Pancreatic Cancer: The gift that keeps on giving

Well after being out of Duke Hospital for one month, to the day, we had to return to the Duke Emergency Department late yesterday afternoon after Joe started running a fever again. We only had a 20 minute wait in the waiting room before being called to the triage room and then were taken back to an exam room.  They are really starting to catch on that someone with a suppressed immune system by the chemotherapy should not be sitting in the waiting room with people coughing, sneezing and blowing their noses constantly.
Joe was seen immediately by the nurse and withing 5 minutes the doctor and a med student were in to assess his condition.

This started right after lunch.  Joe had driven over here to Chapel Hill to meet me for lunch and I could tell sitting there that he did not feel well.  He said he was just tired, so we cut my lunch time short and he went on back home.  At 2:30 he called to tell me he was running a 100.7 fever and had called the Cancer Center triage line and was waiting for a call back.   At 3:30 he called again and told me that they had said to go on to the Emergency Department.  So I left work, went home, grabbed the required overnight bag just in case and off to Duke we went.  I only managed to forget 2 things this time:  my cell phone and my medications.  Better mine than his, right?

Since he is still having the chemo home infusion running, they could not start any antibiotics although his temp was down when we checked in at Duke ED, but most likely due to the Tylenol he had taken.  They took blood for labs and for cultures.  It took 2 nurses and 5 sticks of a needle to get the blood flowing.  He has rolling veins.  They hung a bag of fluids and he layed in the bed and we waited.  We were treated to 2 turkey sandwiches each and each some Jello pudding since we had been there through dinner time.  That was a first.  Our only contact with the outside world other than Joe's dying cell phone was through Facebook so that kept me sane while we waiting and Joe napped.

As you can see below, there was a great deal of support on FB last night and that is just a very small sampling.  Joe just messaged me that his most current temperature was normal so I have my fingers crossed that I get a call very soon to go pick him up!