A not so happy holiday weekend...

As some of you know, I spent the holiday weekend in the hospital. I started to feel the Neulasta shot on Thursday. That was our first Troop meeting for Girl Scouts. I led the meeting and came back home. Then the next day I was in pain. The throbbing in my back was really starting to hurt so they let me go home early. I got off just in time to stop by the school to meet Evelyn for lunch. I was not able to eat with her because my mouth hurt, but I sat with her. The next morning it started... I could not get warm for anything. Then I took my temperature three times and each time was higher than the first. I think it got up to 101.5 when the oncologist returned our page. He said that he did not like what he was hearing. He wanted me to go to the emergency room and prepare to stay in the hospital for a couple of days. Once I got to the hospital my fever went down a little but my heart rate was racing. My brother works for Life Flight, so of course we were name dropping every chance we got. My daughter even brought a magazine from the hospital that has a picture of my brother and she would tell the nurses, "Look, this is my Uncle." They kicked a guy out of a private room in the ER so that I could have it, which I felt really bad because he ended up on a gurney in the hallway. I had bilateral IVs and they started with blood work and cultures. Then they started pumping me full of fluid and antibiotics. I ended up having a reaction to one of the antibiotics because I started to feel really itchy and I got red splotches. They finally got me up to a room upstairs and it just so happened to be the room from when I stayed for my first round of chemo. The nurse came in and he told me that the ER nurse told him that I was family of Life Flight, which makes me VIP. He was able to take one of the IVs out, because they only needed one. But they continued to pump me with fluids and antibiotics. My nurse was really nice. He reminded me of a younger Mr. Hennip, my daughters third grade teacher. I think he was my nurse for one day the last time I was there.

The next day my cultures were negative but they had to wait 48 hours for them to grow. They also came in to give me a blood thinner because they did not want a clot to form and my potassium was low, so they started me on that. The doctor came in and told me that my red blood count was very low. My level was at a 7 and it should have been at a 13. They were going to transfuse two units of blood. This scared the heck out of me, but it had to be done. I think I was in denial of how bad it actually was, because my echo cardiogram came back normal. By this time my fever was gone. I thought it was all a little overkill. Seeing the blood go in was crazy. I am so used to seeing it go out, not coming in. I was so scared and very stressed out. That night I did not sleep very well at all. The doctor came to see me the next day and he wanted to keep me another day, but the oncologist said that I was ready to be discharged. As soon as I heard that, I was packed up, changed and ready to go. I just wanted to take a long shower, get in my pajamas and sleep in my own bed.