Week Nine

And so we have arrived at Week Nine.  Before getting into the week’s adventures, here’s the weight recap:  140. 2 lbs last Friday, and 141.4 lbs today.  Up another lb…yeah.

 

On Friday, the 18th, we headed up to Grants Pass to watch Monday’s eclipse with Scott and Heidi, and Carol’s brother, Ted, and his wife, Kim, and their son, Carl.

Heidi, Scott, my chair, Carol, Ted, Carl, and Kim

 

The eclipse was not ‘total’ in Grants Pass, but it must have been at least 90 percent.  The temperature definitely dropped, and light-wise it felt sort of dusky or dawnish.

Unfortunately, as the eclipse approached, I was starting to feel a bit poorly.  I wasn’t my usual social self over the weekend, and by Monday morning I knew we needed to head back to Woodland immediately after the eclipse. I felt like I had a fever, but no thermometer to verify the situation.  So, at 10:50 we headed south down I-5 (The Five, to some).  Traffic was not at all heavy on our return trip (and it wasn’t too bad when we drove up on Friday).

We got home by 4 pm, had a couple cans of Osmolite, and took my temperature.  It was 103.  We called the doctor and he said “Go to Emergency.” So by 5 pm we checked into the Emergency Room, for the second time in this long odyssey.

They checked all my vitals, took blood samples and cultures, did a chest x-ray, but couldn’t find a cause and so decided to admit me to the hospital for further tests and study.  The hospital didn’t have any available beds, but by 11 pm they were able to check me into the Intensive Care Unit.

 

Some sort of liver count was high (or low) so they did an ultra sound of my abdominal area.  The hospitalist doctor thought I was having a gall bladder problem and appeared to be recommending gall bladder removal.  However, the hospital surgeon was unsure about that diagnosis and wanted to do another test in the morning before committing to surgery.  This test was the HIDA scan and was done in the ‘nuclear’ room.

The scan involves taking some baseline pictures, then injecting a radioactive material into me and taking more pictures to see if the intake and egress ducts of the gall bladder were functioning properly.

Entering the HIDA scanner in the Nuclear Room

 

The difficult part of this procedure was that I had to hold still for three minutes while the picture was being taken, wait for ten minutes or so, and then hold still again for three minutes for another picture, as they tracked the flow of the radioactive material through my gall bladder. The annoying thing was that the operator was not clear on exactly when I had to remain motionless, nor was she very helpful in saying “Okay, you can move now.”  She said I should listen for a microwave-like beep which meant I could relax.  But I couldn’t tell a microwave beep from other sounds that occasionally popped up. So I stayed motionless for most of the hour the process took. Grumpf.

Not long afterward, the hospital surgeon came to see me in ICU and said the HIDA scan showed the gall bladder ducts were functioning properly and the bladder did not need to be removed.  The bad news to all this was that they were not able to determine what had caused my elevated temperature.  But, as was explained, this is sometimes the case:  a person has a temperature spike that doesn’t come with a handy explanation.  So, they gave me a ten day supply of antibiotics, and sent me home.  And that was fine with me!

Four days in ICU…..probably about the same cost as the St. Regis in Princeville, Kauai, including air fare.

There you have it, Week Nine.  God bless you all.  Life is an adventure.