Another sleepless night

First, I would like apologize to the nurses in my family whom I apparently scared to death with my last blog entry. Apparently what I consider to be a serious side effect is not what the medical community considers as such :)

Last night I made the mistake of eating a salad. I thought it was quite good, but it turned out to give me something close to food poisoning. Luckily, Ali didn't eat any of it...and who can blame her, it's poison after all! I spent another night without any sleep in pain trying to fight off the symptoms. At about 0500 this morning I went to the ER, where they gave me a full workup. I am working on clearing up the stomach problems as I write this. It turns out to be a good (and bad) thing that I went to the ER. While there I found out that my white blood cell count is extremely low, and I am currently neutrapenic. This means that I am risk of serious infection because my body is unable to defend itself. While it is good to know this information, laying in a hospital bed being exposed to those same organisms I was trying to avoid was not a good thing. I got out of the hospital as soon as they would let me, and am now closely monitoring my temperature for a fever. If I get a fever above 100.5F then I need to go back to the hospital and be given IV antibiotics, perhaps being admitted as well. This is something I am vehemently avoiding with every ounce of strength I have left (not much left though).

Looks like no work this week. In fact, I will stop trying to predict when I can get back to work, since I keep hitting all of these obstacles. I look forward to feeling and being normal again.