I’m back from the hospital! I’ve been
I’m back from the hospital!
I’ve been sick for a while now, which is why I haven’t been posting much, but I thought it was just normal sickness. Mostly it involved looking incredibly pale, sleeping all the time and headaches. It kept getting worse and worse until two weeks ago I got dizzy spells and started throwing up, I couldn’t stomach food. Usually when I get sick to my stomach it lasts no more than a few days. So after a week I went to the doctor, last Thursday, expecting a sinus infection was behind everything.
He took one look at me and sent me over to the hospital for a blood test. When my blood count came in at 54 (140-160 is normal), I was immediately sent to the ER and started getting blood transfusions. They assumed I had a GI bleed and sent me in for a gastroscope the next day. (Bonus that the scope punching through my esophagus has eased my usual difficulty swallowing pills.)
The scope found nothing. So they referred me to the lead Internist in the hospital, who was incredibly busy. For almost a week I waited to see him, and in the mean time the general doctor overseeing my case (Dr. Reid, fantastic guy) ran multiple blood tests, everything he could think of. Other than my blood being low (they stopped giving me transfusions when I hit around 80) and a bad Potassium (which I had to drink this awful medicine to fix) they couldn’t see a problem. I showed none of the signs of bleeding, or any of the other conditions he knew about.
Finally, they referred me to a different Internist, who came and saw me the same day he got the referral. Problem was, he had no clue what was wrong either. He said his normal next step would be to check my bone marrow, but because I’m rather overweight and have an odd bone structure, though, they’d like to avoid that. So instead he referred me to a blood specialist (hemotologist?).
But, the good news is I can work with him as an outpatient, since my blood has hovered around 80 for days and I seem stable.
So, I’m home. I’m still sick, I barely feel like doing anything but watching TV and browsing the web, and I probably have a mass of blood and other tests in my future, but I’m home at least.
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