Saturday, August 05, 2006

Jack's update -- holding pattern

We took little Jack to the doctor again first thing this morning, as the doc had requested. Jack ran a little bit of fever last night (100.8), but slept fine and is fever-free so far today.

After a full regular exam (ear, nose, throat, joints, abdomen, etc...) he checked out completely normal. He then had a blood test which showed high lymphocytes, seeming to indicate a virus. But this is the opposite of his results from the other three blood tests this week, which all had high but balanced white blood cell count, indicating possible bacterial infection.

None of the "major" concerns (leukemia, meningitis, immune cell deficiency, etc...) seem to fit, because every few days the fever goes away. This wouldn't usually happen if he had a really serious illness.

Bottom line: we're no closer to figuring this thing out. Or even knowing if there is a "thing". Or if it might be over and Jack won't run fever again until he's a senior in high school. We just don't know, and there's so little to go on that it wouldn't make sense to run a battery of tests trying to find the needle in the haystack.

Plan of action: He's off all medicines now, hoping that if there's something going on that it will come to the surface and make diagnosis possible. We have copies of all Jack's recent charts and doctor's visits at home now, and if the fever spikes again we'll probably just grab all the paperwork and head to the ER. Until then, the doctor wants us to talk to him every day with updates.

Thanks for your prayers!

3 comments:

FishrCutB8 said...

Glad to hear the fever is gone, but I kow not knowing is a killer. We said prayers for you at men's group this morning.

His strength to you and Jamie.

Fish

Redlefty said...

You're definitely right -- the unknown is the worst part. Who knows, maybe the fever won't come back this time. The only constant thing through the last two months has been unpredictability, and no more fever sure would be unpredictable!

Bob Devlin said...

Been following along, RL & RW, and Jake is in my daily prayers, as is your whole famliy.