Whew. As Gail reported, I had to go back into the hospital Tuesday afternoon due to a high fever and nausea; I just got home. Apparently a bacterial infection of some kind - Dr. A, my oncologist, said that this sort of thing can happen due to my depressed immune system. He didn't think that it had anything to do with my going out this past weekend, it could have been bacteria from my own body run amok.
Whatever it was, it wiped me out. My fever spiked at 103 on Tuesday night, but broke early Wednesday morning. All along, I was wracked with such nausea that I couldn't look at - or even smell - food. So I didn't eat a morsel for almost two days, and between that and the many bags of I.V. antibiotics they dripped into me, I just felt weak and overmedicated. (The only bright spots were the extremely powerful pain injections, which were downright euphoric. But eventually I was shying away from them for fear of addiction.)
Early this morning I began to manage to keep a few bites down, and feel a little better. My last blood test showed my various counts back to acceptable levels, so I have been released in time to enjoy the weekend. I'll still be relying on Gail a lot around the house, but I'm glad to be out of the hospital. They do a fine job of treating the sick, but the food was awful - and you can't get more than an hour's sleep before someone comes in, at any hour, to check whether your feet are swollen or whether you've peed or some such matter of import.
