Iowa City Hospital Stay #5 - Fevers - November 26-30

After going through the process of being put in a room (when the nurse asks me if I wear dentures, etc.), I was finally able to go to sleep. I wanted to say, that since I was just in the hospital less than three weeks ago, please use my answers from last time. Ha. But I knew that would not happen.

Denise was able to visit me from 1 to 3 every afternoon. We noticed how quickly two hours go by compared to the four hours we had previously. Many hospitals do not allow any visitors, so we are grateful that she could visit me at all! On Thanksgiving Day, her family waited to have dinner until after our visit was over, instead of at 1 PM as they had planned.

We took a "selfie" for Thanksgiving

When I saw the doctor on Thursday, I asked what the criteria were for me going home. She said that I needed to be fever free for 24-48 hours. Out of my control, but now I know what they are looking for.

And I missed turkey dinner at the hospital. They served it for lunch and stopped serving it at 2 PM. I forgot to ask when I ordered lunch. Oh, well. Denise brought me turkey the next two days.

Thursday evening I started getting a fever again, so my nurse gave me Tylenol regularly all night to help keep me maintain a more constant body temperature (as opposed to chills, take Tylenol, hot and sweaty, and then repeat the cycle).

All day Friday I had no temperature, but about 5 PM it started creeping up again. I took Tylenol then and again about 9 PM to keep it under control. When the nurse checked on me about 1 AM, my temperature was normal, and we decided that Tylenol was unnecessary.

On Saturday I had to have a blood transfusion, because my hemoglobin dropped to 6.7, which is below the threshold of 7.0. (After that my hemoglobin climbed some every day, so on Monday when I discharged, it was 9.4. Much better.)

Friday evening was my last fever, so Monday would hopefully be discharge day. The doctor (different one) on Sunday was not so sure, so I was glad that she was not working on Monday. The Infectious Diseases doctors recommended not treating the bacteria found in my nephrostomy urine because I was not sick with the bacteria. It was only in the nephrostomy. And they also recommended changing from the IV antibiotic to a different one in pill form that would treat possible pneumonia. They were concerned about some spots on my lungs, though there were different opinions about that.

When I saw the doctor on Monday morning, she was ready to discharge me and started the process to get me out of there. But first, I needed to have the nephrostomy tube changed (again), because they wanted to see if the bacteria was still there after doing so. (Again, I wanted to have it capped, but that was not going to happen. I also thought this would happen on December 3, as scheduled, but they cancelled that appointment and scheduled one for December 21 instead. That was frustrating, as I was ready to get rid of my "friend", the bag.)

Once there was enough urine in the bag, the nurse took it for the culture. (The results that came back a couple of days later showed that the bacteria was still there, and I was still not sick from it. Thankfully!) And then we were free to go home about 2 PM. Praise God!

Five days is a normal hospital stay when someone is neutropenic following chemo. And after my previous 12-day hospital stay, I was glad for something "normal"!!

Sometimes we can think that because God does not keep me out of the hospital after a round of chemo, that God does not answer prayer. That is not true. I believe that I stopped having fevers late Friday because people are praying. And He has promised to go with us through EVERY circumstance. We are so thankful for God's help, grace, care and love.

Home again, home again! Thank God!