Just couldn't get through the week 12/21-22/2017.
December 21, 2017 Back to In the Beginning
Just couldn't get through the week without another doctor's visit.
Noticed that the drain in my side is red and tender. Well, 'inflamed' is more like it. I'd post a picture, but wouldn't want you to barf on your keyboard or phone. A bit later, feel something on the inside of my cheek. Aw crap... They told us about this in the video. A mouth sore. Just feels like when you bite the inside of your cheek and it gets all rough with a noticeable difference in feeling. Not a pain or an itch, although closer to the latter, because you always feel like 'worrying it' (to use an archaic meaning) with your tongue. No fever, so I think that's a good thing. Mikki had stepped in my urine when I missed the bowl in one of my many nightly sleepwalking urinations, due to drinking a gallon and a half of liquids every day. She ended up with a rash on her feet. More on that later.
Call the urologist's night line but the Dr I got wasn't much help and just said to come in the morning. Mikki and Lisa said to call the oncologist, since he is now primary on the case.
Call the night line for the oncologist, but it is 11:00 and I go to sleep and never get a call back, until 12 when the operator calls back to see if anyone called.
December 22, 2017
Drop Mikki off at Lisa's to take care of Ellie in the morning. Play with Ellie a bit then head to work. Call the oncologist and ask for the nurse. Leave a message. Get to work and the nurse, Kayleigh, asks if I can come in right away. Fortunately, it is the day that it is, work is dead and I'm only 20 minutes away.
Get there and in short order, get a blood draw and sit in the inside waiting area. Met one guy whose birthday is 8 days before mine, same year. He had one of those caps like what you would picture an Irishman would wear but made of leather.
I mentioned I had one in corduroy. He tips his hat and says it covers up the baldness well. I said I'd be doing that in 2 weeks. Next a woman sat down and said she has been doing chemo for two years and now just takes it orally. She compared CCCN very well to the places she had been on the west side and in California.
Get routed to an exam room and the 'nurse' takes my vitals and ask questions off a form. I ask her some questions and she can't answer anything. So obviously not a nurse. Finally see Dr. V. he asks about other antibiotics I've had recently and I'd had Cipro in October and November, so he prescribes Augmentin. I ask him about Mikki's foot rash and he assures me that the chemo was out of my system in a day and that maybe she was allergic to the antinausea medicine and to treat it with a topical hydrocortisone cream.
Dr. Vogelzang prescribes two shots of neupogen: one today and one tomorrow. He has to get insurance company approval, which is such BS for a shot that is needed to save your life. So I sit in the waiting room and chat some people up and wait and then his nurse comes out. She says I can come back when she gets the authorization and she'll call me. So I go to the grocery store, put my prescription for the Augmentin in, and grab some food off the shelves for lunch. Get the prescription and, since I'm down the block from Sunrise Hospital, I give Lisa a call to see if she has a break.
I wonder through the halls of Sunrise and meet up with her in the Peds ER waiting room and she says, "Let's get out of here because everybody's got the flu here." We bump into a resident. I couldn't quite figure out his status because he was normally out of town in another state. Lisa asked if he was coming back to Vegas, so I don't know what the deal was. He went on quite a bit telling me how wonderful my daughter is, which obviously I already know. He didn't seem to think much of Rabbi, but he left it at that.
After he left Lisa let me know he's gay and I said, "Yeah, I figured, but I also thought he was a nerd."
Then we went on our way and talked about how Ellie now knows how to spell her name. Lisa couldn't believe it when she first heard it. I told her I was sure Mikki was working with her. Lisa said last night that Ellie sat up at midnight in the bed and belted out Jingle Bells at the top of her voice. Then we talked about her new dining room furniture and my health situation.
She emailed me some papers and other emails that some of her friends sent about my symptoms and the latest clinical trials that are going on in other hospitals and clinics. She also said that the other day she was examining a kid and he started to make ralphing noises. She stepped aside just in time for the kid to blow chunks all over the room. She stepped out into the hallway and called,"Nurse." It was funnier when she told it.
As we turn the corner we see the guard podium ahead and two women on the ground, paper towels all over the place and brown stuff on the floor. A young boy was standing right next to him and Lisa thought right away that the kid had done the same. But then I pointed out that is right around the corner from the Starbucks and was probably coffee.
Just as I got to the car, Kayleigh from CCCN called and said that she didn't get the authorization yet. I could come back for the shot if I wanted to pay for it. . I got the shot, left and went back to work. It seems stupid that I had to come back the next morning for the second shot when it was just intramuscular and I could have done it myself.
Got back to work and, given that it was the day before the holiday weekend, everybody was already gone. I did some work for a couple hours and decided to meet Mikki and Andrew at at Lisa's house so I can play with Ellie a bit.
Everybody was just waking up from a nap when I got there and it was almost time for Ellie's dinner. She and Andrew started playing with the train under the tree and her play kitchen. Mikki prepared her dinner, but Ellie didn't really eat much of it, so we let her down out of her high chair. She and Andrew went upstairs to play in her playroom.
When Rabbi got home at 7, we chatted a bit and left in separate cars. Mikki came with me.
Couldn't resist some driving music.
https://youtu.be/J2aqvKY6zLc
On the freeway, I felt like a fever was starting to come over me. We got home; I checked my temperature and it was 100.9. Normally I would blow that off and take some Tylenol but Dr. Vogelzang said anytime my temperature goes to 100.5 I have to go to the ER.
So I take some Tylenol and my evening antibiotic and a vitamin for good measure. I called the night line for Dr. Vogelzang and as expected they told me to go to the ER. We went to Summerlin Hospital since Vogelzang has privileges there, we know that the care is good and I was just there for the other stuff.
It was amazing. I spent a minute with the admitting nurse, barely sat down in the waiting room and they whisked us into the ER. Went through all the usual motions of and urine tests and history and getting down and up. The doctor in the ER said she really didn't think the Augmentin was the right antibiotic so she wrote the order for something else ...Vancomycin, that's it.
We've had a lot of experience at Summerlin Hospital and it can take a long time to get a room so I told Mikki and Andrew to pack it in and go home and I'd let them know what was going on. They left around 11:30 and by 1:30 I was finally brought up into a room. Staff is just awesome here as well as head CCCN. Got into discussion about bikes with my nurse Tara. She bought her hubby a Giant road bike for Christmas.
While I was editing this blog I accidentally froze the screen and hit the power button too many times. Stupid phone sent off an SOS message to Mikki, Andrew and Lisa. Lisa texted back even though it was around 4am. Second time this week, so I've disabled that stupid feature. The instructions don't even tell you the right button. It's really the home button that triggers it, not the power button.
Next: Dial 57588 for magic
Noticed that the drain in my side is red and tender. Well, 'inflamed' is more like it. I'd post a picture, but wouldn't want you to barf on your keyboard or phone. A bit later, feel something on the inside of my cheek. Aw crap... They told us about this in the video. A mouth sore. Just feels like when you bite the inside of your cheek and it gets all rough with a noticeable difference in feeling. Not a pain or an itch, although closer to the latter, because you always feel like 'worrying it' (to use an archaic meaning) with your tongue. No fever, so I think that's a good thing. Mikki had stepped in my urine when I missed the bowl in one of my many nightly sleepwalking urinations, due to drinking a gallon and a half of liquids every day. She ended up with a rash on her feet. More on that later.
Call the urologist's night line but the Dr I got wasn't much help and just said to come in the morning. Mikki and Lisa said to call the oncologist, since he is now primary on the case.
Call the night line for the oncologist, but it is 11:00 and I go to sleep and never get a call back, until 12 when the operator calls back to see if anyone called.
December 22, 2017
Drop Mikki off at Lisa's to take care of Ellie in the morning. Play with Ellie a bit then head to work. Call the oncologist and ask for the nurse. Leave a message. Get to work and the nurse, Kayleigh, asks if I can come in right away. Fortunately, it is the day that it is, work is dead and I'm only 20 minutes away.
Get there and in short order, get a blood draw and sit in the inside waiting area. Met one guy whose birthday is 8 days before mine, same year. He had one of those caps like what you would picture an Irishman would wear but made of leather.
Get routed to an exam room and the 'nurse' takes my vitals and ask questions off a form. I ask her some questions and she can't answer anything. So obviously not a nurse. Finally see Dr. V. he asks about other antibiotics I've had recently and I'd had Cipro in October and November, so he prescribes Augmentin. I ask him about Mikki's foot rash and he assures me that the chemo was out of my system in a day and that maybe she was allergic to the antinausea medicine and to treat it with a topical hydrocortisone cream.
Dr. Vogelzang prescribes two shots of neupogen: one today and one tomorrow. He has to get insurance company approval, which is such BS for a shot that is needed to save your life. So I sit in the waiting room and chat some people up and wait and then his nurse comes out. She says I can come back when she gets the authorization and she'll call me. So I go to the grocery store, put my prescription for the Augmentin in, and grab some food off the shelves for lunch. Get the prescription and, since I'm down the block from Sunrise Hospital, I give Lisa a call to see if she has a break.
I wonder through the halls of Sunrise and meet up with her in the Peds ER waiting room and she says, "Let's get out of here because everybody's got the flu here." We bump into a resident. I couldn't quite figure out his status because he was normally out of town in another state. Lisa asked if he was coming back to Vegas, so I don't know what the deal was. He went on quite a bit telling me how wonderful my daughter is, which obviously I already know. He didn't seem to think much of Rabbi, but he left it at that.
After he left Lisa let me know he's gay and I said, "Yeah, I figured, but I also thought he was a nerd."
Then we went on our way and talked about how Ellie now knows how to spell her name. Lisa couldn't believe it when she first heard it. I told her I was sure Mikki was working with her. Lisa said last night that Ellie sat up at midnight in the bed and belted out Jingle Bells at the top of her voice. Then we talked about her new dining room furniture and my health situation.
She emailed me some papers and other emails that some of her friends sent about my symptoms and the latest clinical trials that are going on in other hospitals and clinics. She also said that the other day she was examining a kid and he started to make ralphing noises. She stepped aside just in time for the kid to blow chunks all over the room. She stepped out into the hallway and called,"Nurse." It was funnier when she told it.
As we turn the corner we see the guard podium ahead and two women on the ground, paper towels all over the place and brown stuff on the floor. A young boy was standing right next to him and Lisa thought right away that the kid had done the same. But then I pointed out that is right around the corner from the Starbucks and was probably coffee.
Just as I got to the car, Kayleigh from CCCN called and said that she didn't get the authorization yet. I could come back for the shot if I wanted to pay for it. . I got the shot, left and went back to work. It seems stupid that I had to come back the next morning for the second shot when it was just intramuscular and I could have done it myself.
Got back to work and, given that it was the day before the holiday weekend, everybody was already gone. I did some work for a couple hours and decided to meet Mikki and Andrew at at Lisa's house so I can play with Ellie a bit.
Everybody was just waking up from a nap when I got there and it was almost time for Ellie's dinner. She and Andrew started playing with the train under the tree and her play kitchen. Mikki prepared her dinner, but Ellie didn't really eat much of it, so we let her down out of her high chair. She and Andrew went upstairs to play in her playroom.
When Rabbi got home at 7, we chatted a bit and left in separate cars. Mikki came with me.
Couldn't resist some driving music.
https://youtu.be/J2aqvKY6zLc
On the freeway, I felt like a fever was starting to come over me. We got home; I checked my temperature and it was 100.9. Normally I would blow that off and take some Tylenol but Dr. Vogelzang said anytime my temperature goes to 100.5 I have to go to the ER.
So I take some Tylenol and my evening antibiotic and a vitamin for good measure. I called the night line for Dr. Vogelzang and as expected they told me to go to the ER. We went to Summerlin Hospital since Vogelzang has privileges there, we know that the care is good and I was just there for the other stuff.
It was amazing. I spent a minute with the admitting nurse, barely sat down in the waiting room and they whisked us into the ER. Went through all the usual motions of and urine tests and history and getting down and up. The doctor in the ER said she really didn't think the Augmentin was the right antibiotic so she wrote the order for something else ...Vancomycin, that's it.
We've had a lot of experience at Summerlin Hospital and it can take a long time to get a room so I told Mikki and Andrew to pack it in and go home and I'd let them know what was going on. They left around 11:30 and by 1:30 I was finally brought up into a room. Staff is just awesome here as well as head CCCN. Got into discussion about bikes with my nurse Tara. She bought her hubby a Giant road bike for Christmas.
While I was editing this blog I accidentally froze the screen and hit the power button too many times. Stupid phone sent off an SOS message to Mikki, Andrew and Lisa. Lisa texted back even though it was around 4am. Second time this week, so I've disabled that stupid feature. The instructions don't even tell you the right button. It's really the home button that triggers it, not the power button.
Next: Dial 57588 for magic