Welcome to the Himalayas

Finally convinced/ordered (delete where applicable) Sam to go to A&E in the early hours of this morning after an evening of shivers, aches and fluctuating temperatures. Turns out her blood count was lower than they were last week. They’re not sure what’s causing the drop or where the infection is coming from so they’re trying to narrow it down. The problem is, if her count isn’t above 1.0 then they won’t be able to proceed with the chemo this Thursday (at the moment it’s 0.6) so hopefully it’ll rise before then. It looks like she’s in here for another couple of days at least.

On the upside, we’ve got a rearranged appointment for the MRI for this Tuesday. Hopefully we’ll find out how we’re progressing with the treatment and what size the lump is when we have the pre chemo appointment with the oncologist on Wednesday.

In the meantime Sam has been told she has to rest in here and try to get her energy back. The drip is reattached to her arm and the jacket potato is on order for dinner.

It’s almost like she hasn’t been away.

At around 0130 Sam’s temp peaked at 37.9° so I was ready to make a phone call. She wasn’t having any of it though and insisted she would be fine and it would drop again. After a little “huffy” disagreement between ourselves she went back to sleep. However, there was no way I could get back to sleep, so after 30 minutes I woke her up to take her temperature again. This time it had dropped to 37.1°. She then gave me that “told you so” look and rolled back over.

We’ve just checked it again now and it’s back down to normal figures so I’m not sure whether it was just me being over cautious or not. She’s still got the headache and is quite lightheaded but she says she’s ok.

We’re at the hospital this afternoon to have her PICC line cleaned so hopefully we can get more advice then.

The MRI scan that we had scheduled for today (to check to see if the lump is reacting to the chemotherapy treatment) was unfortunately cancelled by the hospital this morning. Apparently the MRI machine has broken down and they are awaiting an engineer to come and fix it. Hopefully we’ll get an emergency rescheduled appointment in the next couple of days otherwise we’ll have to wait until next month. It would be nice to have the results at next week’s pre chemo appointment with the oncologist, but then I suppose it’s not a massive issue as the treatment will still carry on regardless. It would just be nice to know if we’re on the right track.

Sam temperature is starting to rise again. The headache and achey joints that she had last week have returned. We’re taking her temp every half hour and it went up to 37.5 but then started to fall again (37.2 at the last check). If it hits 38 or above then it’s straight back to A&E. She’s afraid to take any kind of paracetamol to combat the headache because that’ll artificially lower her temperature and give a false reading. She’s in bed now so hopefully she’ll just sleep it off and feel better in the morning. However, just to be safe, we’ll continue to monitor her and we’ll do another check when Charlie wakes up for his feed. Part of me feels like I should rush her to A&E now, but then the other part thinks it would be a knee jerk reaction. She’s taking those monster antibiotics so hopefully she’s covered but we’ll see how she is during the night.

I’ll let you know how we get on in the morning…..

They must be running short of jacket potatoes in the hospital because they decided that her blood count was up enough for her to come home this afternoon. She’s still a bit weak and light headed but they’ve given her some super duper antibiotics that she’s got to take twice a day for the next 3 days.

Now it’s time to make sure that she takes it easy for the next few days.

Wish me luck…… 😉

I knew it wouldn’t take long. She’s bouncing off the walls in there. The good thing is that even though they moved her to a different ward, they’ve still kept her in a separate room. It’s so separate in fact, that you have to walk through a cleaning cupboard to get to her. She really is in isolation. I’ve told her to relax and take advantage of the time away (as best you can in hospital), but unfortunately she’s not a natural relaxer.

She told the nurses this morning that she really wanted to go home today so they took her bloods to do a count. Unfortunately for Sam, it says “review on Monday morning” in her notes so the decision wasn’t going to be made today. Also, she’s still connected up to a drip with another 14 hours worth of antibiotics to get through so she’s not going anywhere in a hurry. It didn’t help matters when they gave her a menu where she had to fill out her meal choices for the whole week (I think they’re trying to tell her something). So far her choices have been jacket potato, jacket potato and jacket potato. Not sure what variety she’ll pick for the next 5 days though.

Hopefully she won’t have to find out.

Well the system works well (in Yeovil at least). Unfortunately, the system in Taunton was shocking. In Sam’s little blue book there are numbers you should call if you’ve got issues. There’s the Yeovil number that you call during the day to get hold of someone and then there’s the Taunton number that you ring when it’s out of hours. I rang the out of hours number in the evening when Sam’s temperature was rising fast to get advice on what to do. I got an answerphone message asking to leave a name and number and they’d get right back to me. I explained Sam’s situation and what was happening and then sat back and waited for the call. That was 25 hours ago and we still haven’t heard anything from them.

As the evening went on Sam’s temperature got higher and higher and her heart rate got faster. They wheeled her into a side room in A&E where there was a bed and she had a little snooze until they transferred her up to a ward at around 5am. She’s been on a drip since she’s been there and they are pumping her full of antibiotics. She’s definitely in all weekend and they’ll reassess her on Monday to see if her blood count has risen. If it hasn’t risen enough then they’ll keep her there until it’s at a satisfactory level. Unfortunately for Sam this could take all week. She’s ok today because she’s had her own side room to make sure she doesn’t catch any bugs. Unfortunately, she’s just text me to say that they’re about to move her onto the ward.

That’s her week written off then………..

Blood count very low. She’s in for the night.

So much for being stubborn.

They’ve taken her bloods, carted her off for a chest xray and now have her hooked up to some IV antibiotics (how about that for speed). They’re checking to make sure that Sam hasn’t developed something called neutrophenia. This is a condition that is caused when the number of white blood cells (called neutrophils) in the blood is low. If they get too low it can be very dangerous. Neutrophils (white blood cells) help the body to fight infection and people who are having chemotherapy are at risk of developing it. This means that if they get any kind of infection then there’s nothing to combat it. If it’s not picked up quickly then things can escalate and sometimes it can be fatal.

They’ve looked into Sam’s throat and they think she’s started to develop a throat infection (so they’re keeping an eye on that) and the chest xray is to make sure there’s no infection there too. She’s been told that if her blood count comes back too low then she’ll be spending the night here.

She gave the doctor the same look she gives me when I’ve done a bad injection. I felt his pain.

My god, it’s packed in here and it’s not just adults either. The kids room is quite busy with young children too.

As we got out of the car and even though Sam was really not feeling right (Blurry vision, high temperature, sore throat and very achey) she was still saying she didn’t want to waste anyone’s time (She can be a stubborn fool sometimes). Luckily this stubbornness didn’t last long because when you walk into A&E there’s a big sign next to the receptionist (in red) saying that if you’ve had chemo in the last 6 weeks and are feeling unwell, then you must tell them immediately as this can be dangerous. As soon as we mentioned this to them our feet didn’t touch the ground. We were sat down for around 2 minutes before Sam’s name was called (much to the annoyance of the people who have obviously been here for a long time).

It’s probably a good thing that we weren’t in the waiting room for too long because I’m far too nosey not to stare at people to try and work out what’s wrong with them (Damn you 24hrs in A&E).