See Ya Simon
This morning it became official.  I was getting discharged.  There wasn’t too much fanfare in the conversation.  I had remained fever free and every culture had come back negative.  With no reason to keep me any longer, my DC orders were written and I was out!

Looking Back
I wrote about what nightly vitals are like earlier in the week but didn’t get a chance to post it.  While in the hospital, I get vitals (BP, Temp and PulseOx) every 4 hours.  This means I never get more than 4 hours of sleep (and hospitals claim they are trying to make you better!).  It’s hard to describe the routine, but it’s necessary.  Some nights I’m almost already awake for it and other nights I’m sound asleep.  Below is what I wrote earlier in the week.

Nightly Vitals
Sometimes I wake at the click of the door.  Sometimes it’s the sink light coming on.  On good nights, I don’t wake until the nurse is right by my bed.  It’s time for vitals and labs.  I want to stay asleep, so I robotically go through the motions I know all too well.  I lay flat on my back.  I stick my arm out into the air and the blood pressure cuff goes on.  My pointer finger extends for the pulse oximeter and I open my mouth for the thermometer.  I lay still as the monitor beeps when each vital comes back.  Sometimes I hear what they are, but often I don’t.  A brighter light goes on and it’s time to be stuck.  Sterile kits are opened, protective gloves applied.  The familiar countdown of “3, 2, 1, stick” is barely audible as I keep my eyes closed.  A needle pierces my skin and with any luck the blood flows into the tube.  But luck hasn’t been on my side lately, and most likely I’ll be stuck again because the first vein isn’t producing.  All the fun finally ends and I hear my urine jugs being emptied into the toilet.  Then the lights go off.  At this point, all alone, I allow myself to wake up a little bit.  I take a drink of fresh ice water that sits by my bed.  I try to see the clock in the dark of the room and the haze of my nearsightedness.  I get up to pee, because hey, I gotta go.  Then I lay back down to try to fall asleep.  Mostly likely to be woken again for meds or more vitals in an hour if I’ve been running a fever.

Continue reading Home Sweet Home

Get the Hell Out of Here Bieber
Good news today.  So far there hasn’t been any signs of Bieber Fever.  During rounds the morning the attending said I would most likely be discharged tomorrow.  Even if I ran a little bit of a fever the plan would be for discharge.  Reason being is the cultures are still showing negative, so I’ve never had any proof of an infection.  Also, my white counts are starting to come up a bit after being flat for a few days.  This is a sign my bone marrow is recovering.

Filling in The Blanks
A little bit of the story has been left out simply because I haven’t been up to writing on here.  So let me fill in a few blanks.  On Saturday I was in bed most of the day with fatigue.  We had a birthday party for the girls, so I was up and around for some of that, but otherwise I was in my room.  Throughout the day my temp was slowly rising.  My $7.99 Walgreens branded thermometer has consistently displayed 98.1 as my temperature.  Late that morning when it started displaying 99.0, I knew something was going to be up.  99.0 turned into 99.9 which turned into 100.1 for the better part of the afternoon.  Then we hit 100.5.  That was significant because I thought I was supposed to call the doctor for anything over 100.4.  I ignored it for a bit hoping it would go down, but then I eventually dug out my paperwork to get the Hematology on call number.

It was then that I noticed I should only call for anything over 100.8.  Woo-hoo!  I was technically under the limit, which means I didn’t have to call.  Let’s ignore the fact that the thermometer typically was off by around 0.5 degrees.  So I went back to bed.  And my temperature went up again.  The good news here is I was still following the letter of the law.  My temp was only 100.7.  Why bother the nice doctors at the hospital?  If they wanted me to call with a temp of 100.7 they would have put that in the discharge instructions.  If they wanted me to use something other than a $7.99 thermometer they would have given it to me.  But they didn’t.  And I’m a stickler for following instructions (when it suits me).  So I did what any good cancer patient would do when they have a rising temp and implied instructions to be calling in at this point.  I took a nap.

Unfortunately the nap didn’t  cure my fever.  As you might have guessed, my temp went up again.  This time to 101.8. 101.8!!  Now wait a damn minute here, what happened to all those numbers in between?  It was at this point I knew admission was inevitable.  Short of pouring ice in my shorts (which I didn’t think was an option because we had people over earlier for the party and the ice maker probably hadn’t caught up yet) I knew what I had to do.  I found the number to call and talked to Dr. I can’t remember his name who, much to my disappointment, told me to head to the Emergency Room.  He basically said “You have a fever idiot, what were you expecting”.

Continue reading Red to Go

This is One Hell of a Concert
The Bieber fever continues.  Typically I will get chilled, then very hot, then the fever will break, then we’ll do it all over again.  I haven’t had a fever free day since this all started.  Most days I’ll have multiple fevers. Every time I sweat and think the Bieber fever is finally done, it comes back out for another encore song.  There’s really no telling how long this will last.  My immune system is compromised and my body’s only way to fight off infection is to turn up the heat so to speak.

Neutropenic Fever
You may want to validate this explanation with Dr. Google, but here is what is essentially happening to me.  My white blood cell count is very low.  Normally when my body detects infection, it would send out neutrophils to attack and destroy the bacteria in my body.  Since my counts are low and my bone marrow hasn’t recovered enough to produce new WBCs in a sufficient amount, my body doesn’t have its natural defense mechanism.  If it detects an infection, the only self defense it has is to raise my body temperature to fight off the infection.  So my body is currently going through cycles of fever until it can produce enough WBCs to fight off infection.

Continue reading Lather, Rinse, Repeat