Remainder of my Hospital Stay
It was relatively short lived and uneventful. I didn’t have any nose bleeds. They never found out what caused the fever and it was more than likely a result of just low neutropenic counts. The most difficult thing I had going on was that my throat was very sore and borderline painful. I had some mild pain relievers at first, then some magic mouth wash (has lidocaine in it), but nothing seemed to really help. Despite that I was able to come out of this hospital stay without losing too much weight. I think my body has finally restabilized after it’s initial drop from the long hospital stay I had in June through July.
I was in the hospital for a grand total of 10 days. When they released me I think it was for a variety of different reasons. My counts were coming back up, slowly but definitely on the rise. I hadn’t spiked a fever in almost 6 days. I was actually in pretty good shape physically. I was doing some sort of band workout or walking every day. They could tell I was pretty active.
All of the above and the fact that I think they were fairly desperate for beds. When I first got there, there was a patient in a bed in the family waiting area where the exercise equipment is. The area was blocked off with tall folding style white walls. With me being in relatively good shape and begging to go home, I think they were comfortable letting that happen. My counts were lower for this discharge than they were last time and almost half of what they told me my counts needed to be in order to be discharged. Didn’t matter to me. I was eager to get home.
I feel like recovery is better at home. I have a better routine. I have my own comforts. It’s easier to recover when you have all the comforts and workout materials. I could get back to training (if you can call it that). I could eat what I wanted, when I wanted and it wasn’t shit food. The food was hit or miss but mostly miss. It was either overcooked or just done wrong. Out of my 3 meals a day, something was always left off or wrong. I made due with what I had but that didn’t mean I enjoyed it. I’d much rather have been at home.
Getting home was great! The girls were happy to see me and I was just as excited (or more so) to see them. Being that my counts were and are still low, I have to wear a mask in the house most of the time. It’s weird and if you were to see my wife and I riding down the road on the way home from the hospital, I certainly would have thought we were those weird people wearing their masks in the car. She had been at school all day around 3-4 year olds and my immune system is simply non-existent at the moment. So yeah, unfortunately I have to wear a mask in the car if I ride with someone else. I’m even hesitant to go inside any establishment other than the hospital and actually haven’t been inside any where else since I was last released in July. I just can’t afford to get sick this close to getting a transplant.
I’m days away from my next bone marrow biopsy. When those test results come back, we’ll hopefully have some idea how much closer (if at all) I am in going to transplant. One day at a time and one patient day at a time. Time doesn’t pass all that fast when you just want to be done with all this shit.