Good Evening,
I have thought about that subject line several times in this past 24 hours, and I remind myself that this day too shall pass. On Wednesday I had noticed a slight sore throat and some stiffness in between my shoulder blades and neck later in the day. But I pushed that off on pitching hay to the horses and cattle earlier in the day. By the time I got home Wednesday evening after driving about 45 mins, I was unable to close my hands when I let go of the steering wheel. It was all so bizarre. I got out of the car and it seemed that all of my joints were painful.........what the hell !!!!! Those were my exact words. I phoned the transplant coordinator on call, and she had was not familiar with these symptoms, and wanted me to go to the ER. We had just gotten the kids to bed, and it was so cold, I chose to go to bed and hit the clinic first thing in the morning. After lots of blood work, a chest x-ray, strep, and influenza tests, everything was negative. I was also having a lot of nausea to top it off. Getting up and walking was a chore. The transplant team wanted me down in Omaha right away to be admitted, they thought for sure it was something called SERUM SICKNESS, but until other viruses were ruled out I would have to be in isolation. The serum sickness is a rare side affect of the Thymo treatments I had. The serum sickness usually comes on weeks after the treatment. If it is uncommon, you can bet I will get it. The treatment is once again some steroid treatment. Nothing like I had for the rejection, they are giving me 40 mg a day. I am feeling a lot better tonight. My hands are still bothering me some, my jaw seems to be much better. It was even hard to chew food, don't worry I could still talk.
The good news is, once I am better it should not reoccur, unless I need future Thymo treatments. There is more good news, my liver functions are looking great. My good attitude slipped a little yesterday, and I will be the first to admit it. I melted down, but I am trying to find the positives and focus on those. I should go home tomorrow, they are still waiting on a few more blood tests to come back first. Once everything else is ruled out, and the steroids seem to help, that is how they know it is serum sickness. One of these days I am just going to send out an e-mail to say hello, and that my life is so boring and uneventful with nothing to report. I hope all of you are doing well. We got a little break from the frigid cold weather, and that is always a relief. Thank you all for your support and prayers, it all means so much.
Love,
Trish
No comments:
Post a Comment