Nancy
Well-known member
Joe is back in the intensive care unit with a very severe case of serum sickness. It's a Type III hypersensitivity reaction to a substance, possibly a medication that we didn't know he was allergic to, or even the blood which they had to give him after surgery for anemia. Sometimes one never finds out what the culprit is.
Anyone out there ever had this? It's one of the nastiest illnesses I've ever seen. He went from a normal recovering heart patient to a man who needed a wheelchair within the period of 6-7 hours. He was admitted to the medical floor, but was transferred into the Intensive Care unit on Friday evening. The condition is improving rapidly with the administration of intravenous cortisone, lasix and other stuff. He will have a full recovery from all accounts in about a week and a half. However it went through his body like a runaway train. I honestly didn't know what was happening. Started out with hives, progressed to a pinpoint rash, then joint swelling then redness which was very hot over his joints and then excruciating joint pain, stomach swelling and edema. He had no use of his hands, legs or feet.
The good news is that he said that throughout all of this his repaired heart felt just great and the surgeons who did a stat echo and chest xray could not detect any heart damage, thank God.
He will graduate from the Intensive Care Unit probably today or tomorrow to the Cardiac step-down unit. He'll have good monitoring there.
As usual, his spirits are still wonderful and we have been again blessed with super-duper doctors, adding Infectious specialists and Rheumatologists, and his Internist to the soup. Even though this is not an infectious disease, the Infectious Disease specialist was called in and the Rheumatologist for the joint involvement.
This is not a usual thing, my guess is that Joe's body has had to undergo so many things, that it's probably in an irritated condition.
I'm hoping for a very quiet Fall, either that or I'll get my MD and RN by osmosis from all the hospital visits. Add one more disease to my repertoire of knowledge.
Anyone out there ever had this? It's one of the nastiest illnesses I've ever seen. He went from a normal recovering heart patient to a man who needed a wheelchair within the period of 6-7 hours. He was admitted to the medical floor, but was transferred into the Intensive Care unit on Friday evening. The condition is improving rapidly with the administration of intravenous cortisone, lasix and other stuff. He will have a full recovery from all accounts in about a week and a half. However it went through his body like a runaway train. I honestly didn't know what was happening. Started out with hives, progressed to a pinpoint rash, then joint swelling then redness which was very hot over his joints and then excruciating joint pain, stomach swelling and edema. He had no use of his hands, legs or feet.
The good news is that he said that throughout all of this his repaired heart felt just great and the surgeons who did a stat echo and chest xray could not detect any heart damage, thank God.
He will graduate from the Intensive Care Unit probably today or tomorrow to the Cardiac step-down unit. He'll have good monitoring there.
As usual, his spirits are still wonderful and we have been again blessed with super-duper doctors, adding Infectious specialists and Rheumatologists, and his Internist to the soup. Even though this is not an infectious disease, the Infectious Disease specialist was called in and the Rheumatologist for the joint involvement.
This is not a usual thing, my guess is that Joe's body has had to undergo so many things, that it's probably in an irritated condition.
I'm hoping for a very quiet Fall, either that or I'll get my MD and RN by osmosis from all the hospital visits. Add one more disease to my repertoire of knowledge.