Change is coming.

I talked with Dr. Narins this afternoon- he told me that I only have a low grade fever now and all my other numbers are looking really good,my organs are doing wonderfully, and test results continue to show improvement. 

If things continue to trend this way they're gonna send me home tomorrow.

YESSSSSS !!!!

I'll post more when I know.

No Ticket to Ride

So I deliberately held off from taking any Percocet (Contains Tylenol) or any other Tylenol products last night just to see if I had beat this fever or whether it had been subdued yesterday by the aforementioned drugs. 

Sad to report that I woke at 5:15 with shivers and shaking equivalent to an 8.0 on the Richter scale.

Argh.

I haven't seen Dr. Narins yet this morning but I'm betting he is going to harsh my mellow plans of chilling on my own couch tonight and sleeping in my own bed.

Fevers suck.

That's the word from here @ 6:00 am.

More later.

I feel like a (bad) number....

4 o'clock am here now at Ground Zero.

I slept the first part of the night away pretty well but now I am awake with a fever again. My blood pressure is pretty high 178/98 and my heart rate is 122.

They just weighed me - there's no weight gain. So they've given me more painkillers and some Tylenol for the fever and started another bag of antibiotics.

Laying here shaking like a car with a bad timing belt is no fun

I'm hoping, by morning, some things change. 

I'll keep you posted

Absolute elsewhere in the storms of my mind...

And so under the advisement of my close counsel I requested some pain meds and some Ativan before the procedure was started yesterday and then the anesthesiologist also gave me a good dose of sedative and by God it was all said and done before I knew it... 

AND I SURVIVED !!!

(Yeah ok. Everybody told me I would but I was I guess I was just being a candy ass on this one)

Sometimes better living through chemistry is the way to go.

I don't want to start any blasphemous rumors but I think that God has a sick sense of humor and when I die I expect to find Him laughing....

Another Thursday and I am still here at Pinnacle fighting off an infection and fever and all the accompaning crud.

Dr. Yang has a strong belief that this is coming from a stent that has been left inside me a little longer than what is customary. They had to wait for this because of all the extreme bleeding I had going on.

So binding myself within the limits of T.M.I. all I'm going to disclose here is that this afternoon at 2:15  I am to be "sedated", taken to the operating room, and have this 12" stent removed by Dr. Boline.

It was scheduled to come out on Monday but with this infection and all -

now today is the day.

Now I don't consider myself an overly excitable boy but this has me about as high anxiety as it gets and I will be darn glad when it is over.

Due to the use of Anesthesia for this I haven't had anything to eat or dink since midnight and only a very small gulp of water to take my 19 pills this morning.

Some medical manuevers border on sadism.

On other fronts, Dr. Waybill, the nephrologist, has changed my meds again she now has me on Metroprolol, essentially just a "kiss of a dose" am & pm.

With the stent gone, and the volume of antibiotics they are pumping me full of, they expect to see the fever dissapear pretty quick and if so, I'll be able to go home.

Let's hope this hold true.

My world is getting smaller. Sorry God.

Dr Yang was just in. 

He makes this seem like it's no big deal. 

(Riiiiiiiight.)

Or at least nothing he hasn't seen many times before. He told me that they are dropping the A(ntibiotic) Bomb and that if all goes well today - I'll soon be out of here.

He did mention that the nurses had mentioned that I had asked in clinic on Monday, when I could go back to church. He laughed and he said "You've got to stay away from church man" he says "I can't tell you how many times we've had problems with people who insist on going to church" he said that "people will go to church no matter how sick they are and that's just a petri dish of infection." 

On Monday they told me they didn't want me to go for two more weeks and today he said 4 to 6 weeks. No crowds at all for 4 to 6 weeks. 

Argh. 

I'm a social guy.....

Now I'm going to be a hermit.

Almighty Fear

So spending half the day in the York Hospital ER for evaluation. And after a plethora of new bloodwork and some IV's, the attending ER physician consulted with Dr. Yang and he wanted me to be re-admitted to the hospital in Harrisburg.

So this is where I am now.

Ironically back in the very same suite that I left 4 days ago.

When I got off the elevator on this floor it was like rock star status as one nurse down the hall cried "MR. LENZ!!!!!"

This caused several other nurses to come out and look and they all "welcomed me back".

There's something a bit sick about this.

I haven't seen the doctors yet so that's it for now.

I'll post when I can.

I didn't plan on THIS today...

So I woke today really not feeling well and my numbers are off a little bit.

BP is 155/95

Pulse is 122

Temp is 102.5

Nausious with tightness in my chest.

General feeling of unwellness.

Yeah...... I be 'illin.

I called the tx center and they've sent me to the local ER for evaluation.

It's where I am now.

Argh.

They are taking a boatload of blood.

We'll see where this goes.

Sometimes you gotta take the crap with the cream...

So clinic seemed to go well today. I saw tx coordinators Becca, Deb, chief nurse Judy, Dr. Yang, Dr. Narins, Dr. Waybill, had multiple examinations, vitals, and bloodwork done.

They all said that I looked "terrific". Dr. Waybill said I looked better than most recipients of just a kidney. So that's good to hear. But when they asked what I had been doing the past 2.5 days...I got yelled at "for doing too much".

I feel like I've been just a real load - not doing much of anything.

Better and stronger are coming very slowly and I am notoriously impatient. 

I was also told that I am not to go to church, markets, or be in any kind of crowds for at least another two weeks because of a drug they gave me to really K.O. my immune system. The effects of this drug should linger for about another week and a half. 

They really have this stuff down at Pinnacle. 

Dr Waybill understands my cabin fever but told me that if something gets wrong with my new kidney, they can almost always fix it with meds. The pancreas - not so much. And so cabin fever or not - I've come too far, been through too much to risk that.

I am pretty darn ecstatic with two wonderfully working organs and I plan to do all I need to to keep them that way.

The docs started me on another drug today that will thin my blood a bit. It's customary for tx recipients to be on such a drug but they stopped mine when I was bleeding so much. It's a very, very, fine line and so they will be watching this extremely closely.

I have clinic and labs again on Thursday. Twice a week for several months.

In a weird way....it's kind of comforting that they follow you so closely.

There's peace of mind in knowing that if anything goes awry, they would know in very short order and be able to address it.

I've been thinking that it was already 2 weeks ago this evening when things went really south - the RRT code, and being rushed back to ICU in the middle of the night. I hope to never relive an episode like that.

The past is done and I'm movin' on.

Nothing is going to go awry.

I'm a believer.

Thanks for checking here....I'll post again tomorrow.

These times are different....

So although sleeping at night is still fitful I am slowly getting used to this new lifestyle. Pills, drinking liters of water, checking my blood sugars, weighing myself, taking my temp, and blood pressures 2x daily and for now - taking it kinda easy but also living without all kind of killer toxins in my body. I am also able to eat (everything but grapefruit) and without taking insulin 3x daily. As a matter of fact I haven't had a shot of insulin in the past 17 days - the first time I could survive without them in 38 years.

Although that is a "lifestyle' change and it is nice, what is much, much, bigger to me is no more threat of Hypoglycemia and the unawareness of it that has consistently almost killed me dozens of times in the past 10 years.

Life is good.

Tomorrow I go to clinic for an exam, meetings, bloodwork, etc. i will be doing this every Monday and Thursday for months to come.

I'll be sure to let you know how it goes.

Thanks for continuing to check here.