Tuesday 3 May 2016

Fever time #8

[I'm quite spacey on Benedryl and pain meds so please be patient with all my errors or half sentences.]

I'm back in the hospital for *hopefully* the last fever cycle. I came up to Halifax on Sunday, spent most of Sunday napping or staring blankly at things and then the fever hit Monday morning. Right as scheduled. It was terrible this time (not that any time is fun) but it seemed harder to get myself up to go to the hospital than the times before. Isaiah is stuck in Springhill this week so I stayed at a friends near the hospital and she had the honor of taking my whiny self to emerg at 5am. I should've gone earlier as I was up for most of the night mostly because I was anxious about getting the fever but then couldn't sleep because of the actual fever.

It was a terrible cycle of waking up, checking my temp, oh its 37.6, sleep for 20 min, wake up again, check temp, oh it's 37.8...and so on. Until it hit 38 and I started making an attempt to get up. But then I couldn't physically get out of bed and would fall into a half-sleep. It was only when the chills turned to hot flashes that I was able to function a bit better and get up. It makes me wonder what people do if they live on their own. I guess call 911.

I slept most of yesterday sleeping while all the doctors came up with a plan. My blood pressure was super low when I went in so the floor didn't want to admit me until I had been stable for 12 hours. Meaning I spent last night on a terrible emerg bed. Thankfully it was pretty quiet overall, only a few chatty nurses waking me up once in awhile. At least no one was screaming in pain.

I've had low blood pressure almost every other fever cycle so I'm not sure what made this one different but the internal medicine doctor was obsessed over it. He had them pump me full of fluids and albumin (a blood product that is suppose to help the body absorb hydration) and when I didn't pee instantly, he threatened to put in a catheter. I kept telling him that I peed before I got there and I'll go again in a bit.  Thankfully I was able to pee normally again so he stopped bringing it up.

I was brought over to the VG this afternoon. On the 5th floor which is the same as last cycle but different than the other ones. The doctors have me on some intense antibiotics even though my cultures haven't returned yet to say if I have an infection. The infectious disease doctor really wanted to pull the PICC line in case that was the source of infection/fever but she agreed to wait until the cultures return before touching it seeing as my cultures have been negative my last two admittance. The PICC has lasted this long that I don't want it to be pulled two days early and then be stuck with nurses trying to put IVs in me. That never goes well.

Now I'm just waiting for my white count to come back up and the pain to stop (my back pain has been replaced with the femur bone pain).

Always with the gross stains on the ceilings.

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