Thanks everyone for your usual great feedback.

When John woke up yesterday morning his temperature was back down to 36.4 and the redness around the PEG site had gone down. We went to the hospital anyway. The clinical practitioner radiation nurse ( who has seen hundreds of PEG incisions) said it looked okay to her but told us to come back in if redness spread to greater than 1 cm and if his temperature went over 38.

She said it sounded like John had picked up a virus (citing the particularly stuffy nose) but with the rise and fall of temperature it looked like 22 days after his last chemo that his immune system was starting to come back on track.

She also said that it takes the body a lot of effort to maintain the PEG incision and when he gets something like a cold we should automatically expect the site to get somewhat more red. She stressed that we had to come back in though if there was oozing or, as a I said above, a lot more redness.

The nurse also suggested a simple decongestant at night for a night or two ( nothing that included medication for anti-fever, anti-runny nose) to help with the stuffiness.

It's amazing how scary these flare-ups of different types are. I guess we all know that sometimes it is something small and other times it's something to be really concerned about and when it first happens there's no way of knowing what path you are heading down this time.

Thanks again for taking the time to post your helpful replies and I hope everyone is enjoying the holidays right now.

Mary