Tuesday about 6 PM, I received my childhood immunizations. The autologous stem cell transplant last November erased the memory of my white blood cells. This means that all of my immunity has been neutralized. Therefore, I have to start over with my childhood immunizations. Joy. 

  
They popped me with six injections. I can’t even remember what they all were, but it was stuff like polio, pneumonia, the flu, and tetanus. I forget the other two. She put three injections into each arm. What I found interesting was that she gave one of the injections on the flabby part of my arm on the backside. I haven’t seen injections given there before.

  
I started running a fever Wednesday morning. It wasn’t much of a fever initially, 99.6. I began having aches and chills and I was cold to the bone. The site where she gave the tetanus injection was starting to hurt rather sharply. She had warned me that it would jack me up and I wouldn’t be happy with her. She wasn’t joking. 

As the next 24 hours progressed, I went downhill. My fever started climbing and it became harder and harder to take enough medications to break the fever. I was so cold that Janice put multiple layers of blankets on me. I crawled underneath them and shook for long periods of time. Needless to say, I did not get much sleep and I was miserable. 

  
By Thursday morning, I realized something was going to have to change. My fever  that morning started at about 100.4 and progressed to 100.8, then increased to 101.8, and then was 102.8. That’s when I told Janice I needed to go to the ER. 

What I thought was a sore arm from the tetanus immunization, was something else. Evidently the immunization caused a problem: I have cellulitis on my right arm now. It is red, tender, and hurts like the dickens. 

I’m now a) either in the hospital for ten days antibiotics or b) getting a PICC line and going home with home health for IV antibiotics. 

  
The saga continues…