August 18, 2018

Somehow over the weekend, I found my way back into the hospital. I need to figure out a way to score awful food in an easier fashion. In all seriousness, I've had a fever since early August with pain while breathing and difficulty breathing while laying down. My kids are always sick so I just chalked it up for a while to having one of their colds again. After 10 days of fever, however, I called my primary care physician and started the ball rolling in the adventure to figure out what could be going wrong. After numerous blood tests, an antibiotic for 5 days and a few scans, we don't yet know the cause of the fever, but know with certainty that I have pericarditis, a larger pleural effusion and a pericardial effusion.

Pericarditis is swelling and irritation of the pericardium,
the thin sac-like membrane surrounding your heart.

With the definitive results of the scans and fever still of unknown origin, my PCP decided to admit me to the hospital Friday. Reluctantly, I moseyed in to Mercy's Heart Hospital Friday mid-day. Friday was spent getting stuck repeatedly and then remembering how uncomfortable those hospital beds really are. I met with a couple of doctors who all assured me testing would be done Saturday. So, Friday was pretty chill. No sleep Friday night as the issues for which I was admitted were not yet treated. Saturday arrived in a slow fashion and by 1 PM, I saw a cardiologist and then got an Echo cardiogram, which confirmed what was noticed in the CT scan the day prior. With all that, each physician didn't really know why I was in the hospital, as pericarditis is not typically treated with hospitalization. No one seemed to note or care of the fever on-going for 2 weeks. So, with some nudging, I was discharged Saturday evening no longer on blood thinner and now able to enjoy Ibuprofen for current diagnosis.

Luckily, this week I am headed back to MD Anderson in Houston, TX, for my scheduled 3 month post-op visit. Since my PCP believes this is a complication from my surgery 3 months ago, hopefully the efficient machine at MD Anderson gets things figured out quickly.

With that, my originally scheduled 2 day visit may need to be adjusted, but I have faith in knowing that my team in Houston will turn over every stone in search of an answer. Once I know anything new about this excitement, I'll update all. Until then, I'll take any and all prayers for a Christ-like attitude in times of frustration.