Night Sweats

Last night was fun. My fever spiked to 100.6, so right before I went to bed the medical folk decided they needed some blood cultures. These are really neat but a bit annoying on my end. Basically, the vial is filled with some crazy liquid, and my blood is added to it... but my blood already has a brilliant concoction of IV antibiotics. If the antibiotics aren't working, then my blood should blossom like a spring garden on a warm day, with the sun's golden face shining lovingly on her children.

I'm not really hoping that's the case.

What we need is a sad grey lifeless nothing to show up inside that vial. The annoying thing is that if I get a fever, it points to infection. And if I could have an infection, they want cultures. And if they want cultures they want two samples, one from each arm. *sigh* That on top of normal daily labs and I'm starting to look like a heroin addict.

But back to my title. Night Sweats.

Fell asleep shortly after 10pm. Woke up at 2am so they could check my vitals (Blood pressure, pulse, temperature). My bed was pretty soaked. They changed my sheets and I changed my shirt, and everything was just peachy. Until I woke up at 0530 so they could draw my daily labs. Soaked again! New sheets, new shirt, good to go!

Finally woke up again to one of the resident MDs saying hello and doing her rounds. Here's the fun part of the morning. I stood up so she could check my wound from the lymph node biopsy, and a few seconds later the room was spinning and I was ready to puke. Fortunately I hadn't eaten for a while, so after a few dry heaves I was back on my bed a bit shaken up but otherwise ok. My nurse came in to check vitals and it seemed ok, but she wanted to check them again after I stood up.

Blood pressure dropped from a solid 120/60ish while sitting to 87/45ish while standing.

Welp. That'll do it.

Now I've got some antibiotics and some extra fluids pumping into me and all is well in the world again.

I also got an ultrasound of the area around the wound earlier to check for fluid pockets but it just looks like regular inflammation.

Oh! One more thing.

I had a kick ass-dream last night. I was trying to catch a special kind of mouse. You had to turn off the lights and it would  venture out, but it wouldn't see you because the lights are off. You have to slowly pour dirt on top of it to sedate it momentarily, and then grab it and throw it into a bucket. After taking a blood sample, we give them vicodin and release them back into the wild. This was supposed to help diabetes research.

Weird, huh?

That's all for now.