Easter

So it's been a while since I've had a real health post. I guess all good streaks come to an end eventually...

I went to my family's Easter party on Saturday. That went fine and I was happy to see everyone. I had been a little tired that whole week, but all of my being tired I usually contribute to school stress. Anyway, I went to bed a little early since I planned on getting up extra early for church.

About 2am I woke up and was freezing. I got up to take my temperature (I was surrounded by dogs, there was no way that I was just normally cold) and ended up getting sick twice. I took my temperature and was at 99.5 degrees, which is a fever for me. I normally run around 97. So I took a couple tylenol to head things off and went back to bed. I didn't sleep well since I was still feeling so cold.

Around 5am I woke back up and was still shivering so I took my temperature again. At this point, my fever had risen to 102, so I knew it was time to give Cleveland a call and check in. After a brief chat with the pulmonary fellow on-call, we decided it would be best for me to head to the ER to get checked out, just to make sure there wasn't something else going on that couldn't be diagnosed over the phone.

After waking Cameron up, we headed to UC's emergency room. In hind sight, I should have never gone there, I should have tried to go to Children's... But anyway... Things ran smoothly for the first hour I was there, then they had a shift change and I got a horrible resident who insisted that I be admitted. She kept telling me that I had a pneumonia, but I don't think that's the case. I have some scaring on my left lung and the doctors not familiar with my case see it as pneumonia. I had a ton of things due in classes the following week and flat out told the resident that I hated the hospital and refused to be admitted there. I told her to set up a transfer to either Children's or to Cleveland. Children's doctor on the floor wasn't comfortable with me coming there so I thought I was heading to Cleveland.

At that point, Cameron called Dr. Trapnell and they came up with a plan for me to do IV antibiotics at home instead of being admitted. He figured that I probably had a GI thing going on, not pulmonary involvement. The UC ER doc didn't like that plan and made me sign out AMA (against medical advice). Since I had to sign the AMA, no home healthcare company would take my case to do the home IVs. Making a 12 hour story a little shorter, the next day Dr. Trapnell and I made the decision not to do IVs since we were mostly sure that I only had a stomach bug. Looking back on my weekend, I probably brought this on myself.

Earlier that weekend I had dinner at a friend's house. They weren't completely aware of my dietary restrictions since transplant and well... I didn't have the heart to tell them that I couldn't eat the food (It had feta cheese) but figured I could chance it and it would probably be ok. I'm guessing that's where the vomiting and fever came from. Regardless, it still falls under the GI bug category, so I just left the details out from Dr. Trapnell because I felt bad for being a "bad transplant patient"

Now, 2 weeks later, the only thing that I have are a few giant bruises from the IVs and a small lecture from Dr. Trapnell that I should have called him sooner than I did. You could tell by what he said that he honestly cares about me.

I only have a few more weeks left of school and then I'm done for the summer. Still waiting to hear if I got my clinicals. Figured I'd give them until the end of the week (which I have now) and then go to the office next week and talk to them face to face and see what the hold up is (which I will do on monday).

Hope everyone's having a wonderful spring!