Freddie's Fight Against Neuroblastoma

Freddie had a CT scan of his torso and an MIBG scan done at the end of July as a bit of a sneak-peak restaging. Thankfully, he continues to have no evidence of disease! He didn’t have a bone marrow biopsy this time around, but he’ll have the full restaging workup (CT head and torso, MIBG, and bone marrow biopsy) in a few months after active treatment concludes.

Late Monday, August 3rd, Freddie threw up and started shivering. (Fred’s shivers are pretty ominous; he’s never had them and not had a bloodstream infection.) Because he’s still high risk while receiving cancer treatment, we were instructed to take him to the ER that night to get checked out. We were admitted overnight after Fred had blood cultures drawn and got a dose of IV antibiotics, but were discharged home in the morning since Fred looked so good! Later that night (8/4), Fred spiked another fever, this one much higher at nearly 104Fº. A few hours later, the on-call oncologist called and told us the blood cultures from the night before were positive, necessitating a trip back to the Children’s for admission and treatment.

His blood cultures grew Pseudomonas fluorescens, a bacteria that’s notorious for being sticky and hard to clear. We tried to treat through his central line with IV antibiotics, but his repeat blood cultures kept popping up positive, and turning positive sooner each day. That being said, the trigger was pulled to remove Fred’s central line and keep us in-house to get IV antibiotics through a peripheral IV instead. It was beyond frustrating since this is his fourth central line, but it was necessary. He had a new line placed Thursday, 8/13, and then received his regularly-scheduled immunotherapy from 8/14-8/17. He tolerated this round really well, but after 2 weeks in the hospital, he was more than ready to jail-break. Fred was discharged home on 8/18 and was able to complete his course of IV antibiotics from the comfort of his own home!

Freddie will be admitted for cycle 5 of immunotherapy from September 10-15. This marks our last [planned] hospital admission! It’s so hard to believe, but we’re more than ready. We’ve spent nearly half of the last year inside the walls of Children’s, and while we’ll miss the nurses and staff dearly, we could not be more thrilled to spend more time at home together as a family.

Thanks for being here!
The Reichards