Can't catch a break

You know how sometimes when you are driving and you see an object or a pothole or something in the road ahead and you swerve around it to avoid the rough ride over it? Well how about when you don't see those objects and you roughly run right over them, blind sighted. 


As my mom wrote yesterday, I spent the last few days up in M50 for a fever admission. It was a miserable stay just because I wanted to go home and I got a shot to boost my white counts that came with extreme bone pain that oxycodone and morphine couldn't fix. It was a rough few days and yesterday I was elated to go home around 3 pm. The trade off was, if I went home, I had to come back today to get a blood draw to check my counts to make sure they continued to go up. I gladly accepted that deal and came down today at 11 for that quick poke and planned to head to Greg's from there. Well, I was blind sighted with the way my day was about to unfold. I went in and told my nurse who was going to do the blood draw, "Hey just so you know there's an area on my incision that looks a little weird. Just wanted to let you know." That turned into, "Let me get one of your nurses real quick, that doesn't look so good." Two of my nurses came in along with various other nurses and doctors in the next few hours to take a look at my now infected looking spot of my incision. We paged Dr. Joyce, my surgeon, because this is now "his leg" and he was out of town. I recommended we page Dr. Wuerz, his resident (my assistant surgeon), and he was off campus at another Clinic location. He actually left his location and came here to look at my leg. He determined it definitely is infected. He swabbed that area and sent it to labs along with my now accessed port blood work. He took pictures and sent them to Dr. Joyce and then got on the phone with him. I was having a rough time, crying with my nurses over this span of about 2 hours. 30 minutes later, Dr. Wuerz came in and told me Dr. Joyce said I had to be admitted. 


To put it simply, I lost it. 


Dr. Wuerz, my nurses and other doctors all were there for me and I was updating my parents who by now were packing my bags and my Dad was coming down. My mom has a cold so she wanted to stay away from me until she feels better. I couldn't calm down. My time in S20 proceeded to get worse when Dr. Wuerz told me the plans for the next few days. He told me that first, they have to take a sample of the fluid in my knee because they have to make sure my new parts aren't infected. Next, Dr. Joyce will be home this weekend and Monday, instead of starting chemo, I have to go in for SURGERY to clean out/remove the infected area and fix me up. When I say surgery, I will go under the knife in the OR, but this infected area is only about an inch so it isn't major. The docs just warned me it might be a hole until it heals from the inside, out. He then told me I will be in here for about a week and start chemo towards the end of next week or until further notice when the surgical fix is healed. 


What. I came in for a quick poke in the arm. Not all this.
At this point, I couldn't take it anymore.


Dr. Wuerz came in again with a kit to get a fluid sample. I laid down on the table and two of my nurses, Holly and Becky were in there holding my hands while I was shaking and crying. The numbing shot stung very badly and didn't even numb a lot. I have a pretty high tolerance of pain, and the pain I felt from the syringe poking under my knee cap and around all the tender parts of my knee was unbearable. I was yelling and crying and squeezing their hands and I almost involuntarily kicked him. That was awful. After calling some friends and my parents trying to call me down, I got the okay to head up to M50 for admission. I just couldn't handle it. My best friend Ali and her mom Connie came and hung with me which really helped calm me down, great friends are so special in life. We then got up to M50 and I got hooked up to antibiotics and there are a few kinds. They are treating it right now as if it is some kind of resistant staph infection (the worst kind) until the cultures come back to determine what it really is. Also, to add to my fantastic day, I just got put in an immobilizer brace because the more I bend my knee, the more I re-open the infected area. I will be in that for about 6 weeks or so, and it becomes more crucial after surgery.


I can't explain to you the emotions that flooded through me when all this began to unfold. Blind sighted like driving over a bump in the road, I couldn't handle it. I just left here yesterday, and I'm back in the same room for about a week. My chemo is now delayed until the incision will heal after surgery, and I am so frustrated I am about to explode. My dad is with me tonight and I know I'm not really a joy to be around right now, he's a saint. He keeps telling me this really is just a bump in the road, one I couldn't swerve. That's life I guess. Goodnight everyone, from Em and Todd hanging in M50, we wish you a better night and better days than us. Hahaha