Voices From The Ville

Megan started feeling bad on Tuesday March 21, just a few days after her last Remicade treatment she takes for her ulcerative colitis. However, since she had to work , she pushed herself for the next several days. By Friday, she felt so bad that she came home from work early. I took her to the immediate care center on Saturday morning. They diagnosed her with an upper respiratory infection, wrote her a prescription for antibiotics, and sent her home.

By Saturday night, Megan started feeling nauseous, and was not able to even keep her antibiotics down. We started giving her anti-nausea medicine, and did everything we could to try to help her keep her medicine down.

Monday, she was not feeling any better, so Becky called her GI doctor. They said he was on Spring break, but if she was still feeling nauseous to take her to the emergency room. Becky immediately left work, and took Megan to the emergency room. They hooked her up to an IV, and after several hours diagnosed her with an Urinary Tract Infection. They wrote her prescriptions for another antibiotic, nausea medicine, and sent her home!

April Fool’s Day was no joke, Megan still was not improving. I called her primary care physician’s office. They said the nurse practitioner could see her so, I took that appointment. She looked at the lab results from the ER, and was concerned because it showed sugar in the urine. She was concerned maybe the problem was diabetes. I explained that it was probably because all she had the night before the test was sweet tea. But the nurse insisted on doing a blood test to check her glucose level. At that point Megan started feeling dizzy and could barely stand up (usually I am the one that gets dizzy under these circumstances, but I kept my composure). They put her in a wheel chair and wheeled her back to the lab.

As I suspected, the lab work came back, and her glucose level was fine. However, the nurse did say it that the lab report was positive for mono. However, she wanted to send her back to the ER, since she was feeling dizzy.

They sent her by ambulance to the ER, and I met her down there. The ER doctor seemed skeptical that she had mono since she did not have a sore throat. However, he did check with the GI doctor’s on call. I think they thought it might possibly be a flare with her colitis, because they talked about putting her on steroids.

Once she was admitted to the hospital they started her on antibiotics through an IV. They also decided to do an ultra-sound since she did have some tenderness in the abdomen area. When the results of the ultra-scan came back they showed a thickening of the walls of the gall bladder. However, there were no definite gall stones. The doctor’s all indicated that they wanted to run an MRI, to make sure that was really the problem. They said sometimes the bile ducts to the liver can be damaged which can cause thickening of the gall bladder walls. Don’t even ask me to pronounce the medical term they used for that disease!

The results of the MRI came back, and there was not any damage to the liver bile ducts. However , they were still not convinced that the gall bladder was the problem, so they did not want to rush in to remove it. In the meantime they sent her blood work off to the lab, to see if she tested positive for any of the more common viruses. By then it was the weekend, and they might not get the results back until Monday. Dr. Boyce, her GI doctor would be back in town on Monday, and we were anxious to get his take on things.

Dr. Boyce stopped by the hospital on Monday evening. He had the results from the blood work that were sent off to the lab. Megan test positive for the Epstein-Barr Virus , more commonly known as the mono virus.

By Tuesday (April 7th), they removed her IV, and started transitioning her to solid foods. She was able to come home from the hospital this morning, after a week long stay. As the doctor mentioned, she is still not well, and it will take time to fully recover. However, we are glad she is home, and are thankful for the cards, visits, phone calls, and prayers.

The lady Cardinals basketball team overcame a twelve point half-time deficit to win over the Oklahoma Sooners last night. Tomorrow night they will play the unbeaten Huskies. I hate to see any team have a perfect record, so I hope the Cardinals can be the spoilers.

The Cardinals did spoil it for Courtney Paris of the Oklahoma Sooners. About a month ago Courtney promised that if her team did not win the National championship, she would pay back her scholarship. She said that without the National championship, she did not feel she deserved it. I guess she had better get out her checkbook!

“I do make good on the guarantee,” Paris said after the national semifinal game. “Not today, though. Obviously, I don’t have $64,000 waiting, but I do make good on it.”

I will be surprised if I ever read about her writing that $64,000 check. And I am sure the University is not going to hold her to that promise. However, I do think she earned her scholarship anyway, taking the team all the way to the Final Four. I wonder how much revenue the Final Four appearance generated for the school?

The Louisville Cardinals won’t be rolling through the motor city this year. However, the Louisville Lady Cards will be marching to the Arch for their first ever Final Four appearance. The Louisville women toppled the top seeded Maryland last night, and earned their spot in St. Louis. Go Lady Cards!