On The Other Side of Through

On July 15th I had a Port placed in my chest. It just wouldn't heal and 2 weeks later I was back in as an Outpatient to have the Port removed. I would suspect they looked at my BMP to determine if I would heal appropriately. BMP/Basic Metabolic Panel (blood test) determines if total protein, albumin and lymphocyte counts are in normal range. Oh well, it's water under the bridge. Or is it? Within 5 days, I was hospitalized again due to pain and difficulty breathing. Thank God for grown children. My daughters took my wife and I to the emergency room at 2:30 a.m. as a Direct Admit into the Hematology/Oncology Unit. I was in familiar confines and know the personnel by shifts now.

My hospital stay was 18 days --- the longest stay thus far. It seemed as though I could not shake the hospital. They got me started on pain med and oxygen awaiting blood test to come back to determine appropriate treatment. Thought this was routine. By Saturday my hemoglobin/hematocrit had dropped from 9/26 to 6.9/20 in 2 days. I had; elevated creatinine (5+), potassium (500) and low magnesium. I was a wreck. I was given 2units of blood. Since I have antibodies it took two days to get both units in Me.


After several days it wasn't the crisis pain but pain from gout in my feet that was giving me trouble. I can't take allopurinol for gout and colchicine for the pain in the joints. To say the least I was in quite a pickle. In addition, my hemoglobin/hematocrit was not moving upwards but trending down although my kidney functions were coming back down. Two more units of blood was required to see if that would stabilize me.


During this time I also had a consult from a psychiatrist to determine if I was depressed. I didn't mind this since I once sold anti-depressants and know how blacks suffer undiagnosed. We sat there and went through a discussion and ended up agreeing to allow a follow-up in a couple of days before a diagnosis. It turned out that I was fine. I was happy I did this because we all can fall into a depressed state when our recovery doesn't go well. Spending 18 days in a hospital room is no joke.