I kind of hate writing this because it just keeps going….
He felt OK Saturday 7/27 and then Sunday night there was another fever that went to 102.
Monday morning, the 29th, his fever was low, 99. We had an appointment with our primary care provider at 4 in the afternoon so we thought we would address the new fever situation then. She is always so helpful. She clarifies things and said the right thing to do was to contact our GI doctor and ask for a reassessment, since Michael’s liver is still functioning OK and his real problems are stemming from infections: both biliary and bladder. We don’t see any signs of the cancer progressing so it would help to know what the prognosis is so we can plan ahead. She also said if the fever goes up again, we should go to the ER.
We went home and Michael’s fever came up to 101 and so, once again, we headed for the ER, got there around 7:30PM. Pro tip: the busiest day of the week in ERs happens to be Monday, peaking in the evening. Tuesday slowly levels out. Strangely weekends are not as busy as you would think. We sat and waited, in Zenlike discipline with many others who we found out later waited, 9 – 11 hours before being admitted to a room! There was the guy who keep throwing up, a stoic elderly gentleman in a wheel chair accompanied by his white-haired wife, and three adults likely in their 60s who were rather jovial. They had to be siblings they looked alike, 2 women and a man. I think the man was the patient. They brought in food from a local eatery. Then when they saw me massaging Michael’s hands one of the sisters decided she was jealous and so her siblings each took a hand and massaged away. Haha!
While you are waiting, they do call you in for triage, take your vitals and collect whatever blood tests are required. So, Michael did get his blood taken for cultures, etc. After 7 hours Michael said it was time to go home and get some sleep. We knew they would call us if there was another blood infection.
I went to work Tuesday morning like always as Michael rested at home. The ER called while I was gone because they had found something in his blood and they wanted him to go in. Thankfully he felt well enough to drive himself while I was teaching a class.
After work I went to the ER and he was already in a room. The young, tall ER doc put him on IV antibiotics and said for sure he would have to be admitted so they could monitor him. We weren’t happy about the hospital admission. They started the admission process and in comes the hospital doc, who we knew! She was the one who had just discharged him the previous week. She was familiar with our situation and that we do a lot of self-care at home that would be difficult in the hospital (self-catheterization, attaching collection bags to drain off excess bilirubin, and changing bandages). She said we could go home with an oral antibiotic. But we would need to come back to the ER and wait again if symptoms got worse. That was a risk we were happy to take in exchange for being at home with good food and water and bed.
Wednesday morning, I looked at Michael and I was shocked then scared because he was so thin. During all those days of fever he didn’t have an appetite. But his appetite did return and he’s eating small meals often and has managed over the last 6 days to put on some pounds.
We reached out to Michael’s GI doctor regarding getting a reassessment of the situation. He said there are forms of this cancer that are slow growing. It appears from all the CT scans that he reviewed (one is taken every time he visits the ER) that the disease has not progressed and he would not recommend more scans because of all the radiation involved.
Now if we can just get the immune system to kick in and for the infections to stop. We are looking for ways to do this.
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