You gotta be kidding me

Every day you wake up, you truly have no clue what the day is going to bring. 

Today?  Well, the plan was to go to the grocery store.  Go to the Surgeon's office for a preop for his broviac placement tomorrow.  (Why?  It's been a month since Manny's PICC was placed and he started having a little pain near the site so we decided it was time to pull the line and place the broviac.  But before we could do that, the Infectious Diseases docs (being extra cautious) wanted us to do a blood culture.  Just to be safe.  Monday the labs were drawn for that.) 

So I head to Walmart and get a voicemail. 

"Manny's blood culture was positive.  Please call." 

You gotta be kidding me!  I knew what this meant. 

And at that moment in time, I knew that our day had just been derailed.  I kept going back and forth between shock, denial and anger.  For the next 2 hours, I shopped at Walmart (wasn't going to leave the family with nothing to eat), then packed for the hospital and arranged for hospital plans. 

Before I knew it, I was walking in the door and being greeted by the very people I just talked to on Friday.  The same place I'd just delivered candy last week.  

The transition is so smooth now for admission.  Everything is in the computer.  The right people know what to do and how to do it.  He has an "action plan" in place. 

And Manny was hilarious!  He was greeting everyone.  Saying their names.  Being a real joker.  I worried that he would freak out ... but he has (sadly) adjusted to his new reality that we live in the hospital OFTEN. 

We have no clue how long we will be here but there's a CHANCE this won't be long.  There's a CHANCE that it was a false positive and it's just a contaminant.  The lab that took the blood only reported "Bacillus" ... which is very very non-specific!  It's not helpful in fact at all.  It could be "nothing" and if that's the case, we'd be out of here over the weekend even maybe or early next week. (Depends on if they want to replace the PICC or a broviac.)  Or it could be a true infection and we're here for the long haul again. 

How will we know?  They took more blood today.  One set of cultures from his PICC line and one from a peripheral site.  It takes time to grow this.  But we should know by Friday (probably) if this was just a false alarm. 

I don't think I've ever prayed for carelessness before.  But seriously, that's basically what we're hoping for.  We're hoping that the nurse that collected it was careless.  Or the lab who ran the blood tests ... maybe someone there was careless.  (But trust me, that doesn't give me the warm fuzzies either ... but I will cross that bridge when I get there.) 

Since it's been almost a month (We were discharged Dec 28 and today is Jan 25), and he has not been sick, his veins are fairly healthy.  They were able to get the IV in on the first stick (that never happens).  I'm thankful! 

So tonight, I sit in room 222 ... next door to the room we were in last time. (that was 221).  Things have gone as smoothly as they possibly can.  It's sad that they have a protocol JUST for Manny.  But I am also thankful for it. And I'm saddened and thankful that Manny thinks of this as "normal".  We both just fell right back in our spot, picking up where we left off, surrounded by friends. 

And I'm wondering what I'm supposed to do with our time here.  Maybe I'm supposed to "redeem" the time in some kind of special way.  I'm praying for specific direction on that. 

8pm, walked out of my room for the first time.  Went down the hallway to the linen storage cabinet.  Mindlessly walked back to my room and opened the door.  I was SHOCKED to see it stuffed full of people I didn't recognize.  Took me a second to realize, I walked in to room 221 out of sheer habit.  I profusely appologized (they were all Hispanic and I'm pretty sure they only spoke Spanish so I think they were a bit confused about who I was!).   I then walked to the right room (next door) and started devising a plan of how to make sure I don't do that again! :) 

9pm ... my hopes of this just being a contaminant are fading slowly ... we have a fever.  Doesn't prove anything, just that this might be real.  (ugh)