Unexpected Hospital Stay

How strange that as soon as I published my last post I started to feel unwell. All day when my Aunt & Uncle were visiting I kept complaining that my jaw & neck on the one side hurt really badly, like someone had punched me. I had bitten my tongue days before this and it was still swollen so I thought maybe that’s why I have this pain.  I woke up that morning with a raised pimple on my chin & decided I was going to try to pop it. There was no whitehead so nothing came out but I could feel inflammation around it. Slowly through the day blood started to pool underneath my skin in that spot. My neck pain progressed and by dinner time that night I felt I should take my temperature. It was 38 Celsius. The doctors warned me that if my temperature was ever 38 or higher to call the hospital right away since this was a huge sign of an infection. I waited half an hour and tried again. 38.5 this time. I started to get chills & feel really unwell. So I packed up & my Mom brought me into the hospital where I was admitted for 10 days :( After multiple blood tests & blood cultures they found pseudomonas aeruginosa (a nasty bacterial infection) that had spread to my blood stream. It had attached itself to my PICC line so that had to be removed.  I received my medication through an IV in my hand. Apparently I have small veins so none of the nurses wanted to do my blood work ever. I got poked about 30 times, made me kind of miss my PICC line.  They don’t know exactly how I got it but it was most likely through the blemish on my chin.

 The first 3 days all I did was sleep. I felt terrible. I had no appetite. I didn’t have anything to eat or drink for 3-4 days. They threatened me that if I didn’t start eating they would have to give me nutrition through the IV so I forced myself to have little bits at a time.

The pimple on my face swelled up so large and continued down my neck. I was so puffy for a few days. I had chest x-rays done to make sure my lungs were clear and a CT scan of my head to make sure there were no abscesses forming. The pain was so bad I eventually ended up taking injections of dilaudid, which I didn’t want to do. They had me on 3 different IV antibiotics which made me so sick. I was vomiting, had diarrhea, and terrible night sweats. I needed 2 bags of platelets and 4 bags of blood because my counts were still recovering from my last round of chemo.

Eventually it started to clear up and the swelling went down. My pimple formed this large scab over it once it started to heal and after a few days it fell off. I learned that when your body’s white blood cell count is low it doesn’t produce pus. The doctors wouldn’t let me go home until my neutrophil count was 0.5 so I could come off the IV antibiotics & continue oral antibiotics at home. 10 days doesn’t seem like a long time, until you spend it in a hospital bed. Once I started to feel better I was going nuts. It gets so boring! And the food is terrible! I think I may have lost a few pounds.  Once they give me the OK to go home I literally can’t get out of that door fast enough.

 I was doing so well at home this entire time, no infections. I am so careful at home & barely leave the house when my counts are low because I know how easily I can catch something. Just goes to show that no matter how careful you are you can still get sick. The immune system is an amazing thing. I can’t wait until mine is normal & functioning properly again!