Last Saturday three hometown friends of ours had intended to come see us, but they canceled because two of them were sick. That turned out to be for the best, because I spent a big chunk of my Saturday at the MDACC emergency room. While brushing my teeth after breakfast that morning, I noticed that my right eyelid was red and puffy. We thought maybe I had pinkeye or some such, so I called the outpatient clinic I go to three times a week to ask their advice. I expected them to take a look at me and prescribe antibiotic eyedrops and send me home. No such luck. They referred me to the emergency room. We've been told repeatedly by the transplant folks to go immediately to the ER for things like temperature over 100.5, diarrhea, vomiting, and so on. Puffy eyelids was never on the list. But the thing is, they take all infections very seriously in transplant patients, and they want to blast the infection with everything they've got so it doesn't get out of hand. We're all for that. So we went in at 10 in the morning and got out at 4 that afternoon. They gave me an antibiotic IV drip and a bottle of eyedrops. We're continuing the IV drip at home. This is in addition to the other antibiotic drip I'm on as well as the saline/magnesium drip we've been doing all along. The saline is once a day (on non-clinic days only) for two hours, the cefepime is three times a day for a half hour each infusion, and the vancomycin is twice a day for two hours each infusion. Scheduling is sometimes a challenge.
The Monday and Wednesday (today) clinic visits went uneventfully. My skin still seems to be improving and there's still no final word on whether last week's preliminary biopsy diagnosis of graft versus host disease was correct. Maybe tomorrow.
And the puffy eyelid thing seems to be under control.