In an effort to get the blog length under control and because my emotions are still close to not under control, I'm going to give you, dear readers, a list of events from the past week with Jack in the hospital.
1. Two weekends ago, Jack started to come down with something--he was completely wiped out by the end of the day for the previous two days of work and after noon on the weekend days, he was too tired to do anything. He slept most of the weekend.
2. After work on Monday, we go to Jessie's to install a swamp cooler and on the drive home, Jack can hardly keep his eyes open.
3. On Tuesday, Jack insists he's okay to go to work, but when he picks me up for lunch, I take one look at him and ask if he wants me to take him home and he agrees to go home.
4. At 3:00 am on Wednesday, Jack wakes up with such a high fever that breaks and leaves him sweating and shivering so violently that he can hardly get a couple of advil into his mouth. He decides to stay home. He agrees to go to his doctor that day. But the doctor and his nurse are out of the office that day.
5. I call Jack at 3:30 on Wednesday afternoon and ask him how he's feeling. He's feeling low. I tell him that when I get home, I'm taking him to the instacare or to the emergency room and he asks when I'll be home. I leave immediately.
6. We arrive at the emergency room, expecting a long wait for a short visit with a doctor who will either send us home with antibiotics or with the diagnosis that Jack has a virus, so go home and take some more advil and drink lots of water and get more rest.
7. The length of time we spend in the ER is just as expected, but we are more than a bit surprised when the ER doc announces that while Jack's high fever indicates that he has a virus, his white blood cell count is critically low (not typical with a virus) and he's trying to decide whether or not it's safe to let Jack leave the hospital. After six hours in the ER, we leave, Jack sporting an IV that has safely delivered antibiotics into his body (after the first round of antibiotics caused hives, resulting in a dose of benedryl followed by a different round of antibiotics). We agree to return in the morning for more antibiotics.
8. We return to the ER on Thursday morning, Jack's birthday, and the ER doc says that as soon as a room is available upstairs, he will be admitted for more tests. And, oh, by the way, his white blood count is lower still. A room becomes available eight hours later and Jack settles in 3W16 in the Oncology wing of the hospital. More tests, worse headache, high fever, sweats, chills, no appetite.
9. Friday--more tests, worse headache, high fever, sweats, chills, no appetite--infectious disease doctors come and go, hospital internal medicine docs come and go, nurses and CNAs come and go and still no test results. The infectious disease docs test for blood counts, liver enzymes, west nile virus, hepatitus, and dozens (only a slight exageration) of other possible ailments and Jack endures a liver ultrasound and cat scan of his head, all while he has the worst headache, high fever, sweats, chills, no appetite, and aches and pains shooting through his entire body.
10. Saturday--more of the same. The docs mention the possibility of performing a bone marrow biopsy on Monday if his white blood count doesn't begin to rise. And there are more tests, worse headache, high fever, sweats, chills, and no appetite. I wonder if when they put Jack in a bed in the Oncology unit, it wasn't just because there are less germs there as we'd been told.
11. Sunday--A repeat of Saturday in all ways.
12. Monday--Another repeat of Saturday, symptom-wise, but a visit from the docs to say that the white blood count is rising, slowly, but higher than before. They have decided against the bone marrow biopsy. I start to breath again. Jack seems to be improving slightly.
13. Tuesday--the whatever-it-is that has laid Jack so low for almost two weeks is back with a vengeance. His fever is higher, his pain is worse, he tells me he thinks he might die from this and while I tell him that can't happen, we have plans, I wonder to myself if he's right. The docs order a lumbar puncture (doc talk for spinal tap) and order an MRI. The docs give him more pain meds and later in the day, produce a paper that shows his numbers, documenting in black and white that his blood counts are rising, his liver enzymes are dropping, there are clearly virus cells in his blood, he does not have meningitus, or west nile virus. However, his symptoms seem to indicate that he has one of the many thousands of viruses that are around, and his symptoms seem to match up with those of someone who is suffering from Colorado Tick Fever--a virus that is transmitted from an animal that has the virus, to a tick that bites the infected animal, and then bites a person, in this case, Jack. The ticks don't burrow into the skin, they can simply bite, suck in some blood, transmit the virus, and hop away. But the cultures that the doc sent to the state lab could take up to eight weeks to confirm or deny that Jack has this particular virus. The docs tell Jack that he can stay in the hospital for as long as he needs to or he can go home to recuperate in his own bed, with food he likes, and nobody there to check his blood pressure or blood sugar round the clock, and he won't have to cope with the hospital noises--the beeping and ringing of medical equipment, the calls for help, cursing, and general insanity from the nearby patients (and I mean that in the kindest, most honest way), and the loud, apparently entertaining banter of the staff, who obviously enjoy each other and their work.
15. Wednesday--The docs tell Jack that he is improving, although he will likely feel bad for a few more days. They write prescriptions for large quantities of pain killers, tell him that the MRI was normal as far as this illness is concerned, but did Jack know that at some time in the past he'd suffered a slight stroke. We think we can identify when that happened. We wait all day for the doc to come write the discharge papers so we can go home. Jack showers and dresses in his out-of-the-hospital clothes and as soon as the doc signs the papers/prescriptions, we get outta there.
16. Jack is still recovering at home. Today was very much like Tuesday and Wednesday, but tonight, Jack looks much better and the docs assured us that he will recover completely in the next week or so.
What a week this has been. Who stays in the hospital for 7 1/2 days? Who has so many tests with so little information? The docs' plans seemed to be to rule out all of the really bad stuff and wait. While it's good to know that Jack doesn't have a bunch of really bad ailments, it was a long week.
I don't think hospitals are all that different than they were when I was bearing children. Jack's room did have one pretty cool feature--a little black button that I could push from my recliner next to Jack's bed that would release the door and shut out all of the commotion around us. That's about as good as it got. A little black door release button. And unlimited diet coke.
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