Tête-à-Tête-à-Tête

My Sloan-Kettering peeps: Dr. Sauter's nurse, Heather,
Dr. Moskowitz, me, and Dr. Sauter - the dream team. 

I have been home and feverless since last Thursday when I was discharged from the hospital. We figured out what the cause wasn’t, but not really what the cause was. But I’m feeling better and that’s all that really matters. I was ballooned up with almost three days worth of heavy-duty IV antibiotics, IV steroids and lots of IV fluid in hopes of flushing any kind of infection out. No bacteria grew in my blood cultures. My chest and lungs are clear. There is nothing out of the ordinary in my blood work, except for that incredibly high sed rate, indicating high volumes of inflammation in my body.

I got the sign off by the medical, oncology and infectious disease teams that were overseeing my inpatient care and was sent home with instructions to call if chills and fevers again broke in. Despite trying to get out of my previously scheduled appointment, my doctors at Sloan really wanted to see me in New York City on Friday. I was desperately tired on Thursday after finally getting home and couldn’t even fathom a trip to the city, but they assured me that they could see me at whatever time I could get there. They are ultimately the ones who I’ll be working with to decide my next steps – and the ones who watch me so closely and frequently, so I knew that in the end it’d be worth the trek for them to inspect me and weigh in on what might be happening.

My parents took the day off of work and my dad drove us into the city so that I could catch up on all the lost sleep coming off of my hospital stay. I didn’t really sleep, though. I was more cranky and delusional, kind of like when I used to ride in the back seat as a toddler I imagine. We sat in a lot of traffic, which only made me angrier. But we got there, as we always do. I was too impatient to wait to park the car so jumped out on York Ave and made my way into the hospital and up to the physician suites grumbling.

Three Years Later

How appropriate that today is the third anniversary of my cancer diagnosis: May 8, 2009, and I’ve spent it in the Emergency Room and now as an inpatient at Hartford Hospital – the hospital at which that diagnosis was discovered. This is certainly not where I thought I would be three years later. It’s frustrating. It’s defeating. It’s confusing. It’s angering. It’s exhausting. I’m doing my best to focus on the fact that I am still here, that I am still living my life despite what this persistent disease has tried (and failed) to take from me, but it’s hard to keep that focus. This year, more than past anniversaries I admit that I’m angry and resentful. The fact that I’m in the hospital on this day is just insult to injury.

Just last night I said to Craig that I am never going back to stay in a hospital and that he’d have to drug me up significantly to get me there and my mom was comforting me by saying that even though I was feeling so awful, at least I was able to heal in my own home. Well, to all of our surprise, here I am, and I won’t be released until they figure out what’s going on with me. It’s funny how a fever of 103 degrees, writhing chills and a morning full of vomiting quickly changed my tune on the Emergency Department visit. I nearly collapsed at its doors desperate for help to make me feel better. I also came uncomfortably close to vomiting on the triage nurse.