Face Plant

In addition to breaking my ankle last week, a few days afterward, I carried out my blind & deaf dog to pee in the early morning and because she was wiggling to get down, she knocked me off balance and I fell face first on the grass. I examined myself hoping nothing was broken and figured it wasn’t. Thankfully. But at the time i didn’t realize i had a) severely bruised my ribs or 2) broken a rib.

That was just the beginning. The doctor visits/physical problems were never ending. I started running a fever of 102 last Wed. It continued til Sat. Wore me out. Called my sarah cannon doctor and doc here. SC told me to get a covid test. My doc here did urinalysis. Sure enough it was a UTI responding to some weird bacteria called klebesela. I love my doc Doc Clark. He always adds a personal note in texts —“I hope you get better.”

Per Sarah Cannon, I kept the appt at urgent care and got covid test (negative) and then she talked me into a chest x-ray, a strep test and flu test (all neg). I told her i was getting blood work Monday but she wanted me to go to ER since my fever so high. I said no way. I hate ERs. She said she was afraid i might totally destabilize in the middle of the night since my oxygen levels were low. I told her we would think about it (but I’m thinking hell no).

We just went home. Monday was Sarah Cannon—no treatment bc of fever—but they gave me a liter of fluid. They made an appt for me to see urologist! ugh! another appt. We returned home and at 6:30 this morning we went to UT hospital for an ultrasound of my kidneys. My darling, darling daughter, after what was a hard week last week for her, went w/ me w/no complaints about the early hours and wheeled my chair through the UT hospital complex while Dan parked the car. Elizabeth makes everything seem easy. I wish everyone a daughter or son or friend like that. And she brought me my favorite starbucks coffee skinny caramel macchiato! at 6 in the morning.

I was dreading the ultrasound bc it’s such an effort for me to dress, undress with my gimpy lymphadema, proton blasted right side with no strength and now my bruised face-planted side. But they didn’t ask that I undress. I just had to pull up my shirt a bit and apparently they could see kidneys from front.

So to summarize between the broken ankle, bruised right side, inflexible left arm, and, oh yeah, the high uti fevers, the oncologist insisting I get my kidneys checked out and a minor thing like my metastatic cancer, it’s been a face plant kind of week.