Chemo crisis!

Well, so much for us thinking that chemotherapy wouldn't be so bad this time!

As I said in the last post, Rick had chemo on Wed and came home with his bottle attached; he was fine Thursday morning and most of the afternoon but towards the evening he started feeling under the weather and ached all over. Friday morning was worse, hard to breathe, vomiting, and pain everywhere - chemo helpline suggested either coming in to Bart's, contacting our GP for more anti-sickness medication or going to our local A & E. By the time I'd had the phone call with them, Rick was worse and so, for my first ever time I dialled 999 and got an ambulance! They were really prompt and within about 10 minutes he was being treated in the ambulance with oxygen and all his vital signs monitored, including an ECG. Anyway, we joined the Friday morning rush hour and went off to hospital. I would just like to point out that I was not really ready to face people at this stage bearing in mind that although I had been up since 6am, I had just fallen out of bed into dog walking clothes, walked Molly round the park (it is dark and nobody sees me), I'd not washed, showered or done anything with my hair or face - and here we were going to hospital where there would be lots of people who had washed and dressed appropriately - I just hoped in the warmth of the hospital I wouldn't smell too bad! But I digress...
Rick was assessed quite quickly in A & E - blood tests, urine samples, chest x-ray - and then sent to the Emergency Medicine Centre, which is a short stay ward off A & E before the patient is allocated another ward in the main hospital. He had a couple of units of blood, lots of IV antibiotics, and saline and potassium (I think) because he was very dehydrated. So now, as well as his bottle of chemo which was still going in, Rick has a line in the other arm as well as the oxygen tubing which is stuck up his nose - what with the emergency bell call cable and the control for raising and lowering the bed it is easy to get tied up in knots!
To cut a long story short, Rick stayed in the EMC all day Friday and was transferred to a ward on Saturday afternoon - and what a difference that was. He went from a very quiet 4 bedded ward with only one other person to a huge 19 bedded ward which seemed to be full of patients looking like geriatric convicts dressed in prison issue orange or green pj's, and the noise...there were call bell alarms going off, machines bleeping, people talking very loudly into mobile phones which were also on loudspeaker (to be fair they probably were hard of hearing). Luckily Emma and Lucy promptly bought some ear plugs for Rick which made his first night slightly more bearable.
He has continued to improve, apart from an episode yesterday morning when his O2 saturation went down to 89% (not a good thing), he's had more IV antibiotics and his markers are down (medical speak for it is a good thing), and should be able to come home today. He has yet to have the chemo bottle disconnected. Although the chemo finished on Saturday there have been no suitably qualified staff to safely remove and dispose of it. They have assured us that someone will be around who can do it today.

And now I think I have brought you all up to date with what has been going on Chez Parsons this weekend - I do hope your weekends have been better!

Thanks for the soup suggestions, keep them coming
Love and kisses
Catherine x