2nd Discharge (home again)

Well I don’t know what to say but I am once again back home. This second hospital stay ended up being just about as short as the first. After another close call,  we were able to turn things around quickly - just 3 days and 2 nights, and some very heavy antibiotics and medication to get me discharged. From what we can gather I have haemophilus influenza and a bit of a bug in my spinal fluid. The good news is that these things can and have been reacting very positively to the drugs. As Karen stated all this is not a big issue for a “normal person” but without a spleen and no vaccinations these bugs were able to get a good hold on me.  So what’s next? Not much. We have been sent home and given a new antibiotic with orders to rest and recover. With a few follow up appointments and a final review with Dr. S a week from Friday. Personally I am feeling alot better and things should improve over the next few days, in fact I hope to return to work Monday. It looks like we finally have a good handle on things and that’s where we stand. I will give an update next week as we get results from the follow up tests and appointments.

Finally I want to say THANK YOU all for your support. As I have said before it really does help to know that you have people rooting for you.

Tony

2nd stay, day 2 - "Unknown"

Hello everybody - This is Karen - Tony's fine, I'm just taking a turn. :)

Ok, so quick review of why the 2nd stay.  Got released Friday evening.  Felt fine.  Woke up Saturday AM with a neck ache.  We figured - Slept funny, got a sore neck.  Took Tylenol and put on some muscle cream through out the day.  Sunday AM - same neck ache, head hurts, had to get up to pee every hour.
Somethings not right here.
We called the Doctor - reviewed with him and he said, let's get you back into the hospital, somethings going on.
So yesterday around 10 AM we were readmitted.  General feeling is oral antibiotics were not strong enough to fight this infection.  BTW - Tony has Haemophilus Influenza.  For those of you that do not know, most of the time when we think we have the "flu" we actually have some other "bug" we do not have the flu. The actual FLU is deadly and that is why there is so much worry over H1N1 and other influenza.  The Spanish Influenza in 1918 killed 50 million worldwide.  (sorry, History teacher sidebar!)
As things stand now, Monday 3:00 PM - Tony has a small amount of "cells" in this spinal fluid (they did a lumbar puncture {spinal tap} yesterday evening)- not really enough to worry over at this point.  They are culturing that and running cultures on his blood work too.  Did an EKG and took him off of 2 of the 3 antibiotics he was on yesterday.  He is still on an antivirul medicine.
Honestly, he is doing well over all.  Not a lot of pain or discomfort, in good spirits with good energy levels, so don;t worry.  We just need to understand what is going on inside of him.
Again, from last week's stay, he has no spleen and has had no immunizations, so he is in a vulnerable place when it comes to infections and disease.  That's how the Haemophilus Influenza snuck in.  
Now,on a strange note, the docs are talking about stopping his meds and letting him go tomorrow AM.  We are a little thrown by that, but this is all just so weird for us.  Tony has an appointment to see his regular transplant doc tomorrow at 9:30, and we will see if that is where they direct us.
So, that's the info we have for now.