Turning things around

In my previous post, ‘Crystal Ball’, I mentioned my fight with pneunomia. I think it deserves a little more details, because there was so much drama and anxiety. So let’s back up a little.

It started late night on Wednesday, January 9th. I was in the living room, chilling by myself (I might have even been writing another blog post), when a sharp pain hit me in my right chest. When I went to bed, I figured out that lying down flat made the pain the most intense, and it was also hardest to breath in that position. One of my groans must have awoken Diane, and after a brief discussion, we decided to go to the ER.

Kudos to Diane for convincing me to go the ER (I wanted to try to sleep it off), driving me there at midnight, knowing that she might still have to go to work early next morning. And then, spending the night in an uncomfortable chair while I rested in a bed.

In the ER, doctors took the first CAT scan, which showed that it was indeed pneumonia, but nothing too worrisome. I was moved to an actual hospital room upstairs the next day, and everything was still fine. The antibiotics seemed to be working, and the pain was going away. I was going to be discharged that Saturday, on the 12th, only four days after being admitted to the ER.

Then I started spiking fevers everyday. These were nastier fevers than what I’ve experienced before in the course of my prior treatment. Instead of going up to about 101F, this time temperatures hit 103F. These fevers couldn’t be quickly resolved with Tylenol, a bit of napping, and sweating it off in one evening. Starting everyday around 3-4PM, often it would take multiple naps, Tylenol pills during the evening and through the night, and ice packs, before temperatures would start to come down in the morning around 8AM.

The pain in the chest came back as well, and it grew more intense as the days went by. Some days, it was consistent throughout the whole day and into the night. Eventually, it got even hard to stand up and walk a few steps inside the room. Doctors equipped my IV pole with a new unit which continuously pumps small amounts of morphine-related pain medication. I also got a button attached to that unit that I could press to get more medication when needed. It’s a pretty dangerous piece of equipment, although the manual push is limited to very 10 minutes; otherwise, everyone using this would become an addict…

With the situation getting serious, something that my oncologist told me a while ago suddenly hit me: many leukemia patients die from infections. Without a functional immune system, there’s only so much that antibiotics and antifungals can do.

Indeed, the mold in my chest grew bigger based on a repeat CAT scan on Jan 16th, all despite being treated by a strong antifungal. My white count was hovering around 150, which was too low to help fight infections. On top of that, the day after, I heard from my oncologist that the latest blood test showed cancer cells mixed in with white cells – 30% of the total white cell count of 160. The cancer cells were supposed to make beating the infection even harder.

That’s when panic and uncertainty set in. I messaged my friends to come visit me. Diane took a week off to be by my side.

Yet, things turned around quickly, as fast as they turned from normal to almost hopeless in the beginning. Fevers started to disappear. The chest pain was seldom felt anymore. Doctors and I managed to put a stop on the infection for now, even though the mold is still in my lungs, but that will take months to a year to clear out.

Things happened in my favor against pretty tough odds. Which means there are still internal and external forces fighting for me. I’m still fighting.

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PS: It might have been sort of a false alarm, but thanks to all my friends (and my brother) who went out of their way and visited me on very short notice.