One of these times when the posts weren’t flowing, and this time your premonitions were true. It’s not looking good at all. On Friday, I spent all day in bed. I’m doing a proper rest day, I explained to myself. They have them at the Tour. For convenience’s sake, I ignored that they’re going on recovery rides on Tour de France rest days instead of lying in bed listening to the radio. I just lay in bed, alternating between periods of mild to intermediate fever and mild cold shivers. Something was clearly wrong. I wasn’t ready to take action. Maybe it’d be better the next day.
It wasn’t. The next morning, I woke up Flucha with my shivering. It was much worse than the day before and scared the hell out of Flucha. She wanted to call an ambulance and send me straight to the hospital. I wasn’t scared nearly half as much. Two months ago when I had to go to the hospital to have the liver stent replaced, the shivers were much worse. They nearly flung me out of bed, but eventually they stopped and were replaced by a fever. It was then that I took the ambulance. I expected something similar to happen this time.
Even though I didn’t join in Flucha’s panic, I could see that a trip to the hospital was on the books. It was all too similar to the time in February when some bacteria invaded my blood. While Flucha packed my bag for another week at the hospital, I gradually slowed shivering until I was lying peacefully. I felt as weak as on the day before, but there was certainly no need for an ambulance. I would have even taken the bus, but a taxi seemed an altogether more sensible compromise.
In the hospital, I was put on a rather uncomfortable bed and thoroughly examined. One doctor noticed my somewhat tense and twisted face and asked how much pain I was suffering. I had to admit that I wasn’t comfortable at all. My back hurt no matter how I positioned myself on the bed. It wasn’t pleasant at all.
The doctor wasn’t happy I took ibuprofen at home. “This is not good for you”, she said. “Ibuprofen attacks the mucosal layer of the stomach and stresses the kidneys. It’s time you got a proper painkiller.” Then she procured morphine and injected a bit with my drip. It didn’t make me silly in the head, but it made the pain go away completely. This felt good.
The conclusion of the first examination: The infection markers in my blood were high. I’ve probably got a bacterial infection that can be treated with antibiotics. The liver values in the blood are too high. There was no word about the why and the what to do, but a CT was lined up for later in the afternoon to see what the liver and its surroundings looked like.
The CT was something I would have wanted earlier than my oncologist who was optimistically going with three cycles of Lonsurf and then an CT, a month from now, to see how things have worked out. It was good to do the CT today. My body had long been sending me signals that the chemo wasn’t doing much. When the doctor came with the results, she confirmed this. She said bluntly, “There’s no point continuing with Lonsurf. We see massive growth. You get no benefit and suffer all the side effects.”
Everything happened very quickly after that. I was put before the decision to stay in the hospital or go home that very afternoon. This was curious. Wouldn’t the doctor want to monitor the infection a bit more closely? The blood cultures to identify the offending bacteria would also take a day or two. Had they given up all hope? The doctor handed me a prescription for oral antibiotics to be taken for ten days and for a bottle of morphine to last a lifetime. With this I was off, first to the pharmacy, then home and straight to bed.
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