Hi friends!
I started feeling crummy Wednesday with fatigue, Thursday I felt like I was getting a blood infection with continued fatigue, headache, and lessened appetite,and Friday morning, I called the infectious disease doctor to request some blood cultures be drawn and she put the orders right in because, as they have said many times, “this isn’t your first rodeo”. They know I’ve been through this countless times for many years so I know what it feels like! At the point I called them I told them I hadn’t had any chills or fevers but just wanted to rule it out and make sure. THEN the chills hit followed by the fever. I knew it was a blood infection but, of course, they have to have all the testing done. I received a phone call shortly after 9:00am yesterday morning telling me they were positive and I needed to come to the hospital. Like the doctor in the ER told me…that was fast! A lot of times it takes a couple days to start growing but mine were started at 12:45pm so they were confirmed positive within like 20 or so hours (you do the math! Lol). I asked the doctor that called me to put in a note for the ER to let them know my daddy is on chemo and I didn’t need to be exposed to germs. She said she would and she had it where they would contact her as soon as I got there. She didn’t happen to think to include the detail that she was putting in for a direct admit and I didn’t need to go to the ER at all. So I get to the ER at around 1:00pm, get all registered, and sit there for a while before being informed that I have a bed and was a direct admit. Turns out the floor they were going to put me on is the oncology floor but I can’t have Ezra on that floor due to people being on cancer treatments and such. So I waited a while in the ER for a bed but then the doctor finally told the nurses they needed to get me back in an ER room because they needed to go ahead and get treatment started. So they took me back to an ER room and got the IV antibiotics and fluids going while I waited on a bed. 
Chilling (literally! lol) in the ER
while getting IV antibiotics and fluids.
I ended up getting to my hospital room around 9:00pm I think. I was VERY grateful to finally get to lie down…the pain has been out of this world this time. It legit feels like someone is trying to pull all my joints apart, at times my head feels like someone is stabbing me in rhythm with my heartbeat, and I’ve been having really intense (like right up there with excruciating) pain going from the center of my chest through to my spine. It was so bad I got very little sleep Friday night because I just couldn’t get comfortable. I got up and got some relief from sitting up and then it got really bad again so I kept having to lie down and reposition until it would calm down. I was a little nervous that it might be my heart (because blood infection can go there) but then I was confused because it seems positional. When I saw the infectious disease doctor this morning she asked me if I had any back pain so I told her what is going on and that I’ve never had this with infections before. She said that the specific type of bacteria with this infection can get in the spine. She said if it doesn’t get better within the next few days while everything else improves then they’ll need to do an MRI to make sure it hasn’t gotten into the spine. If it has, that will make the coarse of treatment a good bit longer (6 weeks of IV antibiotics instead of 2-4). They have to remove my Hickman line, do more blood cultures, make sure the cultures are negative for 72 hours, and then put a new one in. That should happen either today or tomorrow. At some point they’ll do an echocardiogram to make sure none of the infection is in my heart. So I’m in for the long haul. Usually I’m in for a week for blood infections.
Specific prayer requests:
•Pain relief. The pain in the everywhere has been really rough. It gets very tiring and frustrating because I reposition to relieve the worst pain and it causes others to worsen.
•The pain in my chest/spine would just be a part of the general pain from the infection and not that the bacteria has reached and infected my spine.
•Nutritional needs. The blood infections always upsets my stomach and erase my appetite and this one has been no different. I haven’t had anything other than a little bit to drink (which comes right back out my stomach drain) since Thursday night. So please pray that I’ll feel like at least starting my formula back by either tonight or tomorrow morning. The more nutrition I have the more strength my body will have to fight this infection.
Thank you so much for your prayers! I greatly appreciate all the love and support y’all have shown me!
Taking Life One Lovely Hospital Stay/“rodeo” at a Time….
Allison
