Me and my Three Pillows...I <3 Pillows in my brand new bed that moves my body for me at the touch of a button


WOW, whatever they did Friday night....I slept a solid 4 hours straight, which was GLORIOUS! Ok, so saturday comes...after 4 am I'm pretty much up every hour on the hour with my delusions waking me still, nausea, vomiting, and this darn headache/migraine.

Let me tell you...when you have a migraine....this is the worst thing to come over your TV

The Worst....

The sun comes up and Amy and Stacy come on over to find I'm OK...not great, but not on death's doorstep like the day before. I find out a little bit more about this hospital that I'm in...they have a Breast Cancer Treatment Center...HERE! WHOA!

And meet Dr. Prill- in charge of Said Breast Cancer Center and now Overseeing my Care




Finally, someone with some different answers....Still excruciating headaches, nausea and vomiting and she tries something called Levison...a medication for IBS....I could really care less what it's typically used for...I want my stomach to stay where it's supposed to at this point and get something in my mouth and keep it there, which was not the case for the peaches I tried this particular morning :( She also orders a CT scan of my head because of STage 4 breast cancer diagnosis, weird delusions and excruciating headache. She gets me into CT FAST! So fast Amy and Stacy were going to duck out, but didn't want to leave me to find any news on my own, so they stayed! I had to transfer beds twice...commence dry heaving and using 2 more hospital disposable puke buckets And here is a photo of my meals for the first 2 days really...via IV and other nasty stuff we won't get into....just between us girls...



It was no more than a half hour and I was back in my room and Dr. Prill went down to CT to get the result immediately. GREAT NEWS!!!! NO BRAIN METS!!! Best news I heard all week!!!! One less worry and I think all three of us girls cried we were so happy, I had Amy call my dad and tell him since I was getting tired again and nodding off.

Here are my two AWESOME Patient Care Techs, Brad was Day Time and Kayla was nighttime....think CNA's around these parts



I had to tell Brad today that there was no way in hell I was getting out of bed to get a shower today...it was hard enough to even sit up...Amy took the photo of this sign outside my door



And Bedrest it was for this girl until Levisin as an Intramuscular medication. HALLELULIAH!!!!!!!!!

When Amy and Stacy came back at 7 pm Saturday night they expected to only visit me for a very short while because i have been just so exhausted and when they were there I wanted to interact with them and talk to them, which I should have been resting. Well, let me tell you...after the morphine for the headaches, Levisin for the vomiting and nausea I was a New Woman!!!

I stared at this board all day and all night in my room:



And it's really too much information probably, but I had a problem with having to contort myself to reach my lightswitch from bed so of course I found it appropriate to call housekeeping to fix it for me. and they DID!



Notice the knott...they made it much longer and they did it within an hour of me calling them...how awesome is that...and to think I even frieken care!!!

Amy and Stacy come over and I am seriously DOWNING some water and ICE...both of these were full and I barely touched them before 7 pm that night...before the girls leave at 10:30....I'm calling Brad or Kayla for MORE PLEASE!!!!! YAY!!!



More to come.....

Day t

Biltmore Esates....Gone BUST

I'm much to exhausted to discuss the entire weekend all at once, but what a whirlwind it has been. As many of you know...I had a girls weekend planned at the Lovely Biltmore Estates in Asheville, NC.  Say it with me WOW....


A nice 8-9 hour drive from my PA home. I started the trip by heading down to my friend Amy Pickwick's on Thursday evening after a day of not feeling so great. That morning I measured a fever with a new thermometer, so I wasn't quite sure how accurate it was and it had measured 107.6. I had an appointment already scheduled with the oncologist at 11 am, so I asked Barb ( my step mom) to drive me to that, which she did. They took my temperature there and while I was still feeling nausea and generally not so great my temperature was back to normal. My blood pressure was really low while I was there....85/42, which even for me is low. They didn't think too much of it, so they just gave me my shot of neulasta to increase my red and white blood cells as was scheduled then sent me home.

I rested a while and towards late afternoon I thought I was feeling better and could make the drive down to Amy's, and so I did. I did make it, but the last half hour was really REALLY difficult and once I got there I literally just crawled into the spare bed to lie down and sleep. All day I had felt nausea and vomiting, but my oncologist gave me meds for that from the chemo treatment I just had on Wednesday and he just kept telling me to take more...and I did.

Friday Morning is the BIG DAY!!! I still don't feel right before we hit the road at 8:30 in the morning and for good measure call my oncologist office again and they say take quadruple the dose I was originally given for nausea...and I do and we hit the road at 9 am...ready for the long drive with my other friend Stacy with us. I sleep most of the time in and out of consciousness in my backseat. We stop around lunch time at a subway and to gas up and I go inside to use the facilities and hopefully eat SOMETHING....ANYTHING. At this point I have not been able to keep anything...not water or keep anything down since Wednesday. And the smell of the food just sets me over the edge. I can't handle it.

They quickly eat their food and Stacy suggests that since I was so incredibly cold that I should sit up front with the butt warmers and the heat blowing on me, so we swap. BY this time I realize that I am getting dehydrated and tell the girls...I must drink this bottle of water over the next hour...I just have to. And we head on. Over the next hour I have the butt warmer on HIGH, a wool coat and a blanket on and still shivering! I do drink ALMOST the entire water bottle until....it all came right back up...so much for that. Now it's 3:30 and I know my oncology office is closing soon, so I call them again. They ask me to take my temperature, which I did have my thermometer in the car with me in my medicine bag, just not certain how accurate it was...remember? My temperature is 102.7 and their reply is to get to the nearest ER NOW. I breakdown and start crying because I might be sick, but I want my friends to get to the Biltmore and enjoy themselves atleast, but that's another 1.5 hours away and the doc's office says NO! THE NEAREST HOSPITAL! This I could tell really scared Amy. Amy pulls up on her GPS the nearest hospital, which seems from what they are called is 40 more miles away. She punches it in the GPS and we head on, but she is constantly talking to me trying to get me to talk to her and ALL I WANTED was to SLEEP. I could not stay awake. I know she was just really scared for me. Then we see one of those Blue H signs for a hospital for the next exit (much sooner than the 40 miles) and decide to go there. We do and the signs are great, they direct us right to the hospital where Amy drops me off at the ER with Stacy while she parks the car.

It's disorganized and your typical ER with Triaging people. At reception they tell me to go sign in and I do my best, then go sit down and fall again in and out of consciousness with my puke bucket in hand. Talk about friends....I had the nerve to ask Amy to go wash my puke bucket for me at some point while we waited and I thought it might be a little while before I start up again. And Amy did just that bless her heart. About an hour of in and out of consciousness in this place I am finally called to CHECK IN at reception and I go in tow with my puke bucket, which I am using again. I pull out anything I think they can use, my license, my insurance card, health savings account card and slide it all across the counter and tell her to ask me as little as possible in between my dry heaves sitting in front of her. She was great and pretty much did whatever she needed to do with what I gave her. We had very little interaction except she said, "OH MY, You really don't feel well do you?" I go back to my whole in the wall in the reception area and we don't wait too much longer until we are called back...not before this young kid saw just how sick I was and asked if we'd like him to go raise some hell for us! LOL. He was there to see if his girlfriend was pregnant, but heck....we thought you just went and bought something like that over the counter...really???? who goes to the ER for something like that? Anyhow...

THANK GOODNESS we are called back. My girls come back with me and my temperature is a little lower at triage something like 107.2, but my blood pressure is still really low something like 92/54. I have to tell this kid my medical history while I'm delirious and all the meds that I'm on and tell Stacy to open up my medicine bag because I just can't think. Especially it's important the oncology office told me to tell them what I had done this week. He gets me a wheelchair and wheels me back.

Kim my AWESOME ER nurse tries to get an IV drip through a vein in my arm....HA....do you know how dehydrated this girl is? It didn't work and I point out my mediport. We are in luck...Kim knows how to access a mediport and she does and voila! At this point my complaints are nausea, vomiting, excructiating headache and temperature through the roof making me extremely cold. Kim immediately hooks me up to an IV for water and brings me zofran for nausea and vomiting and tylenol in pill form and the three of us girls laugh....seriously....how am I going to keep that down. Bring it back in another form.

Once in the ER, Kim took my temperature again and my temp is now at an all time high of 102.8 and I keep asking for more blankets I am SO COLD! Kim couldn't believe it. I wish I got a photo of Kim....she was really really Awesome. A resident comes in to see me and I have to tell him my story/history and he was a young (cute) guy, but heck that was the last I saw of him...pretty sure my case scared him and he passed me to the older guy. They order a chest x-ray to check for pneumonia...good news, it's clear with the exception of the lung cancer and pleural effusion we already knew about. The old guy doc calls my oncologist and they get on the same page and mind you, it's about 7 pm by now. I tell Amy and Stacy to go get something to eat because they have to be hungry by now and I'm just playing the waiting game and getting fluids. They do go to eat and I decide I should call my dad and tell him what's up. I look around my room and I can't find anywhere where it says WHERE I'm at! I see Wellmont everywhere, but I was sure that was not the name of the hospital I was at. When my nurse, Kim comes back, I ask her for a card with the hospital information on it so I can call my dad. BRISTOL REGIONAL MEDICAL CENTER, in Bristol Tennessee....who knew?! LOL




I was in bad shape this day, I was delirious. As soon as my eyes would close, which was often, I would be in a different place with other people and it was very vivid. I wouldn't sleep. I remember twitching because I thought I was interacting with these people I was seeing and Stacy said I was also mumbling, which I believe. I really thought I was somewhere else! It was scary to say the least.

I can't tell you how much better I felt by the time Amy and Stacy came back friday night around 9 or 9:30 though. I was given 3 liters of water by then. I still had the headache, nausea, and vomiting though. Then I get the news they will be admitting me probably atleast for 48 hours.....sigh....Major Emotional Breakdown....there goes Biltmore Estates....by now news is throughout the ER that we have driven 6 hours today towards our girls weekend at the Biltmore Estates to only end up HERE...BRISTOL REGIONAL MEDICAL CENTER....


It takes another hour or so to get me a bed (a brand new bed brought in that day) on the oncology/med surgical floor, but I get up there and meet all new people have to tell them my medical history again, but they already know about our Girls Weekened at the Biltmore Gone Bust :( I get all settled in and Still complain of this headache and nausea and vomiting and they keep increasing the zofran and phenegren as they have been since I got there, but add some morphine for the headache, which works...finally and my temperature isn't under control just yet, so more tylenol and tramadol. I actually sleep a solid 4 hours that night and it was wonderful. To be continued.....