the weekend update... addendum

so...

guess i put the cart before the blog... or the blog before the horse, or put a blog in my mouth or a foot in my blog.... i dunno what the hell happened...


after we finished the pet-scan on friday ~ 5pm-ish, we headed to draegers to get trish some food, since she hadn't eaten for almost 24 hours.

about an hour after we got home, trish started running a fever up to 101.4ish

we called the emergency "on-call"ogist... and she said....

"bring her into the ER"

and i was thinking

"WTF, SOB, MF, $#!&"


so we headed over to the stanford ER friday evening around 7pm..
again, if it was business hours, we woulda went over to doc carlson, but nahh... couldn't have that kinda luck...
at the ER, they triaged trish in the waiting room and her fever was 99.7.

the benefits of being a cancer chick with a fever is that are pretty quick to get you into a private room, so again, we were put into a pediatric private ER room, and got the same great nurse, monika, we had last trip to the ER.

i kept taking trish's temp every 45 minutes or so, and we saw it go down pretty quick to a normal 98.6 ish an hour or two later..
no drugs, no iv's, no nothing.. hell, we hadn't even seen a real doctor at that point.

dr. oak says it was all part of the long day of no food, some radioactive dye getting pushed into her and her body being a little grumpy at her.

my money was on us coming home that night, perhaps even with a prescription for an antibiotic...

well.. dr. oak was wrong... and glad i didn't wager the 'under' on time spent at the hosptial this weekend.

the real doc came in around 11:30pm (4+ hours later) to let us know that trish's blood counts were really low..

ANC: .25


so... this meant they were gonna admit her to the hospital until her counts went up, and make sure the fever didn't return.

we (well, actually I) weren't too thrilled, but its all to get her better... we are thinking long term here, and if it means a short stay at the hosptial, sobeit..

i left the ER saturday morning around 1:30am, and trish was moved to her private hospital room at 2:30am.

on saturday, her counts had gone up a little..

ANC: .6 (the chemo cutoff is 1.5)


all this time, trish was feeling really good.. absolutely no sign of fever, they put her on some antibiotics to make sure they killed anything that may have been growing in her.

on friday night in the ER, they did a chest xray, and on saturday they told us the results...
the docs maybe saw some stuff that lead them to maybe believe that trish maybe had some maybe little perhaps onset of some maybe pneumonia... i call bullshit, but i aint the doc, and we gotta keep her safe..

so they gave her more antibiotics for the pseudo-pneumonia that may or may not mighta have been there

this meant there was no way they were gonna release her on saturday... ahh another night at stanford penitentiary, oh joy.

its like a little weekend getaway with a craftmatic adjustable bed.


so sunday... no fever, blood counts still creeping up, still on the antibiotics, eating good, looking good, feeling good, walking good...

ANC: .9 (still low, but going in the right direction.. frame of reference, she was .36 and at home, the day before my sisters wedding that she didn't go to..)


we took a walk around the hospital, and again... she was feeling really good, laughing and in good spirits.. just disappointed that she was still stuck in this fine facility...

part of her was comfortable with the fact that she was in the right place if her health decided to go south, but man... a 2 hour long fever that went away by itself 2 days ago.. dr. oak remained skeptical and was lobbying for the doctors to vote her off the island... but i kinda think trish was getting too attached to the awesome nurses she had... julia & patty

the real docs came in on sunday morning and basically said "you should be home by tuesday"... WTF, tuesday? whats wrong with monday... doc oak was wrong again.

anyhow... better being safe than sorry... trish's health is the priority and i guess we gotta make sure her 2 hour fever from friday doesn't come back sunday night or even monday.
so another night at the st. regis stanford, another night of anitbiotics, another night of hospital food.

so now as i pull my foot out of my blog, its monday morning, and the docs just came in... her monday blood test results are still pending, but her white blood counts (different than absolute neutrophil count) are back, and they are way up, so they are assuming the ANC will be within normal range..

the docs and nurse said trish should be paroled out of here by 11:30am... doc oak is happy.

literally 5 minutes before the parole board walked in to release trish, trish rubbed her nose cause it felt dry, and it sprung a leak. nose bleeds haven't been common for trish, but neither has 4 days of conditioned, dry, hospital air... i thought for sure the docs were gonna put her in solitary confiment for another week, but the docs didn't feel it was caused by anything but her nose being dry..

so thats that.. she, i , everyone is looking forward to getting her home.. she misses caden, and caden misses his mamma... she isn't sick, so lets get her the hell out of here..

i thought the friday night, saturday night, sunday night stay was a little overkill, but thats what i get for getting my doctorate from the local junior college...


ya can never be to careful with our favorite little cancer girl...


anyhow... trish's friend ginger flies in tonight from LAX, assuming the airport hasn't burned down by then...
we have herceptin, mammogram and ultrasound tommorrow...

just another (normal) hectic week...

trish & the nosebleed kit

i believe the C stands for Cell, as in jail...