Thursday, November 12, 2009

Press the Pause Button

Honey I'm Home!

I promise to attempt to write something very soon. I have been sick, in the hospital and now am finally home. YAY! However, I'm in a bit of a haze of medications and so I'm not really able to write anything coherent, err, well, actually, I haven't even had a very coherent thought, much less attemt to make any sense on a blank page. As soon as I can see through the cobwebs in my head again, I'll get back to it.
If your just plain curious,and really bored,  feel free to read on. Warning: Boring Medical Shit Coming...
I get a treatment every 4 weeks or so through an IV which is administered through a port in my chest. The procedure is called IVIG. It is to treat a condition Called Chronic Inflammatory Demyelinating Polyneuropathy . In english, it is an autoimmune disease. Last week when my nurse attempted to do my routine treatment, something went wrong with my port and I felt something "pop" in my neck. After evaluation, we went ahead with my treatment using a vein rather than my port and the treatment went as usual. The day following, I started feeling bad, hurting all over, I spent the night in the ER, had the swine flu test done, along with several other tests and concluded I was hurting for no apparent reason. Home I went. The next day I had a fever of near 103 and still hurt all over, head, fingers, legs, hips, just all over pain. Of course, I assumed I must have the H1N1 and had a false negative test due to having my treatment. Convinced my treatment was hiding the flu symptoms, I headed back to the ER with severe body aches and chills, to the point I chipped a freaking tooth from my teeth chattering. Only me. Anyway, after a very convincing plea to the doctor that surely it would be better to give me Tamiflu and send me home, he insisted on admitting me. I thought surely I would go home in the morning. Apparently my bloodwork showed my white blood cells to be near depleation and ended me up in what they call "reverse isolation". It meant I was not at risk of being contagious but that anyone who entered my room could get me sick. They started talking about oncologists and hematologists and bone marrow transplants, like my head wasn't already spinning. I was put on every antibiotic they make, continued taking the Tamiflu (just in case) and made into a  human voodoo doll I'm sure. Finally, it was determined that my port had indeed broken. Remember the "pop" noise. The port snapped, became severly infected and had mutiple clots, which explained why I was having a hard time breathing, felt like shit, and stayed in a drug induced haze. Finally, a week later, I had surgery to remove the port, and got to come home. And here I am. I have to do a bit of follow up on the whole white blood cells thing but that's about it. I'm a little sore from the surgery but not to bad and alot groggy and foggy from all the drugs but should be back to my old self soon. I hear I slept through a baby hurricane. It seems I do remember hearing an acorn hitting the hospital window at some point and I'm scratching my head wondering why they give you sleeping pills and then wake you up all night.

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