What a way to celebrate being half done...

I think my body has a very strange sense of humor. Perhaps as a way of 'celebrating' that I'm half-way done with chemo, I started developing a fever last night. Initially, I thought it was just the heat of the day, but DH noticed that I was burning up when he came home last night. So I went and took my temperature, which had indeed started to climb up. A few hours later, I had reached the critical level at which I'm supposed to call the doctor: 100.5 F. I actually did a bit 'better' yet, as I topped out at 101.1 F. So we called the on-call oncologist, who promptly told us to come to the emergency room. 

So this was my celebration: I spent the night in a noisy and overcrowded ER, trying to catch a few winks between the annoying beeps of the various malfunctioning infusion pumps and such. They want to keep me for 24 hours of observation, the first 9 of which I have spent in the ER already. At 9 a.m. this morning, I finally got a room upstairs. Poor DH spent almost the entire night on an uncomfortable little plastic chair in my ER bay, until I sent him around 5 a.m. What a night!

All they really ended up doing was give me plenty of IV liquids (which led to some near-mishaps when they nurse didn't come for over an hour when I called her so she could untether me to go to the little girls' room...), and some IV antibiotics just in case. Interestingly, I'm not at all neutropenic, but I actually have plenty of white blood cells, including a bunch of immature ones called "bands" that are provoked by the Neulasta. So I'm not really sure that I even have an infection in the first place. I'm confused, I must say, as in the ER they said this might be a sign of infection that warranted a 24 hour observation period. 

In any case, a few minutes DH came to visit (after catching some much-deserved shut-eye at home, and taking out the poor doggie for a walk), and brought me my computer. I am thus back in the online world, writing this from my hospital bed. 

Still, I wonder if and when they'll let me go home. I'm getting a bit tired of this, and I can certainly imagine many far better ways of celebrating that I'm half-way done with chemo!!!

Update: 

Well, it looks like they won't let me go home tonight. Bummer. The doc is being extra careful and wants me to hang around for some more bloodletting and potential fever watching. So far, luckily nothing has materialized. Hopefully it will stay that way, and they will let me go tomorrow.