{"id":4674,"date":"2013-06-28T12:56:48","date_gmt":"2013-06-28T12:56:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mcrc4.com\/?p=4674"},"modified":"2013-06-28T13:02:11","modified_gmt":"2013-06-28T13:02:11","slug":"septic-shock","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mcrc4.com\/?p=4674","title":{"rendered":"Septic Shock"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"20130628-144535.jpg\"<\/a>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.<\/p>\n

Did some blood tests, and drove home, leaving any future traditional treatment decisions after the next PET or MRI.<\/p>\n

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
\nuncontrollable. 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.<\/p>\n

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. <\/p>\n

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. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4674","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-my-journey"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mcrc4.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4674","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mcrc4.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mcrc4.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mcrc4.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mcrc4.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4674"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.mcrc4.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4674\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4675,"href":"https:\/\/www.mcrc4.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4674\/revisions\/4675"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mcrc4.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4674"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mcrc4.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4674"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mcrc4.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4674"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}