I definitely didn't bring my "A" game to chemo yesterday! What an awful day and night we had. I did fine until about the last hour of the infusion, which is only calcium and magnesium, I made it through the hard stuff just fine. I began to feel nauseous and my head was pounding. I was suddenly freezing cold with shivers and I had about a 99 temp, which is high for me b/c my normal is 97.6. My doc's rule is if you hit 100, you have to go to the ER. So, I wasn't about to drive home for us to immediately turn back around when my fever hit 100. So we hung out in the chemo room for a while and I took an anti-nausea pill and slept for about 30 minutes, then they took my temp again and low and behold I was at 100.2. So, they cart me off to the ER which, luckily, was directly below us on the first floor. We only waited about 30 minutes to get called back, which is amazing to me for an ER! My temp was at 100.5 at check-in, then they gave us a private room in the back. The doc came in and wanted to do bloodwork and a chest x-ray. My bloodwork came back okay and I didn't have a catheter infection so they hooked me up with an IV of saline, antibiotics and anti-nausea meds. They also gave me 2 tylenol and within an hour the shivering was gone and my temp went down to 99 something, and my headache turned into a horrendous migraine in the meantime.

Around 11 they took me down for the chest x-ray. When I returned to my room I began sweating and I felt like my insides were on fire, I was finally able to shed my 4 blankets. Turns out around midnight my fever had spiked back up to 101, fun stuff! They gave me some more Tylenol which I thought might finally help my migraine. By the way, the last place you want to be with a severe migraine is an Emergency Room! So many crazy bright lights and nonstop beeping noises and intercom pages, it was a living hell! Joel found a towel for my head, so I used that as a mask to shield the light. It's funny b/c I never saw any of the people's faces that were working on me b/c they would barge in my room and immediately turn all the lights on, so I kept my trusty towel over my eyes to shield the giant fluorescents directly above me. The chest x-ray showed some inflammation and the word pneumonia was thrown around a bit, perfect!

Around 2 or 3 they finally listened to me and offered some meds for my freakin' migraine, which I had gone about 6 hours without any relief. I had to make my headache known by listing a 10 on that stupid pain scale thing with the happy/sick faces on it! Whatever gets their attention! By this time my fever was hovering in high 98's to low 99's, so they offered me painkillers, I wanted migraine meds, which would supposedly take longer b/c they didn't have them on hand. So after some semi-lucid discussion with the doc that is supposed to make my medical decisions for me, I decided on morphine with a little anti-nausea mixed in for flavor. So they hooked it up through my catheter and I was finally out cold for about 3 hours. I awoke to an awful chainsaw sound coming from the floor next to my bed and I thought for sure it was another crazy IV machine noise and maybe it had fallen over or something. Nope, it was my poor husband who had decided he was done with the flimsy chair he was sitting in all night and he had made himself a nice pallet on the hard floor with 2 blankets and no pillow, he was finally comfortable and snoring up a storm! I was sent packing around 6ish, migraine-free, with a nice high from the morphine and a prescription for an antibiotic. We got home and I slept until 3 this afternoon. No fever, no migraine and hopefully no pneumonia!

Thanks to my wonderful husband who is such a champ when it comes to dealing with things like this, he is the best! Thanks to my parents for coming over and letting our pups out and feeding them. And thanks for all the phone calls and emails, we appreciate everyone's concern. I am aiming for a better result from chemo #6, just 3 short weeks away!