Bubble girl

This last week since my last chemo round has been a spectacle and achy grossness, as you know. And on Friday night, it got interesting. After feeling better on Thursday, the bone aching got much worse by dinner time on Friday. I called D, crying from pain, while he was on his way to pick up C de Lune. I went back in the tub, the only place that seemed to give me relief and cooked myself in hot water. I also took a morphine pill. This seemed to manage the pain, but D got worried about me sleeping so much so he asked me to get up around 7:30. By that point, I already had a fever that was climbing at an alarming rate. Since we didn't know if this was simply a result of my lobster-type cooking, I called my home nurse. She told me what to do to bring down my body temperature for a half hour. It did come down to 99, then hovered around 100 for awhile (100.2 is a fever), before suddently spiking to 102.7. That's when we went to the Civic. I guess in hindsight we should have gone to the General, but I figured the Civic would be less busy. Anyways, by midnight I was in observation, having blood tests. My white blood cell count came back desastrous --D made a joke of my only white cell trying to be intimidating, screaming "stay away! stay away!" to the bacteria. So they gave me intraveanous antibiotics and transfered me to the General at 3 am. Saw the oncologist on call around 4 am, and was sent up to a room, where lots and lots of blood was taken again. Needless to say, I didn't get much sleep. On Saturday, they gave me my own room since I had to be in isolation. My immune system was at 0.9 and the bacteria fighting cells were at 0.3 -- think about it: zero is, well, none and normal is between 4 and 12. My normal is 8. This morning, it was at 2.5, enough to be back at home and out into the world. That's something good.

Two more good things:
1) While I was in the hospital, this cute 2o year old admissions clerk came to ask me questions. I don't know how we got to that, but I told him about my previously long wavy blond hair. To which he replied, with shyness and respect, to not worry, that I was still very pretty. Now that I think of it, he said it again before he left. That was sweet of him and when he was gone, I smiled a lot.

2) We went to Cora's for lunch after 2 days of hospital food. D used a butter knife to cut my hospital bracelets off --that was entertaining! There were two women having lunch beside us. They didn't talk to us but after they left, the waitress told us they paid our bill and she wasn't aloud to tell me until they left. That made my day.