Feverish Celebration

Well I made it until the wee hours of Monday morning (day 12) before the fever hit at 3am. It was low and I felt perfectly fine so I waited until 4 am to call it in. The on-call doctor said I could take my time coming in so I went back to bed and woke Mum up for 5am still feeling good. On the drive in I started to feel hot and sick and by check-in at Emerg at 5:45am I was almost passing out. My face was burning so hot that I had a bag of ice on it that my mother had to hold in place and the nurses had to change about 4-5 times because it kept melting that morning.

Emerg did the bloodwork and started me on general antibiotics while we waited for results and admitting. They had me admitted from Emerg into a bed in Hematology in an hour (awesome!) and that’s when they told me Id be there for a couple of “days”. I didn’t even bring a bag because I thought Id go in, get some antibiotics and be sent home in a couple of hours. That’s about the time I got “grumpy”… that’s not the word my mother would use, but her version is indecent and totally over exaggerated!

My neutrophils were .3 so no wonder I felt like shit. I slept most of the morning so I sent Mum home with a 3 page list of stuff to get and instructions on how to wash my laundry that I just had to have for my stay (apparently I'm a vicious dictator when I'm feverish) .

Did I mention it was my birthday? Did I mention I was dirty and hairy? With collection on Tuesday and I wasn’t feeling good Sunday night (now I know why) I had planned to take a proper shower Monday to wash my hair and shave my legs, in preparation for Tuesday. No luck! And of course everyone wanted to look at my legs to see if they were swollen, and wouldn’t take my word for it.

It gets better… bring on the ass exam! That’s right I got the same thing for my birthday this year as last year – sadistic or what! I guess a few days back when I got a little (a lot) dried up, I tore inside and that created a source for infection to get into the blood… “the body’s cell count is just so low it can’t handle its own issues” no shit!

When I set out for the hospital that morning I thought it might be a few hours – the routine fever. Get some blood work, antibiotics, go home. Nope I went in on my birthday a hot vicious laundry Nazi with hairy legs, a sore ass and greasy hair and in return I got an all-inclusive stay, antibiotics and an ass exam! Oh ya and cake… they gave me a piece of cake for lunch. It was a celebration after all.