Cancer Fabulous Diaries: Infection
Date: May 4
I’m feeling: Frustrated
It started on Saturday Night. My arm and the length of my wound started tingling. When i emptied my drain, it measured 30 ml rather than the usual 17 ml. I thought it was strange.
When I woke up the next morning, there was a lot of tension in my arm. I brushed it off as a result of my arm exercises from the night before. As the day progressed, my body started to feel achy. My muscles and joints started to hurt really badly. Around 3:30 pm, I lay in bed wanting to cry. Then I started to get the chills. Around 5 pm my brother, Kelvin diagnosed me as having the Swine Flu.
I called the nurse hotline at the insistence of Kelvin. The nurse told me to go to a doctor. It was Sunday, so I checked in at ER. The doctor was super nice. After realizing I was a chemo patient with a possible infection spreading throughout my body, he got me in pronto! When I went to pee in the cup, I was so focused on my pain that i totally forgot to do it!
I had to get blood work and two IVs because the first IV didn’t work. I also saw two different doctors and two different nurses because of shift changes! I was extremely sore and could hardly move.
My little sister, Sabrina, watched me tear up as I lay in the skinny hospital bed. She rubbed my head and tried to distract me when I had to get my IV. I had to close my eyes because I didn’t want to watch the look of horror on Sabrina’s face as she watched the IV go in. The first sample of blood that they sent to the lab was clogged when it got there, so they had to draw some more blood. They gave me a urine test, some blood tests and a drain swab. After they gave me antibiotics through the IV, I was done! It had taken three and a half hours, relatively short for an ER. They kept the IV in my arm and asked me to come back the next morning. I took a Tylenol 3 to relieve the pain and when I woke up I was overcome with nausea.– Sylvia Soo
