In-Hospitable

Yep, I went back on Sunday.

On Tuesday night/Wednesday morning I had a little pukefest, so at a reasonable hour Kathy called the home health nurse (Julie) to tell her that I would be putting off that days chemo treatment. Good thing we called. No one have the home IV service had told Julie, so even though Kathy had waited till well after sunrise to call, she still woke Julie from a sound sleep.

Once we had that settled, we had fluids ordered, and I got re-hydrated via IV later that day. Oddly though, my urine was the color of black tea, and output was really low even with the extra infusion of fluids.

The nurse offered to work over the weekend, so we rescheduled chemo for Friday. Once it rolled around I was expecting the easy time I had the previous three sessions, but I was more miserable than usual, and nauseas all through Saturday and Sunday. Again, despite the constant infusion of fluids over three days, my urine was black tea. During this few days my stoma was more active than usual as well, and on Sunday its output had the color of clay.

Julie arrived on Sunday evening to disconnect me from the pump, and by this point I was pretty non-responsive. I felt miserable, did not want to move or talk, and definitely did not want to go to the hospital. Julie insisted, and Kathy was a stress bomb, so I finally agreed that they could call 911.

Julie made the call, as she was driving away from the house, with neither Kathy nor I knowing she left. Apparently this did not sit well with the dispatcher, who accused her of abandoning her patient, so Julie came back, telling us she told 911 that it was not an emergency.

Well, 911 apparently agreed. About 30 minutes later Julie called for a status update, and found out the call was never recorded. This time when she started to say it was not an emergency, both Kathy and I told her not to say that (maybe I should get a new nurse). This time the fire department guys were there in five minutes (along with a woman firefighter who was stunning! This girl would have been perfectly cast as a firefighter in a hollywood movie!). The usual guys were the ones who helped me get from my room to the street, and I was loaded into the ambulance for another fun trip to the ER.

My usual hospital had reported that they were not taking any ambulance patients, but I insisted that it was where I needed to go, so they arranged for me to wait with the walk-ins in my wheelchair. Turns out I looked pretty bad, and got moved right to the front of the line for a bed.

The first doctor to look at me pronounced I was dehydrated, and that they would prime me with fluids. Soon after that they arranged for a room on the oncology floor.

The next morning I learned that my bilirubin counts were up, indicating a liver problem. First it was an ultrasound, then a CT, then an MRI (I forgot how small that tunnel is!) and then a diagnoses of my damn lymph nodes blocking my bile ducts. I was immediately scheduled to have a stent installed the next day.

Unless that is, my bilirubin counts came down, which is exactly what they did. So, by Friday they decided I was well enough to go home.

There is good/bad news to go along with all this; my CT scans showed that my tumor activity was frozen. Not shrunk, but not growing. This probably means that I have about a month before the cancer figures out how to beat the folfox.

From there? I am too weak to qualify for a clinical trial, and there are no more drugs, so...

Lesson for the day: if your urine turns dark, and your stool turns white, don't wait for your eyes to turn yellow! Get thee to a hospital!

Love you all,

Blake