NOT AGAIN!

Have you ever been blind-sided, sucker-punched by a fever? Well, on the evening of June 28th I certainly took a beat down from that punch. I had been recovering and starting to make leaps and bounds of improvements since my last hospitalization each day, I had also just seen Dr. Harris that morning and was told he was pleased with "a normal rate of recovery". Then, boom! I start to feel a little flush at dusk and so we take my temperature. Sure enough, 102.5 After some four letter laced sentences, we decided to give things a half hour, to not only see if the fever would come down but to prep for an overnight ER stay just in case. 30 minutes later, no dice. In fact, the fever was up to 103. Off to the lovely UW ER. I have to say the admissions process was pretty quick and my ER RN was on top of things. They immediately expected suspected an infection of some kind, since I have a history of those. Septic - Admitted again.

They gave me a Tylenol, took x-rays, and did a CT scan to see if any of the stents from the previous week had shifted out of position but also to rule other possibilities out. While I was waiting for the CT scan results the fever had broken and I felt pretty good, considering I was sleeping on an uncomfortable bed in ER at 2am or so. All of the quick blood work and the CT scan came back clean, but my symptoms were so symptomatic of infection that they began me on a course of antibiotics anyway.

The oncology attending doctor took particular interest in the infection being in my ascites. An ascites is a bloody fluid build up in a cavity in your body. The fluid should be kind of a watery bloody mix and doesn't necessarily show up on any regular blood tests since it's kind of like a jar of fluid with a membrane surrounding it. My ascities was caused by the internal bleeding I had during the last "episode" (Mine is quite large, like 8 months pregnant large). Ultimately, my doctor decided to ultrasound then biopsy the ascities to determine if the fluid in there had infection. You may ask why not just suck all the fluid out at once if you're going to be in there with that torturer's needle, and he had a good answer, but I can't remember what it was. The most painful part of the biopsy is when they insert the painkiller. They do so in progressive stages, but boy does it sting like a son of a bitch. When the worst pain is behind me, I look down at my lower abdomen to see what's going to and happily see a bloody fluid filling up this humongo tube. The whole thing from ultrasound to band aid over the biopsy site took less than ten minutes.

However, my mid-section was pretty much uncovered during the whole ten minutes and I mentioned I started to feel cold. Nothing was done. Colder, nada. Until my arms started to shake. They rushed to get warm blanks, socks, and quilts but nothing would work control the chills and shakes I was having. I was really shaking to the point where it was harder to breath, talking came out in spurts, and my legs were cramping up super bad. After blasting hot lights at me and covering every part of my body multiple times with warm blankets, they gave me demerol which helped slowly calm my body down to the point I wasn't twitching uncontrollably. My fever was still there, despite the Tylenol, I had just gone through bad chills, and now my blood pressure was dropping dangerously low, so I was immediately sent to the ICU. What a difference this ICU experience was compared to the last one!

Not only was the room bigger and more fancy, but the male RN taking care of me was phenomenal. He really knew his stuff and helped with the fever, kept me in the loop, and monitored me. I felt like he was totally my advocate. The biggest hurdle was to get the blood pressure under control on its own. In the ICU, it was being supported by IV medication to keep it above acceptable levels. Over time, I was able to recover normal vital signs without medicinal help. Since a positive culture had not yet shown up on all my labs, the doctors decided it must be the stents. Although I had just undergone an ERCP three or four weeks back, we went ahead with another one. This ERCP was uneventful and in a day would help to bring my bilirubin down a few points (good thing) and make most of my other critical counts head in a positive direction. I was moved back down to the regular rooms again for a couple days then released on July 4th. I was not about to spend my birthday and July 4th in a hospital bed!

During the time I was in the hospital the second go around, any progress I had made after being released for the first time was pretty much gone. They were also pumping me full of fluids in the ICU to make sure I wasn't dehydrated. As you can expect, my stomach and abdomen were larger than they had ever been. The check out process was just a mess and the intern was completely overwhelmed. I ended up taking too low a dose of a key type of medicine after being released again, until my oncologist doubled the dose a few days later.

In any event, I'm still taking it day by day. Chemo is off the table for a while since my body is really fragile and has lost a ton of muscle mass (skin & bones on my upper back....eeewww). However, I can't eat large meals because the ascites (bloated stomach) pushes against my stomach cavity giving there less space in there.

Please pray for continued strength of body and mind for me and that I have no other "episodes" so I can get back to chemo therapy.

Stay Well,
Rhone