I got a call from my infectious disease doctors this morning with a few updates. Since I’ve been home from the hospital, my pain level has been increasing. I am in and out of fevers and have frequent cold sweats. It’s certainly not the cush life I was expecting when I got home from my latest stay in the hospital.
They noted that this is all to be expected as these antibiotics start to do their job. As they work on this big mass of infection, toxins are released to the rest of the body and can explain all of my worsening symptoms. They explained this process to be like a teeter totter at this stage. They’re not sure which way it’s going to tip yet but they expect it to happen for sure in the coming few days. It will either tip soon toward showing incremental improvements day by day as the antibiotics take hold or I’ll continue to get worse (maybe much worse).
There is also good news to be had today though. The blood that they cultured from last week has come back clean. That means the bacteria hadn’t infected my blood yet (very good news). This particular brand of infection likes to hang out in your blood and likes to grow on heart valves causing serious problems. In addition to the blood cultures, they did an echocardiogram to look at my heart valves. The cardiologist has reported that my heart also looks great. All very good news.
Please pray that the teeter totter starts tipping toward improvement in my pain, fever, and sweats as these antibiotics begin to work.