Foothills ER trip

I'm back in the hospital. I came up here Friday on what I thought was just a casual visit to see if any of my doctors or nurses were around. The hope was that I would run into someone I knew, who would of course have a simple solution to my infection problem that could be put into action right away. Unfortunately it didn't quite play out that way.

Once I got here I looked around for Dr Lupichuck who was supposed to be in clinic that day. At the reception desk I was informed that she was away on holiday and both her nurses (who are familiar with my case) were also not in that day. My backup plan was to call Dr Buie's office and try to secure a render-vous with him. When I phoned his office I got the machine and left a message. I guess while I was on the phone leaving the message with Dr. Buie I was wandering around the hospital. When I hung up, I found myself standing in the waiting area for the ER. There were only a couple of people in the chairs so I thought I would just walk up the triage window and see what the wait time was. So I walked up, changed my mind on the fly, and just said I wanted to see a doctor. I got an indirect answer to the wait time issue when I was guided straight out of triage, down the hall and into bed 33 in the ER.

From there one thing let to another and I eventually saw the medical oncologist on-call. He was glad I came in and after a bit of waiting around, got me started on IV antibiotics. We talked some more and decided that I should be admitted so that I could continue the iv antibiotics for a couple of days while we waited for the results from the blood and drain cultures. I have since moved up to unit 47 (intensive palliative care) where the rooms are nice and big, there is a nice lounge, and the food is served hot from a cart, not trucked in from a Burmese hovel like the rest of the hospital.

So, it looks like I'm here for another day, then it should be home with some antibiotics and back to the regular life. There's no way I'm doing chemo this week. The prospect of having an enjoyable week is uplifting.