Sunday and Monday were rough, and I was really looking forward to our home health visit. The Desferal infused with no trouble on Saturday, yet Steve begged me to take Sunday evening off in case the drug was making him feel even worse. If you are in on the "please refresh my water" joke, he was in full swing over the weekend. Our icemaker was running 24/7, and so was I, hahaha.
His nausea turned into vomiting on Monday, not often, but still consuming him emotionally. I started playing with ideas of admission. Dug out some Ativan from backstock to see if that would help his stomach. He hasn't eaten since Friday. After home health left, I started making calls to the hospital. Everyone was in agreement that coming in was a good idea. Dr. Altman is out of town, and was contacted.
His labs from today show improvement in liver enzymes and more big improvement on the CBC side again. They did a ferritin level but no one seemed to have the result as of late Monday. His bilirubin also moved up, bleh. Much improvement on his "south end" frequency, so some good news there.
Bless Steve's cousin, Bill. Our sewer line has clogged for the third time since Steve's illness, and Bill was going to come over after work and do the dirty work. Instead, he became my wingman, and a fine wingman he was! We got to the ER at Northwestern around 7, got seen at 8 on the Mezzanine Level, and taken to a room in Feinberg around 11. Prentice is still full up, and the plan is to transport him when room becomes available.
While in the ER, Steve's nausea and pain were well managed, and he was able to chill and even joke a bit. Dr. Altman called me on my cell phone from who knows where (not Munich, that's later) and told me of her plan. Our ER doc said Altman e-mailed a "very detailed chart and plan" of Steve's care to them. (HAHA.) She feels very badly that Steve has been suffering and wants to get a handle on this now. At first she thought about starting him back on (anti-rejection drug) Tacro in the morning; by the time he got to Feinberg, orders were for the Tacro to start tonight. She feels that his elevated ferritin lab value may NOT be due to just iron, it may also be from liver inflamation, and the sharp decline was possibly from steriods, not necessarily just the Desferan. There was mention made of a liver biopsy coming, which would give a definitive answer on GvHD as a cause of the GI issues.
Don't know what this means for surgery this week. Goodnight.
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