Update from Home

I’m home!  I was discharged and left UCSF about 3pm today (Friday).  We stayed in the City for a few hours to avoid bridge traffic and have dinner here.  We finally walked through our front doorway around 8:30pm tonight.

Oddly, here’s the latest finding from the team of doctors this morning:  They don’t really know what caused the fever after all.  So it wasn’t a UTI?  Well, the urine culture showed the presence of one bacteria but not in a significantly high amount, not at the level normally found in a UTI.  So the doctors don’t think it was necessarily that, and probably just some viral thing. But just to be safe, they’re prescribing me the antibiotic to treat that particular bacteria.  But didn’t I feel better after receiving the (broad spectrum) antibiotics?  Which means it was a bacterial infection?   Possibly, but not likely, because the level of that bacteria wasn’t high.  Infections from viruses (as opposed to bacteria) often resolve on their own, and we may never know what particular virus caused the illness.  (All you medical folks, please correct me if I’m not understanding this correctly.)

Hmmm, so mystery not really solved after all, and this was a whole lot of no news is good news:

• The fever was high and symptoms awful but I was better in two days
• blood culture was clear; urine culture showed just a small presence of bacteria
• probably not a UTI, likely a viral infection that resolved itself
• all vitals normal
• cyst in native kidney harmless
• spot in new kidney gone

It’s been a confounding week for me, during which I mostly felt well after a rough start.  But it was very assuring to know that as a transplant patient, I’m being monitored very carefully.  And nobody was going to send me home until they either diagnosed something or ruled out the potentially significant illnesses.

As always I had a great care team.  My night nurse at UCSF was just a delight to have. She said she’d check out my blog.  Hi Delight!  Did I tell you my middle name is Joy? 😄