the flu

by now, many of you know that i was in the hospital for part of the weekend.  gotta love the stomach flu.  basically i puked my guts out nonstop from 2:30am-7am friday "morning".   i called my doctor as soon as they opened at 8am, and they sent me to the day hospital (where i get my chemo treatments).  when i got there, my fabulous neighbor and her friend took charge.  i was very dehydrated.  like *very* dehydrated.  they gave me more bags of fluid than i could keep track of.  they also took a bunch of blood to get different counts and cultures.  they kept taking my blood pressure, and it wasn't behaving.  i typically have a pretty low bp (usually 97ish/55ish) but i was getting some really low readings.  at one point when they had me stand up my bp was 60something over 30something.  they couldn't figure out why it was so low, so they continued to hydrate me, and see what happened with my blood counts/cultures.  basically they knew i was fighting an infection, they just didn't know where it was coming from.  and because my bp didn't behave i ended up admitted overnight.  i had a chest xray late friday night (came back negative) and was swabbed for swine flu on saturday morning (preliminary reports are negative- as are all of the blood cultures).  

by saturday morning i was able to eat breakfast, and keep it in my stomach, but my bp was still a bit low.  the doc decided that all of the fluids ma have diluted my blood causing the low bp. so in the end, i got 2 units of blood (although my bp had stabilized by this point) and sent me home about 6:30pm saturday evening.  

my parents stepped in and took care of my girls (thank goodness!!) so they still got to have a fun weekend.  izzy stayed with gma seeger, and symma went to the wedding in appleton.  poor kj was so bummed- he wanted to take symma to her first wedding *so* bad, but he didn't want to leave me in the hospital by myself.  i hope someone else gets married soon so i can make it up to him- he was really looking forward to it.  and of course she had a blast and danced all night and made friends with all the kids, etc...  

so that was my weekend.  the week ahead is very busy... i have my last couple days of school and all of my pre-op appts, and there's a support group meeting on thursday, so that will be fun.  i also am getting a massage from my friend lauren on tuesday!  yay!

thanks to everyone for your good wishes :)  i'm feeling much better now, and will hopefully stay this way.  unfortunately, my poor mom has the flu now.  which means that either izzy gave it to her, or my mom caught it somewhere else and now izzy's been exposed to it.  keep your fingers crossed for me that i don't catch anything else!!  i'm laying low today and trying to stay out of the way of germs till surgery.  of course i will still be going to school, etc... so that won't work very well :)  it's okay, though, my counts are on the way back up this week, and they gave me a bag of antibiotics every 12 hours when i was in the hospital, so i've gotta be pretty fortified, right?  maybe you should cross your legs and arms, too ;)