Tales from the ER

Why is it that ER visits inevitably fall on the weekends when things are incredibly busy?  Last night, after our visit to the ENT doc who weighed Ernie but didn't bother to take his temperature, Ernie spiked a fever of 102.  The directions on the narcotic patch warn you to call your doctor immediately if this happens.  The on call doc at Hopkins was not worried about the patch but was worried about a possible infection.  Evidently there can be open wounds in the throat when you have mucositus and this can lead to a blood infection.  Also, if your white blood count falls too low you can get something called neutropenia.  Neither of these conditions are good news for cancer patients so she directed us to the ER.

After running blood counts, analyzing urine, doing a swab to check for the flu and a chest xray for pneumonia, they did not find anything out of line.  His white blood counts are far below normal but in the expected range for cancer patients.  However, the blood cultures to test for blood infection take a few days so they decided to put him on an antibiotic to be safe. 

Since Ernie can't swallow pills right now due to the swelling in his throat, they gave him the antibiotics intravenously.  They said this would take about an hour.  After half an hour, a nurse came in with the discharge papers and said we could go.  She unhooked the monitor and removed his IV.  No sooner had she finished, she realized that there was still half a bag of antibiotics remaining!  Poor Ernie.  The nurse had to stick him again---his third of the night--and put in a new IV so he could get the full dose of antibiotics. 

The doctor made up for the follies of the nursing staff.  He was incredibly competent.  He assured Ernie that even though his mouth and tongue are extremely painful, he saw lots of signs of healing.  He predicted one to two more weeks and then significant relief from the pain in his mouth.  He also told us that the throat is the last area to heal and not to be alarmed if it took longer to improve.  His bedside manner totally made up for our experience with the ENT on Friday.