26 E-mail: home from the hospital today

5/29/2006

Yesterday got interesting, and not in a good way. Let’s see…I sent my cheerful message out before 9:00 in the morning. Guy and I went to see the movie “The DaVinci Code” in the early afternoon while a friend played with Kelric. During the movie the aches and pains came back. Man, that hurt! My back tormented me for over an hour and the Coke I drank wasn’t sitting well in my stomach. The movie was around 2 ½ hours long and was difficult to enjoy when I was hurting and starting to feel sick. I had one precious Zofran anti-nausea pill in my purse which I took during the film. We went home and I took a hot bath to ease the aching muscles and joints.

Unfortunately, the hot bath water unsettled my stomach even more. Over the rest of the afternoon I ran a fever and threw up several times. Fever is a scary thing when you’re in chemotherapy and it’s not to be taken lightly. We ended up calling the oncologist to see what to do and that lead to a trip to St. David’s South Austin Hospital. I had heard bad things about the level of care at that hospital, but I was too sick to object when my doctor suggested that I go there. Next time, if there is a next time, I will insist on Seton or pretty much any other hospital in town. They took forever to check me in. My room wasn’t cleaned when I was taken to it so we had to wait on that. Once I got in the room it took a long time to get me hooked up to the IV. I think about two hours passed from the time we arrived at the hospital to the time I actually started receiving any kind of care. That whole time I was shivering and shaking.

What was wrong with me? We don’t really know. I had some kind of infection that made me very, very sick. The fever lasted all night long and didn’t break until the morning. Our friend Machelle came over to watch Kelric yesterday so Guy could take me to the hospital. My mom drove back from Brenham to look after Kelric for the night and she’ll stay until at least tomorrow. I spent the night on a IV drip. They gave me IV doses of Zofran for nausea and steroids. The stupid Taxol caused waves of intense pain in my knees, ankles, toes, back, and other places. Sometimes I could sleep to escape how miserable I felt and sometimes I couldn’t. I woke up around 11:30 in the evening feeling really hot. I called the nurses station, waited a while for a response, then reported that either the room was hot or I was running a high fever. I couldn’t tell. An hour and a half later at 1:00 a.m. I still hadn’t heard from anyone. I took another look at the thermometer in my room and saw that it was set for 80 degrees. Back when I was shivering I didn’t notice that the room was hot. I set the thermostat a little cooler and went back to sleep. When my nurse came in at 4:00 a.m. to change my IV bag I told her about the incident. Apparently nobody had told her I needed assistance back when I had called. She felt my arm, said I still felt a little feverish, and she would have someone come back to take my temperature. It was an hour before the technician showed up to take my temperature. I had a fever of 101.4 then.

This morning they gave me a pill of Motrin to take – my first attempt at oral medication that didn’t come back up. That broke the fever and after I managed to keep my breakfast down I was allowed to leave. The hospital food at Seton when I had Kelric tasted pretty good. The hospital food at South Austin Hospital tasted nasty. I’m pretty proud of myself for eating any of it.

So now I’m home, not feeling great but doing much better than yesterday. I’m grateful the hospital stay didn’t last longer than one night, and I hope I never have to go through that again.

Angela

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