The Hospital (Part II)

It was only a couple months ago that Jordan and I sat in that same hospital room with Winston as the patient. Ah, memories. I remember when a male nurse tried to put a nasal cannula (look it up, I had to) on Winston for oxygen. I thought, “Wow, guy! You do NOT have kids.” No way was that thing going to stay in his nose for more than half a second.

Now I was the one on the table hooked up to machines. I didn’t get the cannula. But I was hooked up to an IV, BP cuff, and that thing they stick on your finger for your heart rate. I remember when they tried to put that on Winston, too. The nurse eventually gave up and said it “really wasn’t necessary.”

Jordan was still handling the kid situation at home. Without his company, I kept falling asleep as the nurse tried her best to do her job. I came to at one point and she was awkwardly standing next to me holding a tongue suppressor.

“Do you need something?” I asked.

“Is it okay if I check your throat now?” She must have been standing there awhile.

“You do you,” I said.

They tested for everything. COVID, Flu, RSV, and Strep. The core four. All negative. They wheeled me down for a chest X-Ray and throat CT. The CT room was familiar. It was where I got a CT scan mere hours after giving birth to Peter—the scan that showed us the cancer had reached my liver and was likely incurable. Again… memories.

I was wheeled back to my room. Jordan arrived shortly thereafter. His mom drove from Woodbury to be on kid watch (thank you, Laura!). Thank God we moved to Minnesota and had help. If all this had happened while we were on our own island in Tennessee, I don’t know what we would have done.

Nurses and doctors came in and out of the room. Checking vitals, swapping out IV bags, turning off loud beeping noises. As anyone who has ever been to the emergency room knows, it’s a waiting game. The more mentally prepared you are for that, the better. Eventually, a doctor came in and gave us the scoop…

I had contracted some sort of virus, which caused my throat the get very inflamed. My immune system was completely depleted from the chemo, which is why my fever spiked. My body had no fight left in it. Under normal circumstances, it’s possible that this kind of virus wouldn’t have been more than a little tickle in my throat. But I had close to zero white blood cells to fight off the infection. So, the tickle instead became shards of glass. A very no-nonsense nurse, who I liked very much, stopped by a little later and dropped the hammer: I had almost gone onto septic shock.

We finally had answers. I was stable enough that Jordan felt comfortable heading home to relieve his mother of kid duty. It was almost 9pm at this point. I’d been there for five hours. I, of course, would not be going home since I had the immunity of a goldfish. Fortunately, a bed was available for me upstairs. They wheeled me up to my new room on the eighth floor. It looked very similar to my postpartum room, just without the bench seating for dad to sleep on. And no shower. But it was comfy enough and had a working TV. And a pretty nice view.

To be honest, I was actually a little relieved to be staying overnight. Being sick at home is so hard. It’s painful to stay away from my kiddos when we’re under the same roof. And if I can hear them crying, it’s the emotional equivalent of swallowing glass. The worst part of being home while I’m sick is the guilt that comes with it. Even when I have the most legitimate reason in the world to keep my distance (like avoiding sepsis), that nagging voice still tells me that I’m a bad mother. Or a bad wife for saddling dad with all the work. Despite having stage iv cancer, chronic guilt continues to be my worst affliction.

The first night of my hospital stay was uneventful. I was in and out of sleep thanks to the revolving door of nurses that kept coming to check on me. But that’s to be expected in hospitals, and it’s certainly better than the alternative. I’d rather have dutiful and caring nurses as opposed to ones who just forget about you. Everyone who came into my room had to wear a mask due to my weak immune system. I felt a little like E.T. I looked a little like him, too, thanks to my balding scalp.

The next 12 hours were a blur. More waiting. More IV bag swapping. More vital checks. More pain meds. And a couple tubs of Jello…  Jordan and my SIL Jamie visited me in the afternoon. I think they were there when I was informed that I’d have to stay another night. My white blood cell count was still too low to safely go home. One stray booger from Winston’s nose and I’d be right back in the hospital.

The second night was a little more… exciting, I guess you could say. I kept myself awake until the night nurse took over at 11:30pm, in the hopes that this would limit the number of sleep interruptions I’d endure. I was extremely sleep deprived at this point, having gone about 48 hours without anything longer than a 2-hour sleep stretch. And all I had choked down were those two tubs of Jello.

But when the night nurse—an African gentleman whose name I couldn’t pronounce under my current state of sleep deprivation—finally arrived, he seemed a little out of sorts. I asked him if I could get my pain meds and the lidocaine spray for my throat (which was better but still very painful). He said we’d have to wait on the pain meds because “I had an infection in my blood” and he was in the process of talking to the doctor to figure out how to treat the infection.

A blood infection?! That definitely wasn’t good. My heart started racing, the way it did when I learned that my mammogram was abnormal.

So long, night of restful sleep…

When I asked the nurse if he could tell me what a blood infection meant, how bad the infection was, or give me any other information whatsoever, that’s when the language barrier really became an issue. He couldn’t give me anything. All he kept saying was that he would talk to the doctor, but that didn’t make me feel any better. The fact that he was in close cahoots with a doctor at midnight made me feel even worse.  

Finally, in a desperate attempt to receive any sort of comfort, I said:

“I’m really scared.”

To which he replied…

“It’s okay to be scared.”

And that was NOT what I wanted to hear. Telling someone who is scared that it’s okay to be scared is the scariest thing in the world.

My mind started to spiral… Was this blood infection going to kill me? In my last blog post, I pointed out the possibility that something other than cancer could kill me at any moment. I was just trying to make a point about the volatility of life and death, but now it was ironically coming true. A blood infection! My only way out of this fatal situation was if this blood infection turned me into a zombie or a vampire and I’d become immortal. But then Jordan would have to drive a stake into my heart or chop off my head with a machete. So that didn’t seem like a win either.

I was in and out of sleep all night. Terrified. Alone. In pain. Aching. Tired. Hungry. But mostly just terrified…

I told Jordan the news in the morning, crying. He came to the hospital eventually and we waited to speak to a doctor together. Who knew how long that would be. We waited it out, trying to keep our minds occupied on other things.

Finally, the doctor came in. Dr. Thomas. I’d seen her the day before—a very direct but kind Indian woman with chin-length brown hair. I could see her face this time, though, because she wasn’t wearing a mask. Dr. Thomas told me my health was improving. My white blood cell count was practically back to normal thanks to an injection that the cancer clinic had given me (I had no recollection of getting this shot). And I had been fever-free for 24 hours. She said that I would probably go home today.

I waited for a “but.” I waited for her to address the whole terminal blood infection thing. But instead, she said nothing.

“What about the blood infection?” I asked, clutching Jordan’s hand. The doctor looked confused for a moment, before making the connection.  

“Oh, that was nothing,” she said in her reassuringly nonchalant Indian accent. “One of the blood samples picked up an abnormality but it was likely just a skin contaminate. It’s nothing to worry about at all.”

And there it was. As with so many things in my life… I had panicked over something that turned out to be “nothing to worry about at all.” I couldn’t decide if I was relieved or angry. I knew Jordan was angry. So that left me to be relieved. Looks like I’d be dying from cancer after all! (Kidding)

That’s virtually the end of the hospital saga. I was cleared to go home but it still took hours to get discharged. Another long day of waiting. But eventually we were free to go collect Winston from daycare and then head back to the house to relieve our nanny-extraordinaire from Peter duty. We were a happy family once again, albeit led by two very tired parents.

The plan moving forward is to adjust my chemo dose so my immune system doesn’t faceplant again. I’ll have more information about that next week when I meet face-to-face with my oncologist.

For now, I’m doing okay. I was discharged on Friday and it’s now Tuesday. I’m still extremely tired, but my throat is pretty much back to normal. I have a sleeping Peter on my lap. I just met with the contactor who will be repairing the water damage from that massive leak we had a few weeks ago (another saga). I’m working on this blog post (more like a novella at this point). I’ve got to make a doctor’s appointment for Winston, get caught up on OCIA, order groceries, run errands…

Life goes on. No matter what.