Fear

Anthony has had health problems lately with his lymph nodes and throat. He had strep and then it would just flare up randomly and he was on 4 different antibiotics in the last 7 weeks or so. Early Monday morning around 2am on September 12th he woke up and was spiking 106 fever and had chills so bad he was shaking. He woke up that morning and said he was going to run to the doctor.

I went to work and got a call around 11am from him saying "don't panic but I am at the ER at Baylor because they think I have meningitis".

Of course I freaked out and left my office to go up there. His fever was up and down and all over the place. They took 4 giant bottles of blood that looked like mini wine bottles plus 3 regular vials. They were hesitant to do a spinal tap because of the risks. However after an X-Ray and blood tests his white cell count was still spiked and they couldn't isolate why so they went ahead and did the spinal tap. That was intense to watch. It was just like my epidural but instead of giving me relief from the pain they removed 4 vials of spinal fluid from him for testing.

A few hours later they came back and said that it wasn't meningitis but they didn't know what it was so they recommended admitting him into the hospital. He was hesitant but I told him he needs to figure out what is going on.

They sent him in and did 6 MRI's that night. He was in the tube for over 2 hours which I can't even imagine. Tuesday morning they came really early and took him for 2 CT scans and then by 10am they had the heart sonogram guy in his room taking images of his heart. He also had another chest X-Ray. They were also taking blood from two different sites every 3 hours besides his IV. He is also still running low grade to very high fevers from 94.9-106.

The infectious disease doctor was on the case and sat with him for a long time discussing everywhere he's been in the last ten years. He told him of his 5 different bouts with pneumonia and his skin rashes. At this point the doctor thinks it's River Valley Fever related to a fungus spore you pick up in the desert from him growing up in El Paso. It can sit dormant for years and will flare up. He ordered a bronchioscopy on Wednesday and they put him under and put a camera and tube down his nose to his lungs to scrape out some of the mass to test.

The bacteria cultures they had been doing all week came back negative but they could tell there was something going on still. He didn't feel like they got enough of a sample from the lung because they couldn't get down to the mass far enough. The results take 6 weeks to come back so now we wait.

He finally was released on Saturday after two days of IV antibiotics. He was getting very antsy to get home to Eve and I. He's weak from laying in bed for so long and being on so many medications.

Bottom line is he has a very rare pneumonia (which just means a patch in your lung) in his right ventricle. We won't know what it is for possibly 6 weeks. If they don't get what they need they will have to open his chest and go in to remove it surgically. We go back in two weeks for more CT scans.

I am scared. He's 31 years old. I have always had this giant fear of losing him. His dad died at 41 to malignant melanoma. We have always been super diligent with the dermatologist and his skin but never thought about this. We will deal with it but I hope they figure it out soon. He's my whole world and I can't imagine him being severly ill.