Hospital Update

Mom is still in the hospital. She does not have a UTI, so back to the drawing board. She keeps spiking temperatures. They have drawn several vials of blood to test for infections, virus' and multiple other things. The Dr's are little concerned to send her home without an answer as to why she is having fevers. Mom has been feeling really exhausted and out of breath with just menial tasks, so the Dr. decided to give her 2 units of blood. Her white cell count is awesome, but her red blood cell count was low. They hope that the transfusion will help with that. After the transfusion, her temperature went up so the nurses packed her with ice and adjusted the thermostat in her room and gave her more Tylenol. Mom said it felt pretty good. Teresa stayed the night last night(as Dad has bronchitis and is feeling pretty tired). Mom's temp went up again to 101.9 this morning. She gets the chills and becomes achy when the fevers come. The Cancer PA said they will do a echo cardiogram and a CAT scan to make sure they aren't missing anything. Baring any bad results, she will be released tomorrow. She will need to stay on Tylenol and rest to keep her fevers down. Blood work for all the tests they ran should be coming shortly. Hopefully we will have answers real soon.
Please keep Mom and Dad in your thoughts and prayers.
**The Hempel Family**

Hosptial Stay

Well - here she goes again. Last time around mom got a fever - she thinks it may have been a sinus infection so they put her on antibiotics. This time around they decided to just put her on antibiotics to try and avoid a fever - but Saturday she started having a fever. Sunday she had the chills with it and the doctor told her to go to the emergency room. It was decided that she should be admitted. They changed her antibiotic to see if that would make a difference. This morning her doctor told her that she needed to stay until her fever is gone for 24 hours. It finally broke - but then it went back up this afternoon. They are thinking that it is a urinary track infection. The results come back tomorrow. In that case they will change antibiotic and may send her home since they will know what they are dealing with. Fortunately she only has one more round on the 7th of February.
**The Hempel Family**

My 5th session tomorrow!

I will be having my 5th session of chemo tomorrow. That means I only have three weeks to go for my VERY LAST one. Then I will have surgery to remove what is left of the tumor, after which I will have six weeks of radiation. I've been through radiation before - and chemo is definitely worse.

I'm feeling good now, no more pneumonia or sinus infections. So I'm hoping this round will be easier than the last one.

This is me, on my way to being cancer free!!!
Julie