Awww man...

Last night when Trevor and I were getting ready to go to bed at about 11:30, Shad started whimpering. I bent down to check if his catheter was pulling and he felt really hot. We took his temperature and it was 102. We called the pediatric floor (as we had been instructed to do if this happened). They told us to come on in, they would have a room ready for us. We quickly threw some clothes and other essentials in a bag and were out the door.
By the time we got to the hospital it was about 12:30. We gathered all of our stuff, and Shad and all of his stuff, and headed up to the floor. They first took him into the treatment room where they accessed his port and took some blood for lab work. They also took a urine sample to check for any infection coming from his catheter site.
After that we came to our room and got Shad all situated. We had to keep him awake because they wanted to take him for a chest x-ray. We got that done about 1:30, and then were back in our room for the night. We all got ready for bed at that point, and then Trevor and Shad were out. They came in about ten minutes later to start his antibiotics. He wasn't too happy about that, and had a hard time falling back to sleep. I ended up having to sit by him and rub his back for awhile until he calmed down enough to sleep. After that it seemed like it was kind of a revolving door until about 4:00.
At 3:30 a doctor came in and let me know that Shad was neutropenic, and also slightly anemic. They decided that they were going to transfuse some blood, to help with the anemia, and had me sign the paper work for that. The neutropenia is most likely what caused the fever. For those wondering neutropenia is when you have a really low number of neutrophils, a type of white blood cells. This makes it harder for your body to fight infections. Check out this link for more information.
http://www.cancer.net/all-about-cancer/treating-cancer/managing-side-effects/neutropenia
We will be in the hospital until he goes 24 hours without fever, 48 hours without the blood culture developing anything, and lastly and most importantly, until his ANC count is between 250 and 500. Closer to 500. His ANC is currently 87. We don't know how long it will take for his counts to be back up, but we are hoping (and praying) that he will get to be home for Christmas. If not though, we will just wait and celebrate when he is home, and hopefully he will not know it isn't really Christmas. We would appreciate any and all prayers as we work our way through this unwelcome (but somewhat expected) next phase of treatment. He is still his smiling happy self which makes it a bit easier for all of us.