Day +5

(Written by Lisa): For the most part things have been going quite smoothly for Jon. However, given his situation, we were both wondering when something was going to happen. Last night Jon developed a fever late in the evening. He has to get heavy duty antibiotics every 8 hours, and the nurse took blood cultures out of his central line (similar to his port, but it goes into his jugular vein). The IV team came in and took blood cultures out of his arm (he hates getting stuck with needles - he veins are pretty shot from all the chemo, so it usually takes 4 - 5 times before they hit a vein), just to be on the safe side in case there was an infection in his line. His fever broke sometime between 1 am and 3 am, and he didn't get much sleep last night because of that. And then it came back this morning. The nurse called me to let me know what was going on, so I wouldn't try to bring JJ in (he hasn't gotten Jillians virus, thankfully). She transferred me into his room, so I could see how he was, and he was feeling very nauseated, sore all over, and kind of out of it. Of course I left right away and by the time I got here he had gotten some meds and was feeling a bit better and eating toast, but still very much wiped out. The docs don't know what caused his fever - could be any number of things. His counts are very low, so it could be a neutropenic fever (white counts so low that any type of infection just takes over), or it could also be his body reacting to the donor stem cells. No one knows at this point. Anyways, we have to wait 48 hours for the blood cultures to come back before the docs can rule out certain things...so we wait. Seems like we do a lot of that lately. The fever has taken a lot out of Jon in terms of energy, but hopefully with some rest he can regain some of his strength.

On a good note, Jillian did not throw up last night, so if she can make it through tonight, she can come visit Daddy (if he's up for it). Thank you all for your continued prayers!