3 Weeks in the Hospital
My wife Christian is 36 years old. She works out at least 4 days a week. She eats super healthy, and is in excellent shape. This is her Cancer Story.
She began having severe abdominal pain on Wednesday March 17, 2021 while she was at work.
It was so bad, I had to go pick her up, as she could not drive. This unlike her, as she is very tough and handles pain unlike anyone I have ever seen.
I brought her home, and she rested on the couch, still in pain. She began to run a fever. We both decided to give it the evening to see if it would go away.
The next morning, she was still having pain, and her fever had went up to 104. We went to the ER.
Upon arriving at the ER, they did multiple tests and exams, and ended up admitting her later that day.
The team did some tests and concluded that she had some sort of infection, but did not know what it was, or where it came from. They spent the majority of the next 3 weeks trying to figure that out.
She was put on several different antibiotics given by IV for the first 2 weeks. They would change them to see what worked and what didn't to hopefully narrow down what the infection actually was. After 2.5 weeks, they saw some improvement, with 2 of the antibiotics, so they switched her to those as pills.
These 3 weeks were very rough on her. They performed multiple tests, placed several drains to remove fluid that was building in her abdomen, did several scopes, CT Scans, and cultures. The team of doctors and nurses grew every day, and they were all pretty stumped. There was one large mass, and several small masses in her liver that they were attributing to the infection as "abscesses of infection".
One of the last things they did, was a colonscopy. Upon doing it, they found a mass in the Sigmoid section of her Colon. The mass was causing a stricture.
Pieces of the puzzle began to come together now, as the stricture (blockage) was causing some backing up, which led to a micro perforation in her bowel wall somewhere. This perforation is what gave her the massive infection that put her in the hospital.
The stricture causing mass, was so large, that during the colonscopy, they could not get past it with a regular scope, or a pediatric scope. While they were in there, they took biopsies of the mass and sent them to pathology. We were told it would take roughly a day to get the results.
The next day, we were told that the mass in the colon was malignant.
At that point, they started to withdraw their theory that the masses in the liver were "abscesses of infection" related to the major infection, and that they "needed to get a biopsy of one of the masses to determine if it is related or not". They got that biopsy on Thursday April 8, 2021 and said it would take several days for the results on that one.
She was feeling better at this point, as the infection was finally under control, so it was time to be discharged. She was sent home on Friday April 9, 2021, exactly 3 weeks and a day from being admitted.
Those 3 weeks were very rough on her. It seemed every 3 days there was some sort of test, scope, or scan that required her to be NPO (no food or drink) for 12-16 hours ahead of time. She lost over 20lbs in those 3 weeks.
We waited at home for the biopsy results from one of the masses in the liver.
