Never a dull moment

Once again it has been far too long since my last post. And once again, this in no way indicates a boring and tranquil life. In fact, recent months have been an absolute whirlwind of stressful events!
 
Stressor #1: A few months ago Katherine’s mother was injured in a bad fall. Ever since, she’s been back and forth between the hospital and rehab while dealing with numerous medical issues. This alone would be stressful, but she also owns a cat, and Katherine was taking care of him. When it became clear that her mother would not be returning home any time soon, we finally decided to bring Winston to our home. This would have been fine, as we both love cats, except for the fact that we already have a cat who does not play well with others. Peaches’s large-and-in-charge attitude combined with Winston’s anxiety and spazziness was pretty much the disaster we expected. Cramming two fighting cats and two humans into a small one bedroom condo wasn’t fun for anyone involved.
 
Stressor #2 is actually good news, but still stressful. We moved! Things came together for us to buy a larger two bedroom condo in the same building, and we pretty quickly found a unit that we loved. There’s only one issue: it’s on the 6^th floor, which is great for the view, and not so great for Shabbos when I don’t use electronics – including elevators. A few years ago living on the 6^th floor would have been absolutely out of the question, but I soon realized that I actually CAN manage the stairs now. My lungs are fine, I’m just out of shape! So we took the plunge, which of course involved all the stress of packing and renovating and buying things and getting rid of other things and general chaos, plus freaking out the aforementioned angry cats by bringing them to a new environment. But we did it, and we love our new place! The extra bedroom not only has space for my office area and a guest bed, but also my easel and a drafting table, so I finally have studio space for the first time in AGES! Now I just need to actually use it!
 
Stressor #3 inserted itself right as we were in the middle of moving. Several months ago I suddenly developed lumps at both ends of my transplant incision. Turns out I have sutures there, which can sometimes become irritated. My doctor said they were fine as long as they didn’t become infected. Occasionally they would become swollen and painful for up to a week, but I mostly learned to live with them – until October, right in the midst of moving, when one of them not only became swollen and painful, but also turned red. My transplant surgeon decided that I needed surgery to clear out the infected area, however by the time I saw him the swelling and redness had faded so he couldn’t determine exactly what needed to be removed. He told me to come back the next time it flared, which actually worked out well as we could finish moving in peace instead of juggling moving around surgery recovery.
 
So that’s the last few months of chaos. Now let’s talk about the last two weeks!
 
Last week one lump became red and irritated again, so we rushed to see my surgeon and scheduled surgery for December 30^th. But this time instead of briefly flaring and then fading, the lump continued getting worse, until I needed painkillers to manage it. It then developed a blister, and my doctor decided right before Shabbos that I had to go to the hospital. He agreed that I could at least have Shabbos dinner and spend the night at home before going to the ER Saturday morning. During the night the blister ended up popping and draining, which may have been for the best, as it started looking better afterwards and was far less painful. Instead of being put on IV antibiotics, I only ended up being hospitalized for 1 night before they sent me home on Sunday.
 
Great, right? Crisis kind of averted! Not quite. You see, right before being hospitalized I started losing my voice, which got progressively worse the following days. It peaked on Sunday and then started getting better, but I then developed sinus pain, a dry scratchy cough, and most worryingly a low grade fever. I thought maybe I had picked up a cold and would be able to weather it, but Tuesday night my fever spiked to 101.5, which guaranteed yet another trip to the ER. And since I didn’t have enough problems, I also noticed a 3^rd painful lump in one breast, not far from one of the lumps on my transplant incision. So I’ve been back in the hospital since Wednesday and they aren’t rushing to send me home. The goals now are to figure out what exactly is going on with these lumps and determine what specific infection is causing them so we can target it with the right IV antibiotics, and to decide whether I need more extensive and invasive surgery than we previously thought. We still haven’t come up with a treatment plan, which really sucks as we head into a holiday weekend where a lot of testing and procedures will be less readily available. I honestly have no clue what the short or long term plans are at this point, and I don’t think my doctors do either!
 
So that’s the latest in Eliana’s Medical Misadventures. Let’s all hope things only get calmer from here!