Home again

Monday I went in the hospital for my usual tune-up. Things were fairly normal, yet not.

I went straight into the ICU for my "desensitization" to the one IV med. Have I ever told you how much I hate this? My mind's a bit fuzzy right now thanks to all the Benedryl, maybe I've written about it before, but yeah. I very much dislike having to go through this process. This hospital requires I do this in the ICU for close monitoring, which I understand, but that means I am hooked up with the telemetry wires, a blood pressure cuff, and oxygen SATs at all times. Plus sometimes I'm hooked up to an IV pole.

So... getting up out of bed—like, to use the bathroom, or just to get up and move, or get something out of my backpack—requires assistance. Even rolling over while trying to sleep is a chore, and I barely got two hours' sleep that night. I was super cranky on Tuesday. (Oh and in the ICU, there pretty much is no bathroom, it's just a toilet in the corner like you're in jail. I've gotten over the initial shock of this, because the truth is that most people who are in the ICU cannot walk and will not use it anyways. I'm a rare case, and there for a very specific and rare reason, and my nurses almost always comment on their surprise on how I just walk myself right into my room; it's just not what they're used to.)

Long story short, things didn't go quite as smoothly this time. I think I was in a bit of denial, but I have to call it like it is: I was having a reaction to the med I'm allergic to (the one we did the desensitization with.) I guess the desensitization didn't work as well this time? I don't know.

So from Tuesday morning until Thursday, I was dealing with varying waves of fever, chills, rash, and itchiness. We finally upped my Benedryl on Thursday and that helped immensely, and I haven't had issues since. They felt okay to send me home yesterday, and I felt comfortable to come home as well.

Mostly I wanted to come home, in part because of the obvious reasons you'd think of like sleeping in my own bed and not being bothered by beeping IVs. But also because the hospital no longer has a treadmill for me to walk on while I'm there.

We CFers used to have a nice little place to exercise while we were stuck in the hospital. It had an elliptical and a treadmill, and a few weights and things I don't know if anyone ever used. There have been more changes to this little 'exercise room' than I can count, and apparently in the most recent moving of the room, the treadmill broke. This was possibly the most ancient treadmill you could imagine, I'd never seen another one like it. I would say it was probably from the 80s, so I guess I shouldn't be surprised, but it still sucks. I can walk the halls all day long but it's not going to get me a decent cardio workout like I could get on the treadmill. Exercise is an important part of the CF regimen, and especially in trying to gain back lung function from a tune-up, so it's very disappointing to me that they don't have this anymore. The elliptical is too big for my small stature, and too difficult.

All that to say: I wanted to get home quickly so I could get MOVING again.

And here I am, sitting on the couch. I'm taking 50 mg of Benedryl three times a day, before each med dose, so I'm a bit groggy and I hope this all makes sense. The plan is the usual: two weeks of this and hopefully I can then stop my meds.

I'm still finagling with the timing of my IV meds, so I had to get up at 3:30 am this morning to give myself a dose. But, I actually had something to watch this morning with the royal wedding and all. I dozed off a little here and there as guests arrived and woke up with a startle as the trumpets blared (truly blared) to announce the arrival of the bride. I promptly fell back asleep around 9am after everything was over, and Jarrod was awesome and took care of a lot of small chores this morning and made me breakfast. It's good to be home.