The Saga of Chicken Pox with Leukemia

So Serenity ended up spending 24 hours in the hospital, now she is home on IV meds. Here’s the interesting thing, we’re basically being her primary care providers – that’s how much training and experience we’ve gained in medicine this year.

Chicken Pox is a potentially deadly combination with Leukemia, but only if there is a severe reaction. So the Oncologist had her check in to the ICS ward at Primary Children’s Hospital so they could observe her reaction. 24 hours later she still wasn’t running a fever and was doing quite well, except for the sheer boredom! She has pox all over her body but it’s a mild case, the biggst concern is if they get in her mouth and respiratory tract. We are monitoring her temperature and her breakout, if they accelerate she’ll be back in the hospital, otherwise she’ll work through them here.

She is on a broad spectrum antibiotic (Acyclovir), taking 70 mls every 8 hours. She takes them through an IV pump which feeds into her port. This means we are performing nurse duties of managing sterile environments to hookup her IV to her port, monitoring the drip, etc.

I know there is a lot more to medicine than this, but sometimes it feels like we just need 10 more credits to be a full blown nurse.

Here’s a few pictures from this hospital visit:

The whole family hanging out

She’s pretty sure that she’s at her cutest with her tongue sticking out!

See what I mean? She’s holding her horse, he’s her ‘proxy patient’ – he gets most of her procedures done to him before she does. Her other animal is her monkey because my nickname for her is “Monkey Butt” – I have no idea why!

#serenleuk