Week 25 – Thursday 1st – Back again in hospital

It is funny how the world works.  I had 4 days in hospital over the weekend and by Monday 26th (which happened to be my birthday) I still hadn’t raised a temperature and things seemed to be going reasonably well so the doctors decided to let me go home.  They were having trouble finding the source of my high temperatures which is normally an infection of something they can treat with anti-biotics.  But in this case it appeared that I was not carrying an infection.

So home I went on Monday afternoon in time for a lovely birthday celebration with Jan and Lachy.  A few presents were shared and we enjoyed a nice meal – although for me I’m still on the cut down version without any appetite!

On Tuesday I experienced an unusual amount of abdominal pain which persisted most of the day. By lunchtime I was not feeling so well so took a nap after lunch and rested for most of the afternoon only to get up and find my temperature was climbing quickly.

We watched it for about an hour but to no avail – it was well over 38 at 38.7 so unfortunately there was no way out but back into hospital.  We rang Ward 7B and they confirmed they should have a spare bed for the night but we still needed to go through emergency.

After being admitted (1.5hrs) and seeing a doctor (1 hr) I got the usual blood tests (septic workup for high temps) I rested for a bit before being transferred to room 22 in Ward 7B by about 11.00pm.

The Doctors are still miffed by my condition as they still cannot find an obvious source of the high temperatures.  They organised a CT Scan of my lungs to re-check the old infection – and found that was all clear – a big relief!

On the Wednesday I also received a top up of potassium, magnesium and 2 units of blood as my haemoglobin level had dropped again.

The next thing for Thursday was an endoscopy to check on my bowel.  They are looking for obvious stress on the bowel and the possibility of Graft vs Host disease which affects the gut and bowel first.

The results showed GVH may be a possibility but this can only be confirmed from the biopsies they took which will take 4-5 days to analyse – more waiting.  In the meantime the doctors have changed my medication slightly adding Steriods for the possibility of GVH.

So at this stage it looks like I will have a reasonable stint in hospital waiting for confirmation on GVH and if this is the case it may well be another 2 weeks in hospital while this settles down.  I feel reasonably well and have not had any abdominal pain at all today which makes me wonder what really is going on.

My lovely parents gave me a Spirograph kit for my birthday – something to keep my busy for quite some time.  We all remember this as kids!

I will keep you posted!