It seems I’m taking the scenic route through cancer. Broadcasting live from Methodist Hospital, where I was admitted Friday evening with neutropenic fever.
We had planned to head up to the cabin Thursday, because the worst of the chemo side effects seemed to be over, but that was scrapped when I felt crappy and had a slight (99 degree) fever. I know 99 is basically like no fever at all, as my nurse mother would tell me when I tried to use it as a reason to stay home from school. What you have to understand is that I’m a reptile, and even when sick, I rarely get the thermometer reading up to 98.6. I called the cancer center and talked to my nemesis John the oncology triage nurse, who said it wasn’t worth freaking out about, and I should stay home and monitor it. But based on my last experience, I was freaking out. I made him get confirmation from my doctor. Yes, stay home. Don’t freak out.
The next day I was feeling more crappy, and my fever was up slightly. I called oncology triage again. Nope. If I got to 101.5, I would need to go to the ER and have labs run. Not before then. I am still trying to work out what the parameters of not feeling good are in the world of chemo. I knew I didn’t feel good, it didn’t feel like the chemo side effects, and I was stressed out about it. Ativan helped, and I holed up in the Recovery Lair (spare bedroom with TV and dog attendant).
Bob did not see the thermometer reading of 101.9, so he cannot confirm nor deny the accuracy of that assertion, but he didn’t push back when I said it was time to go to the Methodist Hospital Emergency Room.
To recap the previous hospital experience, I came in with a fever and feeling shitty and was admitted because my white blood cell count was very high: 24,000, indicating an infection. Something in the 6,000 – 12,000 range is normal. Turned out to be a bacterial staph infection (originating around my recently installed chemo port) that had moved to my blood stream: I was septic. I had septicemia.
Since I want to learn about all the options, this time I chose a different path on the adventure. Friday I came in to the ER with a fever and feeling shitty (sound familiar?) and was admitted because my white blood cell count was very low: 800, indicating that I had no ability to fight an infection. (Remember that the normal range is 6,000 – 12,000.) I had no neutrophils, a critical variety of white blood cell. I have neutropenia.
A low-normal neutrophil count is 2.5; when I came to the ER this time, my count was 0. I’m excited to report that I’m up to 0.1 today! Anything under 1 or 0.5 and the lab will make a special call to my nurse to report what’s termed a “critical result,” rather than wait for them to discover it in the computer system. Today my nurse got the call, but on the bright side, the news was better than it was yesterday. And my general white blood cell count had climbed to 1,900.
What does this mean? Well, it’s Sunday night and I’m still in the fucking hospital. Pretty crabby about that. More people are wearing masks around me. I have to wear a mask if I leave my room. I was going to say that Bob is trying very hard to be sterile but that’s not quite right. I’ve been getting lots of IV antibiotics and basically trying to not get infected with anything as we wait for my numbers to come up. We’re also waiting to see if I’m still harboring any of the staph bacteria from last time. It takes 48 hours to know if anything is going to grow. We hope not.
The whole white blood cell deal is crazy. To summarize my essay on white blood cells: if you have too many, you better be able to explain why, and if it’s an infection, you need to stop it before it stops you. If you don’t have any white blood cells (because chemo killed them), you need to Boy in the Bubble yourself so you don’t get sick, take antibiotics to kill anything that might be lingering, and wait for your body to grow more. I think that’s the gist of it.
I’ll hopefully go home from the hospital tomorrow.