Friday, Holding Steady

Peter is essentially in the same condition this morning. His vitals are stable. The ventilator pushes air into his lungs, but his lungs still need to absorb the oxygen, and thankfully they are. Yet something bad is going on in his lungs and his doctors aren’t sure that it’s pneumonia. He never really had a fever and some blood counts contradicted a pneumonia diagnosis. It takes a while for the cultures to grow and identify, but maybe it’s viral. They are bringing in a specialist from neurology and infectious disease to help.

If this sounds weird, it is. It is for a couple different reasons. First of all, it is a freak occurrence to have a patient be released from ICU after surgery, only to be re-admitted almost immediately. Secondly, Peter has been fighting for his life against cancer. Today he’s fighting against… something else, some infection? Whatever it is, its origins aren’t even necessarily related to the surgery, much less cancer. Sure, he wasn’t in much condition to fight infection after surgery, but what it is and how it started are open questions.

Now for the good news. Ty and Erika were debriefed on the tumor pathology report. The doctor said that Peter has never been in a better place in his fight against cancer. He felt that the neuroblastoma was old and beat up from the chemotherapy. He did not feel that this was new, aggressive neuroblastoma. They were very pleased with what they found. In fact, their plan for further cancer treatments would NOT include chemotherapy. They would just radiate the site and try to work his way into further antibody treatments.

That news is very exciting, given that the scare of recurrent and aggressive cancer has been hanging over our collective heads for days. But in order to finish that fight, he needs to win this immediate battle. A sign of hope is that only his lungs seem to be affected right now. His other organs appear healthy and functioning. His lungs are taking oxygen. It’s just going to take time. It could be up to a month on the ventilator, but hopefully less than two weeks. They will look for slow and steady improvement over a week and evaluate. The oxygen and drug levels will be manipulated little by little to see how he can do on his own. And we all know he’ll do great soon enough.