Back in Iowa

Jake brought me up to the hospital last night.  I have been sick for the last few days with a bad sinus infection that wasn't getting better, so here I am.  I had a bad cold for about 10 days at the beginning of September, and after Aunt Barb's death, there was a lot of stress.  The sinus thing popped up, and there ya go.  Sick, sick, sick.

I'm not feeling too well, as you can imagine.  I'm extremely tired and am still coughing quite a bit.  I've also been nauseous on and off since Friday night.  To add to everything else, I started that very special time of month, and the cramps are always enough to knock me down for 2 days without all the other stuff going on.  Being on the antibiotics means no ibuprofen, so Weeee!, even more fun.  I requested tylenol w/ codeine, so we'll see if my doc okays that.  The tylenol by itself does absolutely nothing for me.

Dr. Hornick had been out of town so I had another doc admit me.  Thankfully, Hornick was back this morning and I feel much more comfortable now.  He is THE best doctor.  I truly trust him with my life and that means a lot when you're in a position like the one I'm in.  He cares very deeply for every one of his patients and that is really obvious.  He knows his stuff, is incredibly humble, forceful when he needs to be, and has a great bedside manner...what else could a patient ask for?

So far I'm only on Tobramycin (Tob from here on in), which I'm on every time I'm here.  I think we must be waiting to get test results back or something because nothing else was prescribed, which is unusual.  I didn't get a lot of time to talk to Hornick when he came in this morning because I was getting CPT (Chest Physio Therapy) at the time.  I'm sure I'll be able to ask more questions tomorrow.  I'm not really worried about it though.

I guess for the time being I'm just resting, eating, and doing nebs.  Tomorrow will start all the fun stuff (completely sarcastic).  I'll get stuck for Tob levels tomorrow morning.  That checks the level of the drug in my blood 1, 2, and 3 hours after it is administered.  They do this after the 3rd dose the first time, and then I just get troughs once a week (or when Dr. Hornick gets a hunch :-P) after that.  The troughs are much nicer because I only have to get stuck once right before they infuse the drug.  They check that to protect my kidneys.  Too much drug and my kidneys can shut down, too little and I won't get the benefits.

I'll also, most likely, start exercise tomorrow (which I loathe).  I say most likely, because right now I don't feel up to it, but I may feel better after another nights sleep.  Also, depending on the second med chosen I may be nauseous by the time exercise time rolls around.  One of the drugs I'm still sensitive to is Meropenem.  Unfortunately, it makes things worse for the first few days...nausea, fever...fun stuff.  I'm hoping for the drug we did 2 admissions ago.  They'd never used it on me and I didn't have ANY side effects and I didn't have to get stuck to be on it.  Beautiful!  At the time they said they'd do every other visit would be Meropenem and every other one would be the new one (can't remember the name at the moment).  We'll see what Hornick's decision on that is.  I don't usually fight him on stuff.  I trust him enough to not fight unless I absolutely can't handle something.  That doesn't happen too often.

My dinner got here about 5 minutes ago, so I'm gonna quit for now.  Maybe I'll have more info to share tomorrow.