Home from the Hospital

Well I'm home from my 6 night stay at HSC. This week was not as luxurious as my stay at The Grace last month. There was no private room and flat screen TV waiting for me this time. Thursday night, after my last entry, Christina came over to watch Anthony while Adrienne and I headed to the HSC Emergency. We waited in the emerg waiting room for about 3 hours before we we're brought back to a private room. Our friends Jody, Steph and Michelle came to wait with us which was nice. We didn't even see Steph and Michelle because by the time they got there we had already been called. But they all stayed there til after midnight to see Adrienne when she left. Pretty nice friends! Hours in the waiting room gets old pretty fast but if you're only there for a little bit it can actually be kind of exciting (at HSC anyway). There are lots of security and cops, all for good reason.

Thursday night was pretty uneventful, they took blood and started IV antibiotics. I saw the emergency doctor and an Internal Medicine Specialist. Both told me the same thing, that ENT would want to see me and that they would most likely be draining the abscess around my tonsil. They didn't know when I would be admitted or when ENT would see me. So I went to sleep for the rest of the night.

Friday morning I was awakened at 8 AM by a guy with a light on his head (an ENT resident doctor). He had me sitting up and answering questions about my medical history before I was even awake. Then before I knew it he was spraying my throat with freezing. Then he gave me more freezing via a needle to the back of my mouth. And before I knew it he was cutting a 1 cm hole in the back of my mouth to drain the abscess. I'd say it was all over by 8:15. Oh, I also got some fentanyl in there somewhere as well which is a nice morphine like drug. Then he was gone, like a ninja. I will spare you all the gory details in between.

Later that morning I saw my oncologist, an internal medicine specialist and a team of infectious diseases specialists. They all said similar things. They had taken blood cultures and we had to wait to see what they showed before determining a plan for treatment. And also that I would be admitted but apparently they were still fighting over who would give up a bed, internal medicine or ENT. I had also discussed the plan for chemo with my oncologist but everything was up in the air until infectious diseases had a plan to get my infection under control.

That was it until around lunch time when the ENT doctor came back with a whole team this time, 5 of them. They tell me that they have to aspirate my tonsil (which was the size of a small grape). They have to do this for three reasons: One, so that the antibiotics can work better. Two, so that they can send away the pus they aspirate to check for infection. And three, so they can send some more pus away for pathology to see if it's not infection at all but cancer which has spread to my neck. So, while one doctor holds my tongue, another jabs a big needle into my tonsil and roots it around (literally) until he hits a good pus pocket to aspirate. The other 3 just get up close and personal and watch. I wonder if they knew that they were about 3 seconds away from me vomiting over all of them? It was not fun at all.

I was admitted Friday evening and basically spent the next 5 days waiting for the blood and aspirate samples to grow bacteria. They did, and it was determined that I once again have another Staph infection. The sensitivities came back yesterday and Infectious Diseases along with my oncologist came up with a plan of attack today. I was sent home but have to go to Cancer Care once a day for the next 5 days for IV antibiotics. Then on Monday I have to get another CT scan of my neck to ensure the abscess is decreasing in size. I had one a few days ago which showed the abscess had decreased by 70% already, they just want to make sure it's completely gone or close to it before I start chemo again. If the scan is good then I switch to oral antibiotics and start chemo on Tuesday. I will stay on oral antibiotics for the duration of chemo so hopefully I don't get a third bacterial infection in 3 rounds of chemo. I also got a new picc line put in a couple of days ago which is good news. The last piece of good news that I'm still waiting for is the pathology on my pus. It is very unlikely that my cancer has spread to my neck, even more so now that the antibiotics seem to be working so well on the abscess, but it will be nice to know for sure. My oncologist told me that if my cancer has spread to my neck that he will be writing journal articles about me. Anything is possible but my type of cancer just doesn't do that.

It's really nice to be home with Adrienne and Anthony and I hope that this was my last hospital stay for a long time. Unless of course they find me a bed to admit me for my last cycle of chemo, that would be crappy but probably for the best. Thanks for reading this really long and sometimes gory entry.