1:30 PM Sunday, March 27, 2011

A brief hello.....we're back at Los Robles Hospital......had a peaceful 34 hours at home, but about 4:15 AM Ed woke me up feeling bad with chills and shivers.  I felt him burning up with fever - took his temperature and it was 103.3.  I immediately called Dr. Menco's cell, he answered and told me to take Ed to the emergency room.  They took the dressings off his chest port (which Ed also said starting hurting during the night) and it appeared to be inflamed with some slight discharge.  Dr. Menco came and they immediately started Ed on IV antibiotics and Tylenol to reduce the fever.  They did a chest x-ray and consulted with the infectious disease doctor and called Dr. Matriciano (the surgeon) to decide what to do about the port.  The concensus was that it had to come out.

Ed is in surgery as we speak to remove the port (which is probably infected - they will do a blood culture on it).  He needs to have some sort of access for his meds and TPN, so the plan right now is to take out the port, sanitize his blood with IV antibiotics for a day and then put in some other type of port access (maybe another PICC line) and get him back on the TPN sometime tomorrow night.   He's feeling pretty lousy, which is a such a contrast to our day yesterday!  We slept a little later than usual and took the morning slowly, enjoying showering in our brand new bathroom.  We went to the market so Ed could pick out a few things he thought he might enjoy trying to eat.  He dozed and watched movies all afternoon, I puttered in the kitchen making homemade navy bean soup, apple crisp and cornbread with honey butter for dinner, which Ed had requested.  We ate on trays in the bedroom (he enjoyed a little soup and cornbread) watching Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives.  Ed was pretty tired so he went to bed around 8:30 and I read until it was time to connect his TPN and give him his nighttime meds.  Ed usually gets up several times during the night because he's getting all his fluids at night, but last night he was more restless than normal after about 2 AM.  I guess that's when everything started to go south and by 4:30 his fever was really spiking.  It all happened pretty fast.  Dr. Menco says that's how it happens and that's why we have his cell #.  (I wonder how he does it!) 

Ed's white count has dropped since Friday, which Dr. Menco said means the Nulasta shot isn't working anymore.  Not sure what that means yet in terms of alternatives, I'm just glad we live so close to the hospital, and that everything has been able to be arranged so quickly today to get him what he needs.  The vomiting is back today as well, so it may have been too soon to trying eating solid food.  We'll see.

Looks like we'll be here again for a couple of days at this point, don't know any more than that.  I'm going to go downstairs to wait for the surgeon and then I'll try and get back to the blog later tonight and update you all about any news.  Poor guy....he's really been through the ringer.  Keep those healing thoughts and prayers coming Ed's way.  I'll be back in touch.