Back home again (01/11/19)

It was inevitable that I would pick up an infection at some point during chemo. Everybody does. Luckily - and largely due to Sue and the digital ear thermometer - we caught this one early and seem to have dealt with it before it became a major problem. Several lessons to be learned from that!

The chest X-ray for "suspected left basal pneumonia"showed "some linear atelectasis at the left base with blunting of her costophrenic angle in keeping with the suspected pneumonia." Translated, that means some collapsed alveoli (air sacs) at the bottom of the lung - but not fluid-filled, which would be worse. The costophrenic angle is where the ribs meet the diaphragm, and 'blunting' suggests an accumulation of fluid in the membranes surrounding the lung. With a bit of luck, both of those should be back to normal by now.
The blood cultures showed nothing at all after more than 48 hours, so whatever infection there was never really got going before we hit it with the IV antibiotics.

I now have a 5-day course of yet another antibiotic (oral this time) before going back to the usual two for the rest of the chemo. Dr.Ch says to take this week as the "week off" for this cycle - so we do the next Velcade injection and two days of dex next Wednesday, which puts subsequent cycles back on the original schedule. All I have to do is make sure I don't get another infection...

Anyway, the people at Springfield were all wonderful. Excellent care, good food (if perhaps rather too much of it considering the lack of exercise) and as pleasant an environment as you could reasonably hope for. 

Might be worth adding that the X-ray report also mentioned "myelomatous expansion of the right third rib". We know about that of course - it's the likely explanation of what I thought was shoulder-blade pain some time ago - but this suggests that the steroids haven't had much effect on it. I shan't be surprised if we end up doing some radiotherapy on it at some stage.