Hospital Stay

Soon after I finished my blog last week, my life totally took a turn.  About 2 p.m. on Sunday, 6/17, I started chilling, followed by diarrhea, vomiting and a fever of 104.8.  This progressed on for a while. I called my nurse friend who thought I needed to go to the ER.  I decided to call Dr. Rob and get his opinion.  He was happy to help and said he had Dr. Kohn's phone number (my oncologist) and he would check with her.  She said I needed to go to the ER at St. Luke's East and gave me a list of tests she wanted them to run.  We arrived there around 10 p.m., and although there was a room full of people waiting to be seen, I got right in.  It was a very long night of tests, chest x-ray, CT of abdomen, putting in an IV, accessing my port, giving me nausea medicine and IV fluids and along with who knows what else.  It was decided about 2 a.m. after they had checked with the oncology doctor on call that I needed to be admitted - problem was there were no rooms.  I stayed in the ER in the very same room for 18 hours before being moved upstairs to a room.  They knew I had an infection but did not know where it was coming from or why.  They ran two blood cultures, one with blood from my port, one with blood from my IV in the arm.

Amanda showed up about 8 a.m. and stayed with me until 1 p.m. when she had to go to the airport to fly to Washington DC and then on to Puerto Rico on Wednesday.  She offered to cancel her trip, but I told her ghat was not necessary, Ron was there with me, and it would just be a lot of sitting around.  They started giving me two IV antibiotics that were general to help with any kind of infection.

While Amanda was there, and since they said I would be there a couple of days, Ron drove to Clinton to pick up some things for both of us.

Once I was transported to my room, it was much more comfortable but I was still pretty sick.  We had no sleep Sunday night and very little Monday night, as they were in there doing something with me every hour.  My blood pressure was low.  Heart rate was 122 so I had to wear a heart monitor.  My fever continued but was more like 101 to 102.

By Tuesday, I started feeling better and sat up in a chair part of the day.  The hospital food was not very tasty, so Ron went to get us McDonald's for lunch.  A plain old hamburger tasted good.

By Wednesday, the cultures had had 48 hours and grew nothing.  They still did not know anything about the infection, but my white count was 24 when I came in to ER (5-10 is normal), and it had gone down progressively the 3 days from 16 to 13 to 8 on Wednesday.  The infectious disease doctor said I could go home on Thursday with two different oral antibiotics.  They thought earlier in the week I might have to go home with IV antibiotics administered by home health.  Glad that didn't happen.  I felt a lot better on Wednesday and sat in the chair all day.  We walked the halls a couple of times just to move around and get out of the room for a while.  I was weak and tired.

Home looked pretty good Thursday when we got home - even though it is still in a shambles.  Charlie Engelken, our handyman, had taken care of things all week for us and kept the work going.  We went to Sieger's for dinner - green bean casserole, one of my favorites.  But, we were able to go home to sleep - we could tip toe around the mess and get to our tiny house TV room and our bedroom.

The dry wall guy was going to sand on Friday, so they did not want me to be here.  When they arrived, I went to Sieger's to hang out for the day.  Debbie made me homemade pimento cheese for lunch, and she fixed us dinner of brisket and baked potatoes.  Charlie called around 3 p.m. and said he had the house all cleaned up and I could come home.  The kitchen was uncovered so we could use it. The floors are still covered in cardboard, and the furniture is covered in plastic, but we have our tiny house front room - we moved the other recliner in there - and we are liking it.  I'm sitting here right now watching the rain hit the pond across the street - I love watching out the front.

Saturday morning I was feeling better, so we both had a "list" of household chores.  I had been up since 5:30 a.m. working on mine and was almost done at 9:30 a.m. when Ron went to the door and said we had a surprise.  I figured someone was stopping by with food.  Then Peyton bee bopped in and yelled surprise!  Made my day.  We played Crazy 8's and Trash, played ball in the basement and had a great time.  A friend from church had called earlier and said she was bringing us lunch, so it worked out great - we had food to feed Amanda and the kids too!  The table and chairs are covered in plastic, so we were thankful it was only 70 degrees for us to eat outside under the umbrella.  It was actually quite nice.  They had to get back by 3 p.m. for Garrison to play baseball, so they left about 1:15 p.m. - he put on his uniform here so they could go directly to the ball field.  It was so nice having them here - what a nice surprise.

Sunday was a quiet day at home.  I was craving fried chicken, so Ron went to Walmart to get us their $10 fried chicken meal deal - 8 pieces of chicken, mashed potatoes and rolls.  And - we have enough left for probably 2 more meals.  With the leftover Shephard's Pie and the leftovers Debbie sent us, we should have plenty of food for the week.  We have been so blessed.

I hope I can make it to 2 pm. and beyond feeing good.  It's only been a week since the disastrous Sunday last week.  The painters and Charlie will be here at 8:30 a.m. tomorrow to discuss the painting project which is to begin a week from tomorrow if everything stays on schedule.

Feeling thankful for doctors and hospitals and medicine that can make us feel better when sick.  God is good - we are blessed.