Guess where we got to spend our Sunday?!?!
Poor Rion has shingles : ( It's around the lower left side of his back, top of his left leg and wrapping around to the middle of his torso on the left side. I am going to put some pictures at the bottom but I'm putting them after a break where you'll have to click through to see them just in case anyone doesn't want to.
Hopefully because we caught it early it will not get much, if any, worse and he'll continue being able to deal with the pain. This all started last week when he was complaining about his left hip & leg being sore and we couldn't figure out what had caused it. Then on Friday morning he woke up with 3 big bumps that I thought were bug bites (I didn't see them until after he messed with them but he said they were filled with lots of fluid- which he proceeded to expel, naturally LOL) By Saturday morning he had a flat rash that went in spots from the middle of his back to the middle of his stomach on his left side. Saturday afternoon while swimming we realized the rash was raised and seemed to be spreading. We discussed going to the hospital Saturday night but it had been a really, really long day and we both wanted to sleep. Yesterday (Sunday) morning we woke up and there was no doubt in our minds we needed to do something about this- it was starting to hurt and the rash consisted of clusters of boils. Following the guidelines set up by Duke we called the local oncologists office and spoke with the oncologist on call who told us it sounded like shingles but she wanted us to immediately go and get it checked out (we were hoping to wait until tomorrow (Tuesday) when Rion already has an appointment scheduled with his oncologist for blood work.) This and Rion's best friend Phillip who said it sounded like shingles prompted us to go ahead and head to the ER.
It really wasn't a bad experience as far as weekend trips to the ER are concerned. We stopped and bought Rion a mask to wear so he would be less likely to pick up anything from all the sickies and once the nurses heard that he had cancer and was on chemo (about 15 minutes after getting there) we were whisked away to our own room. I can not say enough good things about Athens Regional Medical Center. That's where Rion was taken last year when he had the seizure and they were the ones to diagnose him with a brain tumor- in the exact same ER we sat together yesterday. It was a little upsetting for me to be back there where it all began but having Rion coherent and able to talk and keep my mind off of that made it not too bad. They gave him an infusion of acyclovir over the course of an hour and sent us home with an additional 10 days worth of anti-viral medication as well as some pain medication. Unfortunately Rion is having to take a lot of the pain medication because the rash is painful to the touch as well as leaving his leg/hip really sore. But we are just happy we caught it when we did and optimistic that by hitting it hard & fast he'll get over this quickly with relatively little pain.
I have no clue what this means for his chemo that we were hoping to start this week. Logic tells me they are going to put it off again, even if his counts are back up. We'll be confirming with Duke whatever the local oncologist recommends and hopefully coming to an agreement that everyone is happy with.
Thank you all for your continued prayers. We really, really had a great time with the Harris family at the reunion this past Saturday- love you guys and thank you from the bottom of my heart for being so loving & supportive!
Emily
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