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Sunfish Is In The Hospital Fishbowl Again


MightyMouse

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Hi Everyone, just got a note from Melissa, aka Sunfish. She's on her way to cleveland clinic to get admitted because the fevers started again last night. She asked for your prayers and good thoughts, so I am posting that request here.

Love to you all,

Nina

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hi all -

thanks, as always, for your prayers, good thoughts, well-wishes, & other assorted goodies :angry: . i'm sorry that i haven't managed to get online with more of an update before now but i'm happy to report that i'm actually making my escape (aka getting discharged) this afternoon. yippee! of course after december's unsuccessful discharge wherein i got home only to get another fever that night & be readmitted the next day has slightly hampered my confidence not only getting home but STAYING there, but in reality i'm doing pretty okay.

my fevers this go around, while still infection related, were wonderfully NOT due to an infection in my bloodstream. yippee!!! this while many people may get fevers here & there for an assortment of annoying but not particularly super serious reasons, this is actually the first/ only time in YEARS that i have had any type of fever/ chills wherein i didn't end up having positive blood cultures (sepsis or septic shock) &/or a central line infection, both of which always mean my central line has to be removed & a new one then placed (regardless of whether the line was the original source of the infection). but anyway...

this go around, though i was initially started on a plethora of IV antibiotics upon admission due to my symptoms & history, my blood cultures ended up negative so i'm no longer on the IV antibiotics. in one of those good/ bad scenarios - good b/c it's always nice to have an answer, bad b/c it's never good to add diagnoses/ problems - the culprit for this round of fever/ chills ended up being a "C. Diff" infection, the colloquial verbage for Clostridium Difficile Colitis. rather than my rambling on further for anyone interested in more detail it's easy to find decent info on the infection online, but in short some of the risk factors for the infection are recent inpatient hospitalization, use of hard-hitting antibiotics (especially for longer periods), & invasive GI procedures (i.e. tube placements/ changes), all things i "qualify" for per my two weeks in the hospital in december & the IV antibiotics i was then on until the first week of january. in reality it's almost a surprise that i haven't had the infection before (as i've been tested for it many times)..i was actually treated for it based on symptoms only in december (i.e. based on symptoms rather than a positive stool culture) so this bout MAY have been a recurrence rather than a new infection but that's sort of here nor there at this point....

i'm now fever-free & the increased diarrhea (& related incontinance :D ) & extra/ increased abdominal cramping/ pain has improved, though all but the fever aspect was hard to identify as abnormal when it started b/c IV antibiotics almost always give me nasty diarrhea (as they do many, if not most people) & i live with varying extremes of obstruction-like abdominal pain on a daily basis (due to chronic intestinal pseudo-obstruction) such that i wouldn't notice c.diff related pain in the same way as others might, instead assuming that i was just having a string of bad days related to my chronic issues, something that isn't unusual in the least. thankfully though i didn't/ don't have any of the really serious dangerous complications that can at times accompany c. diff such that the first-line treatment for c. diff, "oral" (for me "oral"= via my j tube) flagyl, has definitely already helped & will likely (& hopefully!) continue to do over the next week that i'll continue to be on it.

while it of course stinks to ever have to return to hospital-land, it is of course wonderful to not have had lost the central line that i had placed only a month ago & it's good that we caught the c. diff before it caused more serious problems. and - amongst other things - it is SO nice to be leaving the hospital without having to mess with one or more IV antibiotics on top of my already crazy routine of IVs, tubes, & other assorted equipment. i live in a world of things being relative such that things that are a huge pain to many don't even hit my radar of inconvenience such that an extra crushed pill via my J tube every 8 hours is "nothing".

until later,

B) melissa

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