The Real Poop

The blog address came from an earlier title I tried for this blog. Didn’t work. The new title is a better reflection of me – and if you’re here, I hope it’s a reflection of you…http://breastcancerreaper.blogspot.com/search/label/Introductions

OK – so my wife, who reads these blog entries said that I didn’t tell the truth in one of my entries where I said she was doing good. She wasn’t. I don’t know which entry is was, but I apologize for saying she was doing fine and she wasn’t.

So that brings me to this entry.

It’s a new wrinkle in the Life With A Cancer Patient – The Fever.

Sunday night, after several days of elevated temperatures, she finally decided that she should call the nurse line. She reported the temperature, they said they’d call back. The cancer nurse called back and said we should get to the Emergency Room. So, full of trepidation we went.

I’m sure everyone has, at some point in their lives, been to an ER late at night on a weekend. The place is FULL of mishap victims, drug abusers, people running weird temperatures or feeling ways they’ve never felt before. Crying children – whether injured or tired of waiting for hours while harried ER nurses, guards, physician’s assistants and orderlies try and serve everyone in impossible situations.

Once we made it through the first “strainer” of the standard TPR, insurance forms and debit-carding, we waited. In a freezing cold waiting room. Along with dozens of others. Once they called us and wheeled my wife into a “private” ER treatment room (next door to a young adult who had been to a concert and someone jumped on the back of his leg – breaking it and requiring him to be put into something called conscious sedation while they put pins in his leg and put the leg in traction, but I digress…)

An intern/doctor (who reminded me of Dougie Howser, MD (https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhysK9je7HjOlgiUAKsZ0qpGCzdBSGxtw0dF8gHNcW-xbKwMFu5RbmZ0birxGnDrLuglO7aFq03FpgzuhUgaL7gmalCuAOW-Vj9ku8pf_FI3X_VtBeLOtFGiZA-W1o4UFibeD3_-zmODi_m/s1600/doogie_howser.jpg ) came to talk to my wife. Then a nurse came in and I started to be afraid. Looking through the list of drugs my wife was using and received in her cancer treatment, the nurse had NO IDEA WHAT SOME OF THEM WERE.

The preadolescent intern-pretty-close-to-an-MD-but-not-quite and another nurse came to the conclusion that my wife had a urinary tract infection. As it turns out, they made that diagnosis NOT based on a urinalysis but…I’m not sure. My question is how can anyone make an accurate diagnosis from incomplete knowledge (aka: ignorance)?

Her cancer doctor (who she went to see a few days later and could find no record of the urine sample they’d taken away ever being analyzed…and IT’S THE SAME HOSPITAL with the same computer that keeps records…) looked at her, did a WBC and a urinalysis and said, “You don’t have a UTI.” Of course, this led to another series of tests – one of which required drawing blood from her port, then blood from her arm to compare the results to see if there was an infection in the port. (My daughter and I about passed out when my wife walked out from the infusion lab with FIVE FREAKIN’ GAUZE PIECES TAPED ON HER LEFT ARM! She looked like someone had been practicing their phlebotomy skills on her and got an “F” on the test!

So now she’s home, no fever but her armpit is sore…

To tell the truth, some days it’s one damn thing after another. This is one of those days…

Image: http://www.gigaweb.com/files/productsimages/BS_C/med_800540.jpg