April 22, 2010

Hold the phone. We're back in the hospital. Garrett's reprieve from pain was short lived. By 8pm he was pretty uncomfortable. By midnight he was miserable. By 5am, we were headed for the hospital. He hurts through his whole body. Even touching the hair on his arms hurts him.

Garrett has what is known as "serum sickness". The ATG infusion has many potential negative side-effects and it appears he's getting every one. The serum sickness is a hypersensitive reaction because of the infusion and can cause rash, swollen lymph nodes, joint and body pain, lowered blood pressure, enlarged spleen or even shock. So far, he's got nearly all of them.

Sorry to give you the wrong impression that he was better. We thought he was.

Because his veins were already burned from the initial infusion before the pic-line, the serum sickness is only magnifying the intensity of the inflammation and discomfort as they try to put in some IV medicine to help him. He had to take another IV needle, but we had no choice. But they are infusing extremely slow to minimize the pain.

When we know he's getting better, I'll post an update. Until then, I'm just going to stay at his side and pray for this to pass. He couldn't have had more than 6-8 hours sleep in the past 48 hours. They just gave him some Rx to calm him down and help this chronic pain. Historically, this can unfortunately last up to 14 days. My heart goes out to any child who's had to endure this misery for that long. There is nothing fair about this, that's for sure.


JD