Bum Briefing #3

For those who might not know, I was born in 1981. That has put me in an interesting demographic that a lot of people can relate to. The Oxford dictionary officially calls us Xennials https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xennials and encompasses people born between 1977 and 1985. The best definition I read was we grew up analog but graduated digital. There was no internet when we were kids, we just went outside and threw rocks at trees. By the time I graduated college with an IT degree, not only had the internet been invented but I missed the peak and the dotcom bubble burst leaving me to be a mechanic for a few more years.

This week, I had a stumble rounding the first corner in my marathon cancer treatment. Chemo is basically an atomic bomb going off in your body, then it’s supposed to bounce back before getting another round. I was supposed to start my second round of chemo Monday. Each visit, they start with labs, and my blood work came back with a specific white blood cell called the neutrophil down around 300. The oncologist said at the time they’d like them to be 500-1000 to do chemo again, and started to send me home. After that it was an emotion that’s hard to explain or reconcile. I was bummed to not get chemo. Yes you read that right, it’s one of the many things that are hard or impossible to explain.

They sent us home saying I need to watch my temp and if I have a fever of 100.8 I should call the on-call oncologist team. We didn’t have a thermometer so they sent us home with what could best be described as a happy meal toy. I had a mild headache that afternoon so I took some Tylenol, but I checked my temp before I took it and it was 98.6, oddly perfect but I felt fine. Later on after making dinner I felt hot, thought it might have been the oven but still checked my temp. This time it was 100.5, not quite to what they told me was bad but not good. A debate ensued between Beth and I on how to use this happy meal toy. Beth correctly won this debate and I called the on-call oncologist who said I should go to the UW Hospital ER to get checked out to be sure I don’t have an infection.

Now if you have a debilitating phobia of needles and overall uncomfortable feeling in hospitals, I do not recommend going to a level 1 trauma emergency room. Thankfully, nothing happened while I was there but you can tell they are set up for the worst. For the first time I got asked “Can we take your blood pressure with your legs if needed?”. Well I naively asked “Why would you need to do that?” To which she responded “Not everyone has arms that comes in here”. Thankfully all my vitals were good, I didn’t have a fever anymore when I got to the ER but my blood pressure has now since risen to heights rivaled by the SpaceX Falcon Heavy.

They ended up admitting me to the hospital for observation out of what they said was an abundance of caution. I think they ran almost every test you can think of, blood cultures, EKGs, chest X-rays, etc. What they ended up finding is I had a bowel infection called CDIFF. It tends to affect people with weakened immune symptoms and the staff of course told me the plethora of ways I could have gotten it. But afterwards I had multiple people tell me, you definitely got that from the hospital, they just won’t admit that.

Those of you who have had hospital stays can relate to the days following. For those who have not, the best description we came to is it’s like a weird combination of a low end all-inclusive resort and a penitentiary. You can order whatever you want, as long as it meets your dietary restrictions in their system, as much as you want, three times a day. But the food is mediocre and there is no alcohol. Because of COVID and my condition I was not allowed to leave the unit on my floor. We were not told about this the first night and broke the rules pretty badly the first trip to stretch my legs. Not long after getting yelled at twice, there were signs everywhere saying “No Patients Beyond This Point”. There’s the penitentiary part.

The stay basically consisted of constantly getting my vitals taken, blood drawn every day for testing and taking antibiotics until my numbers were high enough to go home. Apparently the majority of patients are not Xennials because I was warned this liquid antibiotic was terrible and most people hated it. To me it took me back to college and tasted like a shot of UV Grape Vodka. By the end of the stay I was really channeling my analog youth and playing with the bubbles in my IV line. I was told it’s not a problem as long as the whole line isn’t full of air, but my OCD made me get rid of all the bubbles.

I got out of the hospital Thursday, they’re keeping my rescheduled Chemo appointment for tomorrow because they want to keep being aggressive with my cancer. I appreciate their urgency and I’m doing all I can, which I’m told is pretty much nothing. We’re learning that cancer is like taking quizzes you can’t study for and you don’t know what’s going to be on them. And sometimes you fail, having to retake it a week later.