I got a fever of a hundred and three…

LIT-ER-AL-LY!!   (SING IT!!!)

So my first round of the “new” chemo went… well… interestingly.

I had my “dose” on a Tuesday. No major issues to report. All seemed to be going really well, until I woke up that Saturday morning really early with a bit of a fever. I tried taking some ibuprofen. The fever went up over 101. I took some more ibuprofen mid morning. The fever went up over 102. I went into the Cancer Care Clinic to get checked over, they thought it was maybe associated with my treatment. While there I had some blood cultures drawn to check for infection. They sent me home as my fever went down a little.

Within an hour of being home my fever returned over 103 and I was HOT BLOODED. I was pretty out of it but I ended up getting admitted to the hospital for four days. It took time to figure out what was causing the fever, since I had no other symptoms. They drew more blood each day. I was admitted Saturday and started some pretty heavy antibiotics. I think I found out Monday I had a pretty bad bacterial blood infection. I got to go home Tuesday afternoon with some oral antibiotics. Had to take it easy the rest of the week. I guess a blood poisoning like that takes a little or a lot out of you. Good times… ha.

So I had to finish two weeks of antibiotics and that pushed my next round of chemo off for a week. I was kind of happy about that. Secretly…

But now, I’m back at it. I had my second round of chemo yesterday. It seemed to go pretty good. Better than last time it seemed. I felt better afterward than last time, so that’s good. I feel fine today. I’ve got my little take home pump for 46 hours, oh it’s glorious. Especially with the new cat in town. Steve thinks he should chew on all cords, wires and chemo lines… kind of a pain. I blame Kim.

So, hopefully this week goes better than last time. It sounds like that infection may have been an isolated incident. A perfect storm created by a multitude of possibilities given my recent knee surgery and stent procedure. Who knows. Something could have been floating around and then when your immune system is hit with the chemo it can’t control everything. I’m not too worried about it happening again.

The room I stayed in at Barnes was pretty swank. In the new build area, private room, big screen tv (that Kim couldn’t hear ever). It wasn’t bad once I started feeling better. I really had no idea what was going on Saturday or Sunday until pretty late at night. That high of a fever kind of makes a girl crazy.

The plan now is to get through four treatments, then I can have a scan and we’ll see how things are going. So I think the scan falls around the end of September. Fingers crossed, stay tuned. Kim and I have a vacation planned early October, so there’s just basically no other option other than for things to work and everything to be fine.

Oh and I nearly forgot… Strangely, I still have my hair. Not sure if this next treatment will shoot it out, but we’ll see.  So I can still go down this aisle in Walgreens:

I’m still envious of Baby Changko on instagram:

My only other issue I’ve noticed, besides the near death blood infection sepsis, is my sweet, sweet baby face skin… is no more. I have about one million bumps on my face. It’s very romantic. It’s very common when getting Vectibix. You want the rash, it  means the drug is working… you want the rash. I keep telling myself that. Jill, you want the rash. Kim says it doesn’t look that bad, but she’s also blind. I don’t think her trifocals can pick up all of the little acne bumps.

Oh well, so is life. Thanks for all of your kind comments and words of encouragement going into this new treatment and what not. It is always very uplifting, I can’t ever say enough thank yous…

Cheers!!