So I haven’t been out of hospital long! We’ve had our Christmas break and guess what happens? I get ill again! As we are just settling back down after christmas and have put all the christmas decorations away for another year I had an awful nights sleep due to me overheating… Mum checked my temperature the next morning and it wasn’t too high (if it goes outside the range of 36-38 degrees I have to go to hospital) so I was a happy bunny as that meant I could just go and cuddle up on the sofa. Sadly I got comfy on the sofa and promptly threw up… I must admit I had been feeling nauseous most of the time due to the chemo but I had not yet thrown up so Mum rang the hospital but they said I didn’t need to come in unless my temperature rose. This meant I had my temperature checked every half hour after this just in case. About two hours later I had a temperature of 38 exactly! Damn it! It’s hospital time…
We grabbed my go bags ( I have an entertainment bag, a little suitcase and a toiletry bag always ready just in case now) and we set off for Derriford again with instructions from the hospital to turn up at Brent ward (one of the cancer wards). I got to the hospital and got taken to the same bay I was on last time and I had my old neighbour Amanda back! It’s sad I now have such a thing as a hospital bed neighbour but I was happy it was her and not another rude stranger…
After arriving I had the usual things done like have bloods taken and observations done and then they put me on a drip to keep me hydrated (as my temperature had risen to 39.6) and put me on a standard form of antibiotics to try and battle whatever was wrong with me, I then got left for the night while they did tests! During the night I felt freezing cold, the nurses (in my opinion) were mean and wouldn’t let me wrap up warm as I was too high a temperature! (This makes sense but it was still mean.) It was a long night!
Next day the doctors did their round and when they got to me I found out I had the exact same type of infection as I had before christmas I had Staph Aureus again!! This meant I had to have my new pick line removed and it wasn’t even three weeks old and the stitches hadn’t even dissolved or come out yet! Grrr… As you can imagine I was highly annoyed as this meant I had done nothing wrong and that it was my body working against me again!
Staph Aureus is a bacteria sat on the skin and it had gone into my body when I had had my first pick line, I had done my antibiotics course and my hospital stay before christmas and thought that the infection had left me… Apparently not! The doctors new theory was that when the infection first happened it made a home in my body and when I had the antibiotics it hadn’t gotten rid of it completely and when the new line had been put in my body the infection had gone into my line and every time it was being used it pushed the infection around my body. So that meant we had to find the infection’s home… Steph Aureus’ favourite places to stay are on the spine and heart so I had an echogram and MRI booked.
The echo for my heart came back perfectly clear (yay!) and so did the MRI for my spine with extra good news the cancer in my spine looked to have reduced (super yay!). So this meant we were stuck on where the infection was hiding… After some thought the doctors came to the conclusion that they believed the infection was sat on my blood clot in my shoulder but they had no way to verify if this was true. Honestly I was relieved it wasn’t on my heart or spine because they had turned to me and said if it was I could be stuck in hospital for 4-6 weeks and with the new information they thought I would be able to leave by the next week and take antibiotics home with me. YAY!! (Fingers crossed I can go home next week).
So far I realise all I can do is have a positive outlook… Mind over matter! Sometimes its extremely hard but everything else I cannot control, I have to let the doctors do their jobs and do what I am told, take what I need and let what the future do whatever it has in store!