Twelve hours after I set off for the hospital I am finally home! I can't wait for my transfer to Bristol CF centre because these long days to and from the hospital every month are really starting to get to me. It was made worse today by the fact that our car is in the garage and we got a courtesy car from them which is really old and grubby, without a CD player or A/C and with a pants radio...grrrw! When we got home there was a message from the mechanic on the answerphone saying "Can you ring us? I'm afraid we need to speak to you about your car" Hmmm...that's sounds good doesn't it?!
Anyway...back to today. I wasn't particularly impressed to be going up for my third lot of IV's in four months (definitely not a track record I intend to maintain) but I was actually really desperate to get on with them this time because I've been feeling really poo and breathless this last week. When I'm sitting in the X-Ray department thinking that if they don't hurry up I will resort to having to lie on the floor, its probably a good indication that I could really do with a spring clean. I also realised just how bad and out of sorts I felt when Brad and I got in the lift after the X ray and bloods and I stepped backwards and then got very irrated with Brad's foot for being there when, to be fair, it wasn't really his fault that his foot comes attatched to his leg.
Anyway, lung function was down somewhat, white blood count a bit raised, chest more crackly and sats lower than normal so the doctor said she agreed IV's were called for. The first attempt at getting the line in was somewhat comical. The needle took some getting in (apparently I have tough rhino skin....nice compliment) but once it was in she couldn't get it into the vein properly and proceeded to wrestle with my arm whilst shouting "It's running away, it's running away!!!!" Once I had established that she was referring to my vein and not my arm as running away it made a bit more sense, but I wasn't quite sure how a vein can run very far whilst its in an arm anyway. She then started to break out in a sweat whilst still shouting about it "running away" and seemed to be getting a bit steamed up about the whole thing, which confused me as I actually wan't in any pain (for a change) and as she was dealing with the underside of my arm I was at a loss as to what was actually going on down there. It reminded me of a particular Monty Python sketch and I imagined my veins being bombarded with coconuts whilst yelling "Run Away! Run Away!" to each other. In the end she gave got it in but the line wouldn't feed up, so she removed it, seeming to be pretty emotionally drained by the whole experience. She then tried the other arm and this time managed to find a vein that was happy to sit still rather than attempt the 100m sprint. She had also managed to find a vein no one had discovered before, tucked away under my forearm which meant that it went in very nicely and without much pain . I can't wait to get my port! Having now handled one and properly understood how they work, I can see that they really do make the whole process so much simpler.
Having arrived at Midday and the line having been sited by 4pm I was hopefully of leaving before too long. Big mistake. Pharmacy were working at their usual pace (i.e. slower than Mr Slow from Slow Land as a certain person's Mummy would say) so eventually it was decided to use ward stocks to get the process going in the hope that I would be home before Christmas. Then my vein decided that, seeing as someone had sneakily managed to slip a line in it whilst it was off having a cup of tea and a piece of Battenburg cake, it would make up for that afront by only allowing the drip to go in at a rate of 1ml a minute. As a result, an hour and a half later I was still lying there frowning at it. By then the whole ward was not only empty and most of the staff gone home, but I had also had the pleasure of watching the cleaners not only start but finish their rounds (and I must say I was impressed by standards on that front). The other drug was then put through (thankfully with a syringe this time) and by shortly after 6pm it was all done.
However the rules are that that you may not leave until an hour after the dose in case of anaphylactic shock, which is never a good thing to have on the M25. The last two nurses were supposed to be in the pub celebrating someones' Birthday by now and were actually discussing whether it they would be breaking with hospital policy if they took me to the pub with them for an hour! Whilst I quite liked the sound of that (especially if it meant I got free drinks on the NHS as part of my treatment) I said that I would actually like to go and see EmilyWemily who was on the ward below me and asked if I could do that whilst I waited my "hour". They seemed quite pleased by this plan of escape and after a couple of phonecalls I was told I could do providing I promised not to abscond once their backs were turned (would I?!!)
It was so fab to see Emily and have good old natter again. By the time we had finished the hour was almost up (well may be my watch was just a little fast *ahem*) and I finally left just before 7pm and got back home at 10 pm YAY! Better get on with preparing the next lot of IV's now but thought I'd update my blog since its been dormant for far far too long. I'm looking forward to a nice weekend of sleeping, although if I feel up to it I'll be going to a friend's 21st Birthday celebrations on a river cruise in Oxford on Sunday which should be fun...providing it manages not to rain!!! Toodle pip!
