Fever and the ER

Yesterday morning I woke up with a fever of 99.5. Not a big deal if I was not on chemotherapy which weakens the immune system. Dr. Gonzales told me that a person on chemo with a temperature of 100 is the equivalent of a healthy adult having a temperature of 103. Needless to say the higher that normal temperature concerned me so around noon I took my temperature again, it was 100.5 and moving in the wrong direction. It was time to go to the ER and repeat my mantra for the triage nurse.

I have breast cancer.

I’m on chemotherapy.

I have a fever.

They immediately took me back to the triage room and hooked me up to the little blue guy – the machine that takes your blood pressure, pulse and temperature – and moved me to my own room. Private rooms in the ER are reserved for special people, in fact mine was one of 4 out of 25 “rooms” that was private with its own door and ventilation system. So they either thought that I was highly contagious, or they didn’t want me catching anything from other patients; I think they didn’t want me to catch anything. The room I was in was next to the ambulance entrance, and I kept the door open, so I got to see all of the ambulance runs. All of them were women 70+ coming in with chest pain, or something else. I saw one trauma patient, in the four hours I was there, and one really crazy person handcuffed to the bed and escorted by troopers. The crazy lady kept screaming, “Get me outta here, I want to leave. Get me outta here, I want to leave.” I do not see how people work in that environment, it was insane! It made me appreciate the work that dad did for so long – congratulations dad, you survived the ER. I met with the ER doc, Dr. Mills (no relation to my Dr. Mills), and he was your typical no nonsense ER doctor. He was very nice and very thorough. I had a small abscess on my panty line from an ingrown hair, he did not think it looked good, and wanted to lance it and take a culture for staph. Now before you start to think that we live like pigs, how else would we be exposed to staph, you have to know that staph is present on all of our bodies all of the time. Everyone can get a staph infection, and those with compromised immune systems tend to get them more that others because it is easy for the bacteria to get into the pores and start growing like grandma’s butter beans. The nurse tried taking some blood for my CBC, and two collapsed veins later she had enough for the test. OUCH! Little did I know that this was just the start of me gaining my new title “Princess Pincushion.”

I was stuck for the blood, stuck for lidocaine, stuck to lance my abscess, stuck to start an IV only to have my vein roll before finally collapsing (that is now 3 collapsed veins in one day), and finally given a shot in the ass. Oh yea, the doctor was correct and I did have a staph infection. Normal people would have been given some antibiotics and sent home, but lucky me I get everything that modern medicine can throw at an infection. Not only will it kill any staph that even thinks about invading my body, it will kill the pesky sinus infection that I originally went to the ER to treat. In their attempt to give me enough antibiotics for a horse, the nurse tried to start an IV, leading to the dancing vein eventually collapsing with exhaustion. (If I didn’t know any better I would swear that vein was taking X.) Because my veins were not cooperating I could not take the antibiotics via IV, I instead had to take one of the drugs via IM, or more appropriately – they had to give me a shot in the ass. That turned out to be my most painful and humiliating moment so far. It hurt worse that any shot I have ever been given – ever! My muscles had the biggest cramp, and I could not solve it by stretching, it was so painful. It still is sore. Oh well. I’ve been stuffed full of four different kinds of antibiotics and my fever was gone this morning. I’m also feeling a lot better, but taking Dr. Mills advise I’m going to take it easy for a couple of days. He thinks that I’m doing too much, too fast. I feel like I’m being lazy. Today the sun finally came out – YEA SUN – so I’m going to get my 15 minutes of Vitamin D, then go inside, rest…and wait.

Here are photos of my pig.  I finally finished today.