a bit of a setback...

...so tuesday i was so excited about the possibility of getting #6 out that i didn't really notice quite how crappy i was feeling...until i went to bed that is...i didn't sleep a wink...back to pre-surgical, late-night, west-coast phone calls...couldn't get comfortable, couldn't stop shivering, freezing cold, burning hot...a mess...

...so come 6:45 am, i gave up...downstairs...6:55 empty drain...50ml...call pop..."pop, i was up all night, i feel like someone took a bat to my stomach and whaled on me, i have fever, and i'm at 50...when can i call mom?"..."50, hmmm...well mom's sleeping, wait till 7:30 and give her a buzz, but call the doctor too..."

...fast forward to 7:00...drain total back to 50ml...small to major freak out...text pop...wake mom..."mom...(repeat pop conversation)...and now i'm back at 50..."

--simultaneous phone call from pop (cell phone pop/land line mom) CALL YOUR MOTHER AND CALL THE DR'S OFFICE, HAVE HER PAGED IMMEDIATELY--

..."ok dan, calm down, call the doctor and tell her we're coming in...i'm on my way over..."

...so my mom gets there by a bit before eight and i was back up to 40mls...that's 140 for the morning and i was hoping for 20...ugh!!!

...so we make our way over to Penn to see one of the nurses, as dr. wu was in hawaii at a conference...awesome...the one nurse looks at me and my red stomach and gets another nurse...she looks and recommends that a resident be paged...enter resident..."yes ms chase, the best course of action is going to be for us to admit you for a cat scan and iv antibiotics..." again, awesome....this is NOT how i was planning my morning to go!!!

...so my mom and i mosie over to admissions, where we stayed for the next four hours, me balled up in pain, my mother beside herself trying to speed the process along at every turn (which she totally did)...finally admitted...taken to a room where i climbed into the bed immediately...

...my cat scan was scheduled for 2:45, so i wasn't allowed to eat, but not that big a deal...or so i thought...i didn't get taken down till well after 8pm...so i was pretty hungry...by about 10pm the results trickled in...you don't need surgery, you can eat until 12am because we may want to do more tests tomorrow...ok...wonderful...turkey sandwich never tasted so good...meanwhile there was a plethora of other information inherent to the scan results, but no one shared that with us...have we even seen a doctor yet?

...i spent a good portion of the night vomiting...most of the morning...when i get hungry i throw up...though the doctors wouldn't believe that so they kept me off of food, which was most likely why i was throwing up to begin with!!! ugh!!! but by about 2pm the next day they finally told me i could eat...unbeknownst to me at the time, orders had come down for me to be able to eat earlier that morning, but my nurse said she never got them...just another reason why Penn rocks...

...around this time my IV started to go...so they came and put a new one in...that went ok...but it didn't stay...after the vein gave, they tried multiple times without success to get me a line...eventually they switched me to oral antibiotics (condensed story)...

...so still no doctors...my mom ends up calling wu's office and busting out a rather large can of whoop ass on the nurse...well after that, i saw 8-10 doctors on two different services (plastics and they brought in infectious disease) and dr wu called me from hawaii...things were looking up at probably the shittiest hospital i have ever been to!!! lankenau was like a 5 star resort...i wish i'd known!!!

...so four days and much pain later, they let me out...it was great...pop came and got me and off we went!!!

...this morning i haven't measured the total yet, but i think it's going to be low...when i was in the hospital they did a procedure where they injected some kind of substance into the infected cavity in my belly in order to stop the drainage from being so high...something about the liquid causing scar tissue, so the draining will stop...who knows...very uncomfortable, but if it works and i can finally kick #6, it was worth it!!! wish me luck :)