Not my favorite place to watch the games

I ended up watching the Texas and Michigan football games from the ER on Saturday. Texas hung on even after losing their starting quarterback. Michigan made it look pretty easy. That was so much fun I thought I'd hang around and watch football from the hospital on Sunday. But you didn’t come here for football stories…

Becky started feeling bad Friday afternoon and it got worse instead of better during the day Saturday. So we ended up back at our favorite date spot - the emergency room. At least we timed things a bit better this time. We got back to ER less than five minutes after we checked in - not another 3-1/2 hour wait. That doesn’t mean it was a quick visit. In fact, we liked the service so much we decided to spend the night.

After filling several vials for various blood tests, an X-ray, a CAT scan, an EKG, and two IVs, the ER doctor recommended we spend the night for two main reasons. The first was to do a blood transfusion. Becky’s hemoglobin counts were around 7 and have been trending slightly down for the past few weeks. A normal count is in the 12-18 range and a transfusion is generally recommended when it dips below 8. The transfusion was definitely an anxiety trigger for Becky, but we pushed through.

The second reason was to be seen by a GI doctor. Some other count from the blood work or maybe the CAT scan (can’t remember which, it's been a long weekend) indicated a potential issue with the pancreas, and there was still no indication of what was causing her low white blood cell count. Nothing obvious showed on the CAT scan so she felt it was worth somebody else taking a look.

The GI doctor did an endoscopy on Sunday morning and discovered she had candida - a yeast infection in her esophagus. Because she still had food in her stomach and because of the infection, he didn't get a great look at her varices (enlarged veins), but from what he saw he didn't think they looked too bad. Unfortunately, he couldn't do anything about them in any case since there was too much in her stomach. He did suggest she should probably get somebody to take another look once the infection clears.

We're still looking for answers as to what has caused her increased white blood cell count. We'll probably be here until Monday waiting for blood culture results, but even that's kind of a long shot. Beyond that we'll see what the day brings.

If you're looking for a fun outing on Sunday afternoon, it looks like we'll be here all day!