Christmas at Stanford

It will be Christmas at the hospital after all. I kind of expected it. I can’t ever think of a time that I was admitted for something other than chemo and I wasn’t in the hospital for at least a week. We’re all making the best of it. Chris’ parents brought a little fake Snoopy tree into the room and Chris put up some lights. Tomorrow my dad will be bringing Christmas Eve dinner to have here in the room (although I probably won’t participate in the eating). There is also a beautiful tree out in the atrium next to my unit and there have been carolers in the evenings. The rooms are slowly starting to empty out so I’m assuming a lot of people are being discharged just in time.

This morning the pulmonary doctor that did my bronchoscope came to talk to me. She asked me how I was doing and how the procedure had gone. I told her how uncomfortable it was and that I kept asking for additional drugs and they wouldn’t give them to me. She actually had a reasonable explanation for the whole dramatic experience. Usually when they do a bronchoscope they only go into the lungs once or twice; since I had so much thick mucus blockage in both lungs they had to go in a total of five times. By then the drugs were already starting to wear off and they couldn’t give me anymore since they had already given me the maximum for my weight. The procedure usually takes about ten minutes and for me it took close to an hour. Because of all the blockage they weren’t able to get as far/deep as they wanted to and weren’t able to get a sample of the area they needed to. I’m scheduled to have another bronchoscope done either next Tuesday or Wednesday.

Meanwhile the goal is for me to try and excrete as much mucus as possible on my own so they don’t have to do so much when they go in next week. I’ve been given all kinds of respiratory treatments to help with this.

I continue to get puffier and puffier. Today they made me go on the scale and I nearly went into cardiac shock (fortunately I’m in the cardiac unit). I’m approximately nine to ten pounds heavier then when I was admitted on Wednesday!! My arms, hands, fingers, face, and stomach are very swollen. They still won’t give me Lasix due to my blood pressure and because I’m so dehydrated. The reason I’m so dehydrated is because I have full-blown diarrhea from all the antibiotics I’m on. So the only solution is to drink as much as I can and get up and walk around. Well there’s two problems with that: 1) I can barely even take a sip of liquid since I feel so disgusting from being so puffy 2) Walking long distances (further than the room door or bathroom) have become difficult due to my shortness of breath. I know that I always complain about getting puffy and bloated when I’m admitted, but this by far beats all. I literally have water pockets on parts of my body that I didn’t think were possible. I have to hold my belly when I’m walking for fear that it will weigh me down and I’ll do a face plant.

Fortunately the days have managed to go by rather fast due to the number of people visiting and the amount of different teams of doctors coming in throughout the day. I’m actually starting to feel quite exhausted with all the activity. I know it will slow down the next two days as people are celebrating the holidays.