Free From AZ (Soon)

So I got out of the hospital today. I ended up getting a drain put in that was removed just yesterday and kept draining out a few hundred ml of fluid every day. I’d have been free of the hospital sooner but the rate of draining was higher than they expected so they had to wait. They also cut a permanent hole in the wrapper around my heart so that all future fluid will drain into my chest and hopefully be absorbed by the membrane of the chest that encases everything; one of its functions is drainage. This is apparently a really common procedure but still a bit odd. You would assume since the sack exists around the heart it’s probably very important but apparently they leave them open whenever they do heart surgeries and they don’t see ill effect. I’m slightly worried that if there is cancer in the fluid then it will spread through my chest but they insist it won’t spread like that.

The stay itself was very boring with no real internet access and a broken TV remote. Luckily a friend bought me a universal remote to fix the second part at least. I slept a lot and did little else. The nursing staff was mostly good, not the best I’ve had but certainly not the worst. I did have a very worrying issue however. They almost killed me because of a typo. My meds said to take .75ml (75million units) but the conversion is actually .75=7.5million units. They tried to give me 10 times the dosage (7.5ml) because they chose to follow the units measure rather than the ml measure. I knew this was wrong right away but I almost believed the nurse when he told me it was probably just a different concentration; which could make sense. But instead I called Katie and had her tell me the concentration we have in the fridge at home. So I can’t say for sure that 10x my dosage would have killed me but it is far beyond what further research suggests a human use and it would most likely have caused multisystem organ failure such as kidney, liver, and pancreas. Even with my normal dose it turns out my pancreas numbers spiked and I got a 103.2 degree fever. It worries me a bit how easily that could have killed me. Also slightly worrying right now even though I’m taking the interferon every other day the spots in my neck are a bit touch sensitive, not outright painful but it’s still not a good sign. I may have to look into adding radiation or some new drug soon.

Anyway I’m flying home Thursday. My mom flew down to take care of me in the hospital and help me return to Seattle. I’m looking forward to being back home and seeing everyone up there. I’ve been sad that I was delayed so long returning to see my ferret; she is so new to us that I’m worried she’ll not remember me and think Katie and Lizzy are her owners. Anyway I have gotten reports that she is mostly doing well and that Lizzy loves her so that’s awesome. I hope to play with Lizzy and Yuki together asap. That’s about it for now; haven’t been up to much since I’ve been lying in the hospital bed this whole time. I’ll leave you with some pics Katie has sent me of Lizzy.

Hospitalized in AZ

Hey all so just a short update that probably has plenty of typos since this is with one thumb on my phone. 

Anyway I’m in the hospital in AZ. I was at my friends wedding and pain in my chest had been building for a couple days. I went to the ER and the fluidaround my heart was back. I’ve been stuck in the hospital since. This morning they drained it again and put a hole in the sac around my heart so fluid cannot build up anymore. Anyway I’m stuck here in az for like a week. I don’t have Internet beyond my phone so a bigger update will come when I get  a laptop with Internet. 

A real weight off my chest.

So I was having some odd chest pains a week or so ago and got a chest x-ray that showed my heart was enlarged. Apparently it’d been slightly enlarged for a couple months but it was alarmingly big in the X-ray. So I went in to get a ultrasound of my heart and what did we find? A huge fluid buildup had accumulated between the heart and the sack it is contained in. So I went into the hospital for the weekend to have the fluid drained. They basically stuck this tube into me called a ‘pigtail’ (named such because they keep feeding the tube in to make loops). I don’t remember much of the procedure but I do remember at the end they showed me a large syringe and a bottle full of fluid that they had drained from me. There was probably something like 700ml in the bottle, about 2 cans of soda, and there was more that drained out over the next two days via the tube. In other words I clearly had a LOT of liquid in my chest. I am surprised that the only symptom I had was chest pain on the right side of my chest (we’re not even sure if that was related or if I was entirely symptom free). To help understand how much fluid that is I would definitely have died if that much had built up quickly, I could only have that much because the slow accumulation allowed the sack around the heart to stretch, and even so they put the tube in me as soon as they could manage it because they were worried my heart could have collapsed under the pressure if any more fluid built up.

We’re waiting on results as to what might have caused the fluid. It could be stray cancer cells or inflammation or an infection or a few other very unlikely things. The tests they run on the fluid should be conclusive however. It could have been from any number of things though, kidney failure can do it, potentially interferon could have done it, and they really were leaning toward cancer cells somehow making their way into the sack and secreting fluid. Hopefully now that it’s drained any inflammation will go away and it will be fine, but if we’re unlucky it will refill (like if it’s due to cancer).

I also had to miss an interferon shot or two because my treatment and after like 5 days of no treatment I could feel growth starting again in my left neck. I have since taken my shot again however and it caused a major fever (103.3) and was really hard on me in general, but it seems to have killed the neck pain. I’m taking that as a bit of a mixed blessing, I wish that the interferon didn’t stop working so quickly but clearly it IS working. Also during the whole fever state and stuff I missed taking all my morning meds so I experienced a day without pain meds. It was a very crappy day with lots of stomach pain from the interferon and I basically just tried to sleep through the whole day (with a lot of success even though my night sweats made it like sleeping in a cold shower) but on the plus side I didn’t feel pain from anywhere but my belly. Katie had been a bit worried that I could be having growth somewhere and not feel it due to my massive pain med dose, but that worry appears unfounded. I am by the way still way up at 135mg of oxycontin 2/day because my doctor basically says it doesn’t seem to impair me and I experience some stomach pain through it so I shouldn’t worry about having a high dose and just go with what keeps me out of pain.

I also tried a ferret for a few days. I got the one who seemed to love me at petco. Turns out she didn’t like me, she just liked burrowing into my clothing. Actually she didn’t seem to care at all about humans, or toys… or food even actually. So I gave her a few days to try warming up to me, but she just didn’t care about any of us. She would explore the borders of the area she was in and she would burrow under things but that was it. I would have probably given her more of the 2 week trial period petco gives but my heart issue suddenly came up and since Katie and Pedro already knew I didn’t expect to keep her I couldn’t ask them to care for her while I was in the hospital for an unknown duration. But thankfully petco has returns on pets within 15 days so that you don’t have to etither keep a pet that’s a bad match or put a pet up for adoption if they turn out to be a bad match. She was awesome in terms of being well behaved though, she was potty trained, wouldn’t bite, handled everything with a kind of stoic determination (like getting a bath, she clearly hated it, but she barely even struggled). She was like perfect for Lizzy to hang out with because I think Lizzy could probably have beaten her and not gotten bitten, but that kind of uncaringness about the world just really was not what I wanted in a pet for myself. I’d honestly much rather have a ferret bite me than ignore my attempts to play (though I will have to train out any biting in later ferret attempts to protect Lizzy). Anyway I feel really bad about returning her but she’s just not the pet for me.

I got a second ferret just the other night (so this may seem a little disjointed from the rest of the blog which I wrote a day ago). Her name is Yuki because Katie thought she looked like “snow or clouds” and Yuki means snow in Japanese. Katie thinks she’s the most beautiful ferret we’ve seen, I don’t know I’d go that far because I’m a bit more into the masky colorations but she is very cute. We made sure to be more thorough in our test run with her than we had with the last one. She definitely plays well and while she will nip a little in play she doesn’t bite. She squirms a bit when held but when you can get her to settle down she will stay calm for a good long while. She is probably a great mix of playful and docile for me. She also has this awesome habit right now of chewing on my beard. I really hope she keeps that trait. She basically seems to have warmed up to her new environment already. I also figured out how to occasionally get kisses from her and she reacts really awesomely to me blowing on her, it really riles her up to play. I am extremely happy with her and think she will be a great pet.

Also I am going to Arizona for a wedding between two of my friends. I’m going down on the 5^th and returning home on the 10^th but I will be in driving to Sedona on the 7^th and coming back on the 9^th so my actual time in Tempe itself will be a bit limited. I’ll try to stop by and see people if I can however.