2011-12-27: Tue CyberKnife treatment 3 of 3 (fail)

This day didn't start well, end well, or get prolonged into the next day well. Though I suppose it finished overall well. 

Note: Thanks very much to all friends, parents and relatives that helped out during these troubled 3 days.

Tuesday, canceled CyberKnife because of two reasons:

• (1) Swelling feet from last Thursday's hydration treatment, this indicated that my liver or kidney was not working or something else bad happened. 
• (2) I was spitting up something dark that could have been bile or blood as of 2 AM that morning. The CyberKnife people convinced to come in to the hospital to be checked out.

What they found out was that I had a heart rate of 143 about 25 to 40 beats higher then they thought was safe.  

I also think that it was during the course of Tues's investigation that it was discovered that I was spitting up blood, but that it was from cutting what may have been a stomach ulcer around 2 am with a sharp rice cracker. The spit up sample had a sample of blood mixed with stomach acid (partially digested).

Wednesday, I received a phone call early in the morning from one of the J.H. doctors. They had booked me for:

• an ultrasound of my legs and 
• a CT scan of my chest. 
• Both were to look for blood clots that may have caused the foot bloating.

Results:

• No clots anywhere to be found. 
• + again, a high heart rate (134 this time)
• + the CT scan showed fluid building up around my heart and around my right lung.

 These results were enough to convince Kaye and I to commit me to the hospital for the night.

Wednesday night - Thursday morning:
Slept and ate at the hospital.

• "Slept" in a quad room with a bunch of very acute care patients requiring help to almost everything including bathing and peeing. So "Sleep" was a relative term.
• Once again (last time my July2010 surgery), since hospital beds are plastic, their pillows are plastic I had a tendency to sweat in them, then have the sweat pool against the plastic resulting in awesome air-conditioning. Which sucks when you're cold. So had to my change clothing a lot.
• Had my 3rd seizure ever while there. Same symptoms as before, right hand starts shaking a little then coming up without control (missing the nurse's button which I was aiming for!) until I electrocute (seize) and black out. Then I wake up and notice an IV injection sight (rip it out bloodily) see a nurse with a flash light whom I recognized doing his nightly hourly rounds and asked him "why am I in the hospital?". I then slowly started to recall everything that lead up to that point and have to explain my seizures to the nurse.
• Received a few blood tests during the day
• Also did a angio cardio gram of my heart. My heart looks normal (Yay!)

Most importantly, the last thing we did at the hospital was to "tap" my back and drain the fluid from beside my lung and heart.

I had Kaye take a photo of it: We withdrew almost a whole litter (think bag of milk!) (actually 750ml) out of my chest. This makes a huge difference in my ability to breath, cough, speak, etc. I went from collapsed lung to expanded lung fast enough that it was more difficult to do all of the above at first before they started to repair themselves.

So that's about it. I'll let Kaye expand on anything I may have missed. I have to admit that "sleeping" was not a highlight of my stay, so I'm quite tired as I write this to answer everyone's questions.

-- Shane