The drama never ends in our house, We have been very cautious about germs and contamination and knock on wood Nick has not caught any virus BUT on Monday my eight year old Kurt woke up covered in spots. It took me less then a second to realize that he had the chicken pox. I sent an email to our oncology nurse to see if she still wanted us to come at the end of the week for finger poke and I got a reply that said I need to talk to you, call me immedietly. Before I had a chance to call her she called my cell phone and told me to get Nick to the hospital asap.
Once there we were ushered right into a quarantine room and the doctor let us know that Nick would need something called a VZIG (varicella-zoster immune globulin) Transfusion to try and minimize his risk of getting the chicken pox. With people who have no immune system the varicella virus can cause far worse things then just itchy spots, it can attack the brain, eyes and other major organs also the spots are an open invitation for bacterial infections. To quote the doctor, "Nick getting the chicken pox could be disasterous". We are not out of the woods yet because with the incubation period any of my children can get the infection until approx December 19th and if they do then the incubation period starts all over again. Nick is now on a quarantine watch and cant return to the hospital until the 19th has passed which means that we cant monitor his platelets or hemoglobin, or neut counts. I instead have to rely on my motherly instinct to notice if something is not right. If he does happen to get the chicken pox he will need to be in the hospital on isolation getting large amounts of IV antibiotics for a week.
We are now on pox watch and our hepa filter is running on high - Nick has slept most of today and has eaten nothing but a cinnamon bun and some coffee which is not the best sign of good health but I'm keeping my fingers crossed that he's just having a rough day.
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