Adventures at St. Agnes

This morning Mark and I headed out for what promised to be a fun day. I had an 11 a.m. nurse's appointment at St. Agnes as a follow-up to my hospital discharge last week. I was confident that the cyst was healed up, so I just wanted some advice on the diarrhea. Then we were going to go to the mall to meet our friends Bev and John for lunch.

Cancer always has a way of throwing a curve ball into the mix.

We left at 10:15 a.m. and arrived at 10:50 for the appointment at 11. I had never seen the cancer center busier, so by the time I checked in and went through triage, it was 11:05. In triage I learned that I had actually lost 2 ounces since October 19. Ha ha! I'll take that, I thought. It meant that I've essentially maintained my weight for that long, and since I find maintenance difficult, this was a little victory. My blood pressure was 101/59. Not great, but about what it has been running lately.

The nurse then escorted me back to the chemo area where I signed in and was told Joanne would be the nurse who would check on me. As soon as she heard her name, she called out to me that it would be at least 20 minutes before she could get to me. No problem. There are no chairs in the chemo room to wait in. No problem. Mark and I went out to the hallway and found two chairs to wait there. Since we expected this to be a short visit before heading to the mall, we had not brought any books or puzzles to keep us busy. This is really unusual for us, but there were a couple of Time magazines, so I started looking through one. At 11:20 I had to run for the bathroom. No surprise there. I had already run to the bathroom last night at 9 p.m., 9:30 p.m., 11 p.m., midnight, 1:30 a.m., 7 a.m., 7:30 a.m., 8 a.m., and 9:40 a.m. So I figured 11:20 was just about right on schedule.

When I came out of the bathroom, I said to Mark that I felt tired. We had planned to go to the Golden Corral buffet for lunch with our friends, but I said I didn't have the energy to wait on myself and carry a tray. I wanted to go to a restaurant where I could be served. No problem, he didn't really mind. Shortly after I said that, I was called to go to the only vacant chair in the chemo room. It was in the little corner in the back where four chairs are packed in tight without a TV. I took the empty chair in the corner, but there was no other chair for Mark to sit on. He stood next to me against the wall.

The nurse asked me how I was doing, and I explained everything. She then said, let's take your BP again. I was surprised since I had just had it in triage about 30 minutes earlier, but I was feeling tired, so I didn't protest. This time it was 84/43 and I could hardly hold my eyes open. The nurse got concerned and called the doctor's assistant, a nurse practitioner. Meanwhile she took me into the ladies room to examine the cyst because there is no examining room in the chemo area. OK, I will not go into gory details here, but just suffice it to say that this was a new low for me. Me and the nurse in a bathroom trying to look at Bertholin Cysts. OK, just use your imagination; it's not good.

She had to hold my hand to get me in and out of the bathroom because I was having trouble staying alert and focused. I guess that made the whole bathroom exam somewhat more tolerable since I could barely focus on what I was doing.

Anyway, the doctor's verdict was access the port and start an IV of fluids. I am dehydrated. OK, I bet they are right because I had one cup of tea in the morning with breakfast and then maybe a few ounces of water sipped from a bottle on the way to the hospital. I just hadn't thought about keeping that liquid intake up, I guess, this morning. Not smart.

Because my port is problematic, and now that must be in my file, they sent over the "expert" nurse. She was awesome and accessed it with little pain on the very first try. I love her! She drew a few vials of blood to do some labs and slapped a HUGE bag of IV fluids up on the rack. I asked her how long that would take, and she said, "Four hours."

WHAT? I'm aghast!! Did you say FOUR HOURS????

Meanwhile Mark had left because we were too crowded in that little space. All four chairs were full and three nurses and a doctor were all in there working on the four people in the four chairs. Two of the patients also had a person sitting with them in the two available spare chairs. There was no maneuvering room, so Mark had had to go back to the lobby. I tried to text him to tell him FOUR HOURS, but I got no signal. I flagged one of the helper volunteers and asked her to go find him. He was as stunned as I was.

At this point it was about 12:20 and obviously we were no longer meeting Bev and John at noon at the mall for lunch. Mark went out to try to find a signal to call them. I flagged down the volunteer and asked for a tuna sandwich and a Coke for lunch. Eventually Mark drove over to the Subway down the street. He had lunch and also went to the local Giant where he bought two puzzle books to keep us busy.

So I ate my sandwich and settled in for a nap. Eventually I got my labs back. All the blood work was good with one giant exception. My white blood cell count was very low. I was only 1.7 where normal is 10. This is the first time I had had a low white count. Kind of scary.

Eventually Mark and I both connected with Bev and John, so they knew we were not going to meet them.

When the nurse practitioner came to talk to me, she said that I needed to give them a stool specimen so they can test it for C Diff, another infection of the gut that is brought on by high antibiotics. If I have it, they will give me a different antibiotic for it. Here's the truly ironic part of all of this. It is now 6:30 p.m., and I am home, and I STILL don't have to go to the bathroom! If they had only seen me earlier, I could have given them the nice stool specimen at 11:20 a.m. that I flushed cavalierly down the toilet in their bathroom. Sigh. Now I have a lab order and a collection kit here at home. Once I collect it, I have to keep it on ice and deliver it to the lab ASAP tomorrow morning after they open at 7:30 a.m. How fun! For over a week, all I can do is poo and now that they want one, NOTHING. I really hate my body!!

The best news is that everyone agreed the Keflex has done it's job and is probably the cause of all my gastro-intestinal distress, so I don't have to take it anymore!! YAY!! In addition, the nurse practitioner feels that I was not feeling like I had to go to the bathroom because I had not had the mid-day Keflex dose. The last dose I took was at 5:45 a.m. because they made me put off the 11:45 a.m. dose. I am very happy about that. It really does seem that I have no other infection going on right now or I would have been in the bathroom again already. It really seems that the Keflex was causing the symptoms. I am thrilled to be off of it now.

So when the IV bag emptied, they tested my BP again. This time it was 91/54. I guess that was good enough, and we were released at 4 p.m. Rush hour traffic was at its worst, so we got home at 5:30 p.m. after Mark made a brief stop at the local comic book shop. Wow! We left at 10:15 a.m. and were gone over SEVEN hours. Unbelievable and unexpected. Cancer means never being able to make plans!

I have also been cautioned to stay out of crowds and away from anyone sick since my white cell count is low. They expect the neulasta to kick in and do its job in a day or two, but I will heed their advice. I have NO interest in contracting any other infections at this point. I am happy to be home, off the Keflex, out of the bathroom, and ready to have dinner and relax with the TV. Home, sweet, Home.