Septic Shock

On Monday I drove to Olomouc to meet with an oncologist. Olomouc is a city an hour drive from our temporary home in the Czech Republic. The oncologist there is great, the first one that I can say that I actually relate to. Unfortunately just like all others, the only thing that he has to offer is chemo. This is no longer looking as bad however, and I may have to go back on it if the July MRI shows a further progression.

Did some blood tests, and drove home, leaving any future traditional treatment decisions after the next PET or MRI.

Maybe 20 minutes out of Olomouc, strange things started to happen. I started to feel very cold and was not able to get warm. Few minutes later I was shaking all over. These shakes were violent and
uncontrollable. It felt like a reaction to Removab, but I had my last dose 5 days ago and there should be no delayed side effects. The shaking was also much worse than anything that I had experienced with Removab, or ever before. Compared to these, removab was a walk in the park.

The violent shakes continued for at least 30 minutes, by which time I was totally exhausted. Luckily my wife was driving. I just wanted to get home, and had to stop her from turning the car round and going back to the hospital a few times. I could not imagine spending any time in an emergency waiting room, in the state that I was in. She was panicking, and I guess I can’t blame her as I was quite scared myself, though I tried not to show it. This was nothing like I had experienced before and I had no idea what was causing it.

I remembered reading the signs on the building as we entered the hospital few hours earlier. It said ‘Oncology’ and below it ‘Lung Tuberculosis’. I remember making an ironic comment on how clever it was to put Oncology and Tuberculousis patients in the same building. Somehow that image came back to me as I continued to shake violently on the passenger seat. I then realised that it was not just clever but bloody brilliant. If you subscribe to Dr. Coley’s theory and that of spontaneous remissions being the result of a secondary infection, it makes perfect sense. Any oncology patient lucky enough to catch tuberculosis, has a chance of a cure through spontaneous remission or a quick exit. Either way there is an upside, especially if one also considers the significant savings in treatment costs. 🙂

Finally got home and the biggest challenge was to get out of the car and into our apartment. That was very hard. Just when I thought I had it all under control, I lost my lunch. Great.

First thing I checked was my temperature. It was 40.2 celsius. I understood what was happening at that point in time. My body wanted to rapidly raise its core temperature and to control the shaking, I had to get ahead of the temperature curve. A hot bath and a few cups of hot tea and the shaking finally stopped. My temperature settled at around 40.7 degrees. I still had no idea what exactly happened, but I started to suspect my infected port. I was back to normal 4 hours later.

The next day, about an hour after starting my daily IVs I noticed that I was getting very cold. I straight away knew what this was and what was to follow. I stopped my IVs, made a pot of hot tea and jumped into a hot bath. This time I managed to stay ahead of the curve, and there were no chills or shakes. Within 30 minutes however, my temperature again climbed to the 40 degree celsius range.

As I was pulling out the port needle, I noticed a drop of pus that came out of the needle wound. This confirmed my port theory. It seems that a pocket of pus developed just above the port access membrane. When the port was access, this forced a drop of pus into the needle and inside the port, from where it was flushed straight into the blood stream. The result a septic shock.

I now have the means to induce a 40 degree hyperthermia at will, with zero cost. Its very tempting to just continue using my port in the same way. Seems like there is indeed a silver lining in every cloud. 🙂