I spent my new year in hospital, 14 days to be exact.
On the 28th December our oldest dog Jellybean became very sick late at night so I spent many hours at Murdoch Emergency Vets with her. We were told her heart murmur had developed into congestive heart failure. Over the rest of the weekend I went back to emergency vets and our local vet after she had more trouble breathing.
I'd been feeling down (energy wise) since the Friday and I was focussing more on looking after my girl than myself but by Monday there was no denying something was wrong, I'd nearly fainted at the vets office and just had zero energy. By the afternoon my temperature reached 39 so I had to head to the hospital.
Now I thought it would be a simple case of doing a couple tests, giving me some drugs and sending me on my way but I was wrong. Turns out I was febrile neutropenic (fevers and no immune system) and that's not a good thing.
So I was admitted that night (New Years Eve) under the impression that I would be there a couple days (wrong again). Thankfully being neutropenic meant I got a private room, don't think I could have survived 14 days in a shared room. Neutropenia is where your neutrophils (to do with your white blood cells and immune system) drop below a normal level. Normal neutrophil levels are between 1.5 and 7.5 and mine were 0.05 when I was admitted.
Not much else happened for a while. I sat around for days while they tried to take blood and put in new cannulas, my veins in my right arm have all pretty much gone caput. So after a week of begging they finally relented and organised for the PICC team to come and put a line in my arm so no more needles.
I had a CT, chest X-rays, ultrasound and a gallium scan (2 trips to Fremantle in ambulances were required for this) and all came back with no result as to where the infection started. All in all they still had pretty much no idea what it was that was making me sick. By sick I mean I felt fine but was having regular high temperatures, on a good day I'd have 2-3 temp spikes a day and on a bad more than 4.
Anyway I pretty much demanded I be discharged on Monday as I had been feeling fine for a couple days and felt no point in being there another 2 days. So at 5pm Monday the 14th January I was finally released from hospital.
My hair began falling out on my third day in hospital so on the Thursday night I had Chris shave my head to reduce the stress I was feeling about it. We were meant to have our fundraising headshave BBQ on the 6th but I was still in hospital so we had to cancel that. My beautiful friend Thanh and Chris's stepdad Darren have both shaved their heads too.
Chris and I with our baldies
Darren - Chris's step dad
Thanh Le
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