FUO

[SDianneB]

No, it isn't an obscene expression or an entry in the "What to tell the ACS volunteer" person. It's one of few medical terms I happen to remember! Fever of Unknown Origin. Sometimes they will say it as "Fever of unknown etiology," but FUO used to be fairly common.

I was plagued with that last week -- Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday nights. Feeling fine all day, then around 6:00 p.m. - WHAM. Either burning up or having chills. If I got to it quickly with Ibuprofen, it would be gone in an hour or two. Thursday night, it kept coming back.

Fortunately, I could call the Oncologist's office on Friday when they were all there, and hopefully not have to wait 9 hours like I did on a Saturday last year when I had to call them. I only had to wait an hour and a half for someone to get back to me this time. wow.

They tell us to call if our temp is 100.1 or more, and mine would have soared past that had I not been on top of it. So, thankfully, they had me take Amox-Clav (generic Augmentin) rather than me having to pay for an expensive new antibiotic. I have a huge bottle of the Amox Clav left over, and was glad not to have to pay for something else!

The fever goes right away. Zap. I have a few ideas as to what it may be, one of which I won't speak of in mixed company, but suffice it to say it resulted from the bile coming through my kidneys and out in my urine before they fixed the gallbladder & bile duct. Ahem.

The other is that my body may be trying to murder the temporary stent he put in there (something he expected).

Tomorrow is my first 12 hour day on the Topotecan oral study. Will let you know how that goes. Just wish I could eat way more than I can now, so I can help keep up my blood counts and not have to rely on drugs and more drugs for that too.

Later!!

Di

[Addie]

Well, a pox on those fevers!! Sheesh. And as for the stent...didn't you say that might not be permanent? (help me out here...memory fails me! )

As for tomorrow...I hope it all goes swimmingly. No reason to suspect oral Topo is any harder to assimilate than I.V.....and I also learned today, that while a lot of chemos will generally only be given for 6 cycles and then they let the body rest a bit....Topotecan is one of those than can be given for longer. At least according to one of my onc's nurses!

Maybe it all depends on the dosage AND an individual's tolerance...because while I thought platin drugs were harsh enough NOT to be given for more than 6 cycles...I found out today from a friend who gets WEEKLY tx for recurrent breast cancer (and WILL get weekly txs for the rest of her life) - that one of the drugs she gets is carboplatin!! She DID have to have her dosage reduced by half though...as her the dose she was getting was making her feel lousy up to about 75% of the time. NO quality of life.

Her dosage was cut...and she just got back from a short cruise to the Bahamas for some R&R~! She looks and feels 100% better than she was before they trimmed her dosage.

Anyway....I digress...sorta but knowing you, Di, you'll do just fine. The only thing other than the usual fatigue, is that Topo can be pretty hard on the bloodcounts...so just make sure that is well monitored. I gotta say, tough, that my numbers continue to go up since the transfusions. My platelets were down to 12K about 10 days ago. Today, they were something like 561K.

Let us know how you're doing...but I already know it's gonna be a good update. You'll do fine!