Fever strikes

So an update over the eventful last couple of days.

Friday 10th January – neutrophil count 0.18Spent all day Friday in my room as expected nothing to report on that day.

Saturday 11th January – neutrophil count 0.04Woke up feeling fine; had a shower, breakfast etc and then wham! All of a sudden I was frozen, shivering uncontrollably, and teeth chattering. The nurse tried to take my pulse along with other obs but because I was shivering so much the clip wouldn’t stay on my finger! My temp at that point was 37.6 so obviously going to start to rise. The shaking and shivering lasted about 40 mins; my temp then rose to 39 degrees but I couldn’t have paracetamol until they had done blood cultures from my line and my arm for infection checks. I eventually stopped shivering but was burning up and not feeling good at all. Fever peaked at 40.2 and they were struggling to get it down but finally a combination of paracetamol drip and fast flush fluids eventually brought it down. Inevitably, some of my MS symptoms flared up as well and for a while I couldn’t even walk to the toilet.

Sunday 12th January – neutrophil count 0.05I was slightly better I seemed to be able to go longer in between paracetamol doses, no more shivering and I had more energy and was able to eat something. What I found funny was that there is a medical name for the shivering and shaking – rigor. So the nurse said to me, ‘you were rigoring’! I said that sounds like a term used for people that are coming off drugs – I probably looked like someone coming off drugs to be honest.

Monday 13th January – neutrophil count 0.94Received confirmation that an infection has grown in the blood samples that came out of the line. The infection is called burkholderia and it’s quite rare. Don’t know how I got it. After some deliberation they decided the line had to be removed. I was a bit anxious about this happening but it wasn’t as bad as I expected. What was interesting was that they had to press on a vein in my neck to stop it bleeding after the line came out. This was in the same area that I experienced painful cramping spasms when I was at the height of my fever so it was obviously the infection from the line that caused those neck cramps.

Neutrophils have started to rise today to 0.94. So 48 hours of anti-biotics and then hopefully my blood counts will be high enough to go home on Thursday and re book another date to start it all again.