In the couple of days following my last posting, I kept getting elevated temps in the evening. They weren't much, but they were consistent and really made me feel pretty bad. Finally, on Tuesday the fever hit me in the middle of the day and with a bigger punch. That night I would get close to 103. I called in to the resident on call at CC and he went over my symptoms (aside from the fever and body ache there really weren't any) and suggested I call into my surgeon's office the next morning to see what they wanted me to do. Wednesday morning I called and spoke with Marlene and learned they wanted me to go into my local ER for some labs and IV fluids. At this point, my temps were spiking up over 103 and I felt like I'd been hit by a bus. I had no specific pain anywhere, but we had to rule out surgery related infection and I was in desperate need of the fluids. I felt so sick I just couldn't drink enough to keep up.
Once we got checked into the ER I got an IV started, labs drawn, gave a urine sample (which they then came back and did a straight catheter for to get a new one.....that sucked hard!!), and got chest x-rays. The doctor was pretty happy with how my stomach felt and didn't seem to think there was anything going on in there, but these tests would help rule out things like incision infection, abdominal abscess, pneumonia, and UTI which could all have been causing me the problems. I know we were there for a few hours and during that time I got very sweaty, went to the bathroom a couple of times, watched some TV, and drifted in and out of sleep. They finally came back to tell me that everything from the tests was normal and they had no reason to suspect infection or any of the other items they were screening for. If things got significantly worse or I developed new symptoms, I was supposed to come back. With that, and a prescription for anti-nausea meds, we went home. I crawled in bed and stayed there for the remainder of that day and all of the next. I really can't remember ever being so sick in my adult life. As I feel a bit better today and temps are staying closer to normal, I believe I stumbled upon some virus with really horrible timing. Today I've been able to be up and sit in a chair in the living room for several hours and I've eaten twice. I'm about to figure out something else to eat here in a few minutes. I'm glad I got things stabilized because I lost three pounds per day two days in a row and that is less than fun. I still feel very weak and I'm not about to push myself on anything, but it does feel good to be out of bed a little. I'm just hoping I am well enough tomorrow to go get my haircut. :-)
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