Discharged for less than 24 hours and back again

Hi Everyone,

I am blogging for Michele. She wants you to know what is happening. I'll work on a way for her to blog from her hospital room in the near future.

Well, she came home overnight last Wednesday and then went right back into the hospital on Thursday. We suspect that they pushed the discharge due to insurance limitations. But we had no problem readmitting her because her Lead Doctor, Cohen, was very concerned for her and made it all work out.

Her kidneys seem to have healed but there is concern that the medications she took to kill the infection have also damaged her GI tract. She gets the joy of an endoscopy/colonoscopy Tuesday morning to find out the extent of the damage.

Due to her infection, the Lupus has majorly flared up again (so much for the remission last month). If she is cleared of all infection, she will be taking a different chemotherapy drug called Rituxan. She is having a PICC line put in in Tuesday morning. A peripherally inserted central catheter (PICC or PIC line) is a form of intravenous access that can be used for a prolonged period of time (e.g. for long chemotherapy regimens, extended antibiotic therapy, or total parenteral nutrition). A PICC is inserted in a peripheral vein, such as the cephalic vein, basilic vein, or brachial vein and then advanced through increasingly larger veins, toward the heart until the tip rests in the distal superior vena cava or cavoatrial junction. Dr. Cohen believes that this medication will not have as dangerous side effects as the Cytoxin she previously took. For one thing, it doesn't have "toxin" in its name.

So, she needs your prayers, phone calls, and visits. She is very scared and home sick. I can't be with her every minute of every day but with the help of our friends and family, someone can be there to talk to her and make her feel better most of the time.

-Bill