Emergency Room visit

Because Sarah has a chest port in, we have to take fevers very seriously. There is always the possibility that a fever indicates an infection in her chest port.

On Friday afternoon, Sarah started throwing up around 4pm. She continued to throw up every 30 minutes until well past midnight. She became very lethargic right away, and felt warm. We took her temp throughout the night, and at 2am, her fever went up to 101.4 which is into the range of where doctors are concerned which is only 100.5. We called the on-call pediatric oncologist, and he instructed us to bring Sarah into the JHU ER right away. Jen took Sarah into the Hopkins ER and was there from 3am - 7am on Saturday morning. Turns out that Sarah's port was not infected, and that her fever was a "normal" fever caused by a sickness, but you still have to take it seriously. They checked her counts, gave her some antibiotics to fight whatever was causing the fever, and then released her to go home. Jen had to take Sarah back today to the ER to get another round of antibiotics.

Sarah seems to be feeling better today. She ate some crackers and pretzels, and drank some apple juice, and was able to keep it down. She's not back to 100%, but seems to be doing better.

The doctors warned us this would happen. Considering that she will have this chest port in for up to a year, it is inevitable that she will get a fever at some point...he said its a matter of when, not if. Nonetheless, it doesn't make it any easier when it happens. We are grateful though that this is only our first ER trip in the 6 months she has had her port.

All is back to normal here...after a crazy weekend.