I guess it could be worse.

Since last night's post, a lot has happened. Jason had a doctor's appointment this morning that I took him to. Won't go into all of the details, but it was an interesting visit.

When we got to the cancer clinic, Jason had to be wheeled into the office because he had absolutely no strength. This freaked out the nurses because he's usually joking and such, but today he was asleep. Yes, you heard correctly, asleep. they talked to him for just a little bit, but of course he kept floating in and out of the conversation.

I had to go through the run down of what had happened over the last few days, even this morning. Jason couldn't find his warm-up pants and was so out of it, he just got into the car with a sweatshirt and underwear on. His dad gave me a pair of his warm-up pants so he could put them on in the car. Jason realized half-way to the clinic before he realized he didn't have his pants on. I felt bad. Just further proof to me that he had a reaction to his medicine.

They took his vitals, and I knew something was up when the technician lady about freaked out when his blood oxygen level was 78%. She left the room immediately and went and got Fatima the nurse. I love her. She's been in the clinic since Jason started going and Jason has taken a lot of pleasure teaching her some Texas sayings. She took one look at Jason and his vitals and put us in a room where he could lie down. She took some more information from me, put Jason on oxygen and went to find the doctor. They started Jason on some saline and tried to talk with him but he was in and out of it. She went through Jason's list of medicines with him to see if he could tell her what he's been taking and he did a good job, but got some things mixed up. When Dr. Kirk came in, she listened to my information, looked a Jason and started him on some antibiotics. His blood work indicated an infections (his white blood cells were at 15 --kind of high-- but 95% were neutrifils so that meant it was an infection). Jason's breathing was shallow so that's why the oxygen was started.

After the antibiotic was started they told me he would have to go to the hospital so they could find out what was going on. I knew Jason wasn't feeling well because he was okay with all of that. Once the antibiotic was completed, they took his vitals again and they were worse than originally (at first his heart rate was 143 with high blood pressure and 78% oxygen, but now it was 122 with blood pressure in the low 80's). So they changed the plan and sent us to the ICU instead.

Between the time it took us to go from the clinic to the ICU -less than a mile-- Jason's oxygen level was back down to 75%. They hooked him up to oxygen but discovered that even though his oxygen level was going up, so was his CO2 levels (he wasn't getting rid of the carbon dioxide). So they hooked him up to a mask that forces air into your lungs and then helps you force out the CO2. He looked like a fighter pilot. After awhile the CO2 levels went down so they ruled out intubating for the evening, but if it stops working they'll have to put in a breathing tube.

The chest x-rays showed a very entrenched pneumonia and they're not sure if it's bacterial or fungal. Either way it's fixable, but I think the fungal will take longer to get rid of. We've got a week of Spring Break for him to get well.