When I enlisted in the Navy, one of the things that surprised me was the slightly different usage of certain words. For instance, "hygiene" is used as a verb. When I started chemo, I started hearing "fever" used as a verb all the time. The doctors told me "Everyone fevers when they're neutropenic." It still sounds weird to me. Maybe if I start putting it in writing I'll get used to it enough to be able to use it in conversation.
So, last Thursday as I was getting ready for my bone marrow biopsy, I was starting to fever. It happens all the time so I didn't think much of it at first. But the day wore on and my temperature kept climbing. Sometime in the evening the doctors decided I had been fevering long enough and decided to run the standard tests: blood cultures, urine sample, chest X-ray. Before the tests came back they started me on another broad spectrum antibiotic. But even on that, I continued to fever. My temperature eventually climbed to 106.something. The nurses have a temporal thermometer (the one you swipe across the forehead) reserved just for me because I'm a princess. Also because the kind they stick in my ear had been making both of my ears tender. When my fevering was at its peak, my nurse, Cindy, kept taking my temperature using different areas of my forehead to try and get a lower number. But then it blipped up to 107 so she gave up.
At this point, I was feeling pretty cold so I was under at least a couple blankets. They took one of my blankets away and gave me a cooling blanket instead. It's this big cooling pad connected to this big machine that circulates water through. They had me lay on top of it to try and cool down my core. I was pretty sad when they took away my nice warm blanket, but I didn't freeze to death like I thought I would, and it definitely helped bring down my temperature. A little.
The next day the cultures came back and they found enterococcus in my blood. I guess people generally have this in their gut, but my gut is leaky and just lets anything and everything right on through to the blood stream. I had continued to fever because this enterococcus was resistant to the antibiotics I was on. The infectious disease team ordered daptomycin, an antibiotic that kills this enterococcus crap.
I didn't get out of bed all day Friday, except to use the bathroom. And that was a chore. I even asked the nurses to push my table three inches closer to me so I could reach my water, because moving enough to reach it myself seemed like too much of a task.
These fevers are totally lame. I get shivering cold, enough to layer up and pile on blankets. Then I'll start feeling warm, and I peel off the layers, fall asleep, and sweat like a ran a 5k on a hot summer day in Florida. Last night I kept waking up, feeling the slimy sweat on the back of my head, and moving my pillow around to find a dry spot to sweat into. It got to be hard to find a dry spot after a while. That just feels gross. Probably more so than diarrhea. At least with diarrhea you can flush and it just goes away through the magic of modern civilization. But sweat leaks out everywhere and requires lots of laundry-doing. And once it's dry it's invisible, so you can never be sure if you did enough laundry.
So, last Thursday as I was getting ready for my bone marrow biopsy, I was starting to fever. It happens all the time so I didn't think much of it at first. But the day wore on and my temperature kept climbing. Sometime in the evening the doctors decided I had been fevering long enough and decided to run the standard tests: blood cultures, urine sample, chest X-ray. Before the tests came back they started me on another broad spectrum antibiotic. But even on that, I continued to fever. My temperature eventually climbed to 106.something. The nurses have a temporal thermometer (the one you swipe across the forehead) reserved just for me because I'm a princess. Also because the kind they stick in my ear had been making both of my ears tender. When my fevering was at its peak, my nurse, Cindy, kept taking my temperature using different areas of my forehead to try and get a lower number. But then it blipped up to 107 so she gave up.
At this point, I was feeling pretty cold so I was under at least a couple blankets. They took one of my blankets away and gave me a cooling blanket instead. It's this big cooling pad connected to this big machine that circulates water through. They had me lay on top of it to try and cool down my core. I was pretty sad when they took away my nice warm blanket, but I didn't freeze to death like I thought I would, and it definitely helped bring down my temperature. A little.
 |
| cooling blanket machine |
I didn't get out of bed all day Friday, except to use the bathroom. And that was a chore. I even asked the nurses to push my table three inches closer to me so I could reach my water, because moving enough to reach it myself seemed like too much of a task.
These fevers are totally lame. I get shivering cold, enough to layer up and pile on blankets. Then I'll start feeling warm, and I peel off the layers, fall asleep, and sweat like a ran a 5k on a hot summer day in Florida. Last night I kept waking up, feeling the slimy sweat on the back of my head, and moving my pillow around to find a dry spot to sweat into. It got to be hard to find a dry spot after a while. That just feels gross. Probably more so than diarrhea. At least with diarrhea you can flush and it just goes away through the magic of modern civilization. But sweat leaks out everywhere and requires lots of laundry-doing. And once it's dry it's invisible, so you can never be sure if you did enough laundry.
Those sheets are lucky to have some fantastic princess sweat!
ReplyDelete