Frying Pans And Fire

I just arrived home this afternoon after spending five days in the hospital.  I had checked in this past Thursday morning with a fever, knowing I would probably need a blood transfusion and would be in a neutrapenic state (have low or no white blood cells).  So far, with each of the four rounds of treatment I've undergone, I've experienced a need for a blood transfusion, due to being anemic, and I've been neutrapenic.  This means that my immune system is pretty severely compromised and that my ability to fight off infections, even small ones, is more or less non-existent.  Well this was perhaps the worst infection I've had yet in this process.  My fever was fairly high at times, just below 103 or so, and lasted for a few days.  I expected to check in, get some antibiotics and some blood, and be home in two or three days at the most.  Instead I spent five days in the hospital, sweating and feverish, and in just about the most pain I can remember. There were definitely times during my stay at which I had to intentionally remind myself that I would survive the infection and that I would be healthy again, and would eventually get to go home.  It's like that I suppose, having a fever.  It can be disorienting.  Time stretches out and gets a bit fuzzy and dreamlike.  And when I woke up Monday morning and the doctor came in to see me, shared the news that my blood work looked good and I could go home, well I can't tell you how happy I was.

I knew that this past week would be a difficult one, and it was.  I had received my sixth and final intrathecal chemotherapy dose (injected directly into my cerebral spinal fluid).  And I knew that it would hit me hard.  It definitely did.  I felt the effects of that dose almost immediately, and by that evening I was already laid out, exhausted and feeling ill.  I did not know I would get such an intense infection.  

Hard is an understatement.  The problem, for me at least, is that I had to try to figure out what to do to deal with the discomfort I was in, medication-wise.  I already take pain medication to deal with the stomach discomfort caused by chemotherapy.  This allows me to maintain a pretty reasonable level of energy and appetite and to function well enough that I'm not miserable or in bed all the time.  So when I get really sick and the level of pain I'm experiencing kicks way up like that, I'm not sure exactly what to do.  I don't want to take IV pain drugs, like morphine or dilaudid, because they don't last very long and they are really strong, which means they make me feel disoriented and just plain bad over time.  Dilaudid actually makes me throw up, like immediately, and the other ones are almost as creepy.  So I'm having this intense pain, and I'm taking narcotics already, and what the heck does one do?  Well I remembered that I had previously taken two different oral pain meds, alternating them so I could take medicine more often than if I was taking just one type.  And that's what I ended up doing while in the hospital over the weekend.  I suggested my previous concoction to the doctors and they agreed to serve it up.  It eased the pain enough that I was able to survive the worst of the infection without writhing in my bed all night, and was finally able to break through the fever to see the light of day again.

I did have a few moments while in that bed that were pretty crucial, psychologically.  Those moments I've been talking about where a bad situation is reinterpreted as just a situation, and a breakthrough is made.  It was a good experience to have a huge challenge and to shift through it and overcome.  It was a good experience to face a mountain of anxiety and to watch it dissolve into thin air as I realized that it wasn't reality, it was just my interpretation thereof.  I guess if nothing else, this whole thing is really good practice for that, again and again, over and over, week after week.

I ended up getting two separate blood transfusions during this hospital stay, two platelet transfusions, three or four different antibiotics, and definitely a whole bunch of narcotics.  It was like stepping into what you expect to be a wading pool and dropping in over your head.  I think that was why it seemed so unusually challenging.  I was certainly not expecting the Spanish Inquisition.  Needless to say, I'm converted.  Or at least my body is.