Free Ice Cream

Something Was Up

In hindsight, we should have known.  Pam has been feeling worse, very slowly, over the past few weeks. More fatigue, more problems eating, more nausea, more shakiness just .... more. She really has been feeling worse since around Christmas, but we attributed it to the tapering of her meds.  Last week, she started complaining of a sore throat, and we both thought she was coming down with a cold.  Finally, by this past Tuesday, the throat was much worse and her right tonsil was very swollen and she couldn't keep anything down, so she cancelled a dental appointment and went to her family doctor.  They took a throat swab and checked for Strep, but the culture was negative.  By that time, she was running a very slight fever, so they gave her a prescription for penicillin. (The immunosuppressant drugs she is taking mask some of the normal symptoms of an infection, such as a fever, so a slight fever is a big deal.) By the next day, her fever was worse and the tonsil was more swollen and she was in a lot of pain. She couldn't even keep her pills down. Since she had a regularly scheduled appointment at the Bone Marrow Transplant clinic on Wednesday, I took her, and after one look at the tonsil, they got her started on IV fluids and admitted her to the Rat Maze.

Ouch
At the RM, after getting a CT scan, the diagnosis of a para tonsillar abscess was confirmed and a very nice young ENT resident came to her room and attempted to drain the abscess.  It was brutal.  After donning a high tech headlight, and getting all of her gear laid out, the ENT had only had partial success at numbing the tonsil with lidocaine.  After that, she made several attempts to aspirate the fluid with a needle, and, finally, tried to get to it by making a small incision in the tonsil and spreading the incision apart.  Each step was more painful than the last, she never could get to the pus pocket, and, after an excruciating half hour or so, gave up. I am surprised I didn't break my teeth by gritting them so hard as I was watching all of this.

Luckily, us humans are blessed with horrible pain memory. (Interesting factoid: our memory of smells is incredible.  We can all remember smells from our childhood.)

Better Today
The antibiotics seem to be doing their magic.  It is easy to tell that Pam is feeling better.  She hasn't been herself for at least six weeks now, and now she is beginning to act like Pam. She is joking with the nurses and her CNA, and enjoying the free Hagen Daz ice cream.  Last night, we walked the hallways twice and she was able to eat a Cup of Noodles for dinner, and kept it down. Her first dinner since Tuesday.  I am guessing she will get out of the RM today.

In the big picture, this is a minor bump in the road. But, I would like to call a timeout on bumps for at least a while.