Day 21 & 22 (Thurs and Fri)

Another day of mending...

Patient Holding

Ah--another reason patient holding seemed sad the night before is that it is a dim room with little going on. I could hear some young nurses talking in the other room, and their conversation was pretty funny and revolved mostly around sushi ("Ya, like I like the kind with rice on the outside.")

But it made me realise that i couldn't do those things right now--and that I was stuck in a stretcher that I couldn't even leave. Very isolating.

But enough self-pity--that's all behind me.

The Lip continued...

So,  my lip felt better in the mask I wore while I tooled around the hospital from test to test. It was like my breath was humidifying it a bit. So I decided to sleep with it. 

If you can believe it my lip was even bigger. 

I'll spare you a picture.

So I took the advice of one of the nurses and gave it some air--no ointments or salves--no chapstick. It was not great, still swollen, but it feels better. Its still awkward to talk or eat--but in general it hurts less--most of the time--if not talking or eating--it doesn't hurt at all.

But it looks bad, so the doctor I called my immunology doctor (who is I think actually an Infectious Diseases doctor--I will call him my ID doctor.)  wants to know what's going on. He wants the fevers to stop. He wants to biopsy this, and he even wants to remove my picc.

My picc does not hurt, my fevers (while still present) are at least less frequent--and my lip--well it doesn't hurt. 

But I recently discovered there are plans afoot for my lip. So the plastic surgeon (the same one who said we should leave it alone) has agreed to lift up the edge of the scab so they can swab it for a culture--i.e. biopsy it.

No one has talked to me about this and its scheduled for Saturday at 9 AMish.  I am not sure I agree. Here's  my thinking:

• My lip does not hurt.
• My white counts are going up--eventually my body can fight it off.
• Its in a really sensitive area, and will hurt, and may be difficult to heal.
• Its essentially creating a new wound where there already is one
• The new wound is in an area really prone to infection.
• I don't want to end up worse off with a wound that makes it even harder to talk or eat.

So there it is. They can't do it without a consent form--so I will learn more tomorrow and update you.

The Gall of it All

Another thing that happened today is I woke up with a strange bile taste in my mouth. It reminded me what got me here in the first place--Gallstones.

So I mentioned to my doctor that maybe we should look into that--perhaps some complications with my gallstones was the culprit behind my fevers.

I regretted it almost immediately when I realized it was another day of fasting.  But I'm glad it got checked out. I went back to the Ultrasound room and they checked me out. I will hear more later I am sure.

Reading

Today I read. My concentration is not up for the complicated, but I started with the Tales of Beedle the Bard--which was fun. Jen finished up a Choose your own Adventure book, and after she left I explored other paths (which were quite different).  Silly but fun. I also discovered (I think) that they were resurrected by the original authors. http://www.cyoa.com/

Fevers

While I had some at night. I think I only had one (and maybe a second minor one) today so far!

So a good Friday...