Adventures in ER

Yesterday Jane started running a fever. We kept taking her temperature about every three hours. It kept slowly climbing.

One of the mantra’s our oncology department preaches is “call if your temperature reaches 100.5”, so when her temp climbed high enough we dutifully called the on-call doctor. You know how it goes, this always happens at night :). It was 8pm when we first called the on-call doctor.

The on-call doctor recommended we go to the ER and have her white blood cell counts checked. So off we trundled to the ER for the blood test expecting that her neutrophils were extremely low and she would need IV antibiotics.

Sure enough the automated test for neutrophils returned a count of 0.0. When the count comes back that low, it gets passed off to a human for a looksee. We have not heard back from the human yet. So they admitted Jane to the hospital for a day or two.

This is an expected side effect of chemo. The standard protocol is exactly what they are doing, IV antibiotics and then wait for the fever to go away and for neutrophil counts to head in the right direction and get above 500 or 1000.

We may throw the dice, but the LORD determines how they fall. Proverbs 16:33

God knows each cell, each neutrophil, each bacteria. He is totally trustworthy and good. We are so grateful to the doctors and nurses who have been so kind, caring and thoughtful. It is God’s grace to us.

In a more humorous vein, as we have sat here in the hospital, I have found being in a hospital is like being in a third world country*.

• There is a suitcase by the bed
• I think about germs more
• There is an unsettled feeling, like I don’t really belong here. This is definitely not home.
• They dress different here. Each person has their own unique costume, yet, they are all alike as well, like a uniform, but not.
• They must speak a different language even though it sounds the same, because they work hard at making sure I understand everything.
• I try hard at pronouncing their words, but have to be corrected often. They use a lot of Latin, which I thought was a dead language.
• It’s easy to get here, but getting out seems harder. There is paper work, and someone important has to approve of your leaving.
• They have different greeting customs. They are always putting something on their hands and rubbing them together vigorously while greeting you.
• Toilets are different here. They even have something that is like an indoor outhouse you use right in your room. Then they have someone come and measure it and take it somewhere. Propitiation to a toilet god?
• I find that I make furtive eye contact with others. I wonder what they are doing here.
• I get lost when I go to a different part of the country, like the café. I find I’m always referring to a map.
• There is a different sense of urgency here. We have to get accustom to “local” time.
• I feel out of control. We sit alone in a room waiting for some official to tell us what is going on.
• If you know somebody in this country there is a sense of relief, like you’re getting the “real” scoop.

*Full disclosure: I live in a first world country with all attendant perspectives and biases.