Double whammy

I went to the ambulatory surgery center this morning to have my port implanted. Everything went well, except that I did not get my favorite anesthesiologist that I had requested. The one I did get let his nurse put in the IV line, and he wasn't very good. It took him two lidocaine injections and two digging expeditions (all as I'm already strapped onto the OR table and getting jostled around by the other nurses who are trying to ready me for surgery. Well, he got it in eventually. 

After the surgery, I felt pretty good. We were home by 11:30 and I ate heartily (no nausea this time -- yay!) and then rested in bed reading a good book. An hour or two later, however, I suddenly started to get itchy. And then I got itchier -- and then itchier yet! When I peeked down onto my skin, I suddenly realized that my entire trunk had turned a bright, vivid red!!!

Figuring that this may not be a good thing (can you imagine -- that must have been my lucid moment for the day...), I asked my mom to verify that my eyes weren't playing tricks on me. However, my eyes were as good (or bad) as they always are, since my mother agreed that I was pretty much glowing red. So I called Dr. R's office to find out what I should do. His secretary had to page him, as he was still in surgery at the center, but when he heard he told me to go to the emergency room right away. Within two hours, we thus returned to the hospital... my very first trip to the ER as a patient! Seems I just cannot get enough of that place these days...

Once I again I was helped promptly, even though the place was terribly overcrowded with tons of beds sitting in the hallways. Since they suspected something contagious, they made me wear a mask and put me in an isolation room! Turns out, however, that I must be allergic to at least one of the many meds they gave me during surgery earlier that morning. What exactly I am allergic to nobody could say. One suspect was the antibiotic vancomycin, which can cause something called "red neck syndrome" or "red man syndrome" if infused too fast. But for that, my rash appeared too late. Another suspect is the contrast dye they used to confirm the proper placement of my mediport. Yet I'm afraid that we may never know the culprit for sure, as they simply gave me too much stuff today.

In any case, they pumped me full of benadryl, predisone, and also gave me some real pain meds for good measure (yay -- since Dr. R does not 'believe' in anything tougher than Tylenol). Then I needed to wait it out to see whether the treatment worked. Luckily it did, which meant that we could go home approximately three hours later. Thus ended my first trip as a patient to the emergency room.

When I was in the recovery room after my surgery, all of a sudden I thought I might be hallucinating, as my plastic surgeon Dr. K walked in. I wished him a good morning, and he turned around and looked at me with utter surprise. Fresh off a plane from Europe the day before, he was really there to perform a surgery on someone else. When he saw me, however, he decided to give his handiwork a quick checkup, particularly since I had felt a corner of the tissue implant poking me in rather odd and disconcerting ways. Sure enough, he found a stitch he had neglected to take out properly, and he also realized that what I had already shown him two weeks ago on the day he flew to Europe, was really something that required revision surgery as I had feared. Thus he insisted on calling my oncologist about postponing the chemo.

As a consequence, my plans have changed a bit now. On Friday, Dr. K will "revise" my tissue expander (almost sounds like a part of a "writing intensive" college course, no?). My chemo will therefore have to be postponed for an entire week to give both of the surgery scars sufficient time to heal before my body gets bombarded with cell poisons. Unfortunately, this also means that my mom will not get to be here for the first round of chemo. Bummer! But DH has promised to be by my side, which I very much like. Makes stuff like that much easier to bear. He also rushed from work to the ER today when I told him where I was headed. I love it when he does that. Shows what a good guy he is!!!

I do not yet have exact dates and times for everything, as I spent the remaining business hours of the day at the ER, where cell phones are a no-no, particularly when you spend most of your time in the hallway, as I ended up doing once they realized I wasn't infectious. Thus I will have to make a bunch of phone calls tomorrow to figure out what will be moved to when.

On the up side, I collected SIX wristbands for my 'trophy' collection today! Things I am particularly grateful for today include that this was my very first patient trip to the ER; that I now know exactly where to go should I ever need the ER again (which, I have a feeling, will come in handy given my problems with allergic reactions); that DH was by my side both for the surgery and the ER trip.