Unfortunately I am writing this note at the hospital. My mom had chemo last Wednesday and Jesse and I got in that night. On Thursday we went to several doctors appointments and she was doing ok. Then Friday, chemo symptoms started kicking in and she had a fair amount of nausea in the morning. By the late morning she woke up from a nap and had a slight fever of 100.3. For a healthy person, this is not a big deal. But when you are going through chemo, a fever is a bad sign. So we called the oncology nurse who told us to head over to the ER. Long story short, they hooked her up to some fluids and did some tests. A chest x-ray showed that she may have some pneumonia, with the fluid concentrated around the mass in her left lung so they admitted her. We saw a pulmonologist who wasn’t convinced it was pneumonia. He believes, based off a cat scan she just had, that the tumor has grown and is compressing some of the air sacs – atelectasis is the term he used. We will talk with the pulmonologist, the internist, and possibly an infectious disease doctor to confirm if she actually has an infection or if the shadows on the xray are just a result of the tumor.

Meanwhile, they are treating it as if she has an infection. Apparently when you have atelectasis it does happen that bacteria is trapped in the sacs and can cause infection. She is on oxygen and is getting breathing treatments to help keep her oxygen levels up. They aren’t bad, just not great.

So we may be getting out tomorrow. We are hoping that is the case. As you can imagine, she is not thrilled with being in the hospital. But we are making the best of it and are trying to keep each others spirits up and keep active, as much as possible.

I’ll update everyone when we know more and hopefully when we go home.