While they were prepping me to put in the catheter in the operating room, I threw up, because I was sedated and I threw up bile got into his lungs, this means he "aspirated" this is not chemically something that is good to be in your lungs and they cleaned out what they could as soon as they could and called in the Pulmonary guys.
Katie was finally allowed to see me in the recovery room and to say the least, I was in pretty rough shape, shaking from the very high fever and breathing short breaths. Luckily before Katie passed out from worry, everything but the fever itself passed. A fever is common with the aspiration, and it was 102+, which is hard to take, you know you want to do everything to make the fever break, but you can't hide it with tylenol or something.
What do they do for aspiration? - basically continue to monitor you. I am on antibiotics and receiving shots from the nurses. (Katie was bummed that she only got to administer one shot) At this point I am not off-schedule for the stem cell harvest. To stay on schedule, they need to get the catheter in before Wednesday the 20th. Needless to say they are a little hesitant and want to make sure they control the situation so this doesn't happen again. The schedule of timing is the most important with the harvesting portion of the treatment.
Because I just had chemo and because of this complication, they are going to keep me in the hospital, it sounds like until at LEAST the 20th, and at most - Thursday the 21st. They want to keep me through the stem cell harvest, but don't necessarily want to put me straight into high dose chemo because it would be nice to get a little break from the hospital.
I didn't get much sleep Wednesday night because I had the ever-dreaded NG tube down my nose into my belly to help clean out the bile. That was removed Thursday (14th) morning - the doctors did it, which is good because I think if it was in there any longer - I would have done it myself.
The fever comes back when he has been resting for too long and he needs to be using the incentive spirometer - which sends the fever right back down. When he has a fever, they look for infection, so they have been taking blood cultures to make sure there isn't an infection they are not seeing. He is on antibiotics mostly as a precaution.
Why did this happen? - usually people aspirate when they ate too late in the day and the food is not outside of the belly (that's why they tell you not to eat/drink after a certain time) I complied with the instructions, but, in part, because of the fluid in the belly, I am not digesting well (so yes, I haven't pooped for several days) this is the assumption for why it happened in someone young.
So... my belly. Yes, it is filling up again. They will be draining the belly again Monday (18th), which will hopefully give me some relief for longer. They have also said that the tumors which are creating the fluid are chemo-sensitive, so they believe once the high dose chemo starts, the fluid should not continue to retain.
So I am back in the same bed on the 5th floor. We have rotating roommates :( (Thursday (14th) night was the worst - they brought someone in at 2am and they couldn't stop talking, and the people who brought him in were ridiculous.) ICU is monitoring me daily. They expect me to get neutropenic because my counts will continue to go down at this point. I don't know what the protocol here is for neutropenia. We will see what happens and hope that it doesn't happen.
The expectation is that we will be in the hospital through the leukopherisis. at this point they plan to try to put the catheter back in on Wednesday (the same day they will be starting the leukopherisis) I don't know if that will continue to be the plan.
When they took the NG tube out (after I was complaining LOUDLY at how much I hated it) my grin was ear to ear... I even lost my cookies (I tell you this not to gross you our or give you too much information... let's face it, it's a medical update, and we edit the REALLY gross things but at times unpleasant things are included) I tell you because though I was throwing up, I don't think I could have smiled any bigger. He was SOO happy to get i out. I think I told the NP that I would give my left nu.. oh wait... I already gave that up a while ago but I think I told them I would do cartwheels down the hall.
Visitors:
YEAH - we had a pretty busy week with Visitors.
Margot is old hat at being here and the lay of the land and encourages me to go on laps around the floor
Jen has visited as well and spent a big chunk of yesterday hanging out!
Thanks to Christian too who made time in his business trip to stop in and sit for a couple hours!!
THANKS to everyone for coming by during Allen's long stint here!
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