A&E...

And so it begins…

Wednesday morning and I get a call from Dr S. Apparently, I have very high level of calcium in my blood, which in itself is indicative of cancer. Not definite, but indicative. And given the suspicious-ness (is that a word?) of my MRI, it’s not a great sign. I did a pretty good job of trying not to cry down the phone, but I failed pretty miserably, and agreed to get to the chemo suite asap so they could put me on a treatment that would help suck all the calcium back into the bones, where the cancer was doing it’s darndest to leach it all out.

So, another call to Fanners at work asking her to drop everything. Her lovely housemate Walks came straight round to pick me up, and off we went, a not-so-merry band, back to the Whittington for the day. Straight in, hooked up and reading Heat magazine before you could blink.

The chemo nurses were their lovely, amazing, usual selves. Lots of hugs all round. One of them said they’d seen my name on the list that morning and were all hoping it wasn’t me (not that I’m not the model patient – let’s be clear). Unfortunately for them (and me) I can’t seem to stay clear of the place.

The calcium drip had to be given with two litres of fluid, so getting in there at half 12 meant that I was in there til about five. But I left feeling fine, home to see my lovely friend Sherwoo (another Lucy, and therefore one of the hilarious “Two Lucys” – we’re like the Two Ronnies but not as funny, and a bit prettier. We reckon anyway). An evening in front of the telly with take-away sushi and America’s Next Top Model. Just what the doctor probably wouldn’t have ordered.

When she left, I popped off to bed. Climbing the stairs made me feel really breathless. Like, reeeeeally breathless. I could only really pant. I’d had the odd bit of feeling breathless over the past few weeks, but nothing like this. So I lay down in bed thinking that it would pass. It didn’t. And then I began to feel horribly, horribly sick. When I threw up, my whole back went into spasm. I can honestly say I have never, ever, EVER been in that much pain. I’d knelt on the floor to reach the bin, so when I was sick, I ended up lying on the floor in a weird, twisted, crunched up ball of pain. Somehow I managed to shunt myself over to my phone where I rang Fanners and told her I thought we’d need to get to A&E. I’ve never, ever, EVER been so ill that I thought a trip to A&E was needed. Fanners takes pragmatism to a whole new level, so she told me to call Dom (my housemate at the time) and get him to call an ambulance, while she popped on her trainers and legged it round to mine. Thankfully she lives at the end of my road.

Poor Dom. It’s not what you sign up for when you move in with someone is it? A snivelling, bunched up wreck and a midnight call to 999.

Turns out 999 didn’t think I was that important though. “Not an urgent case” I think is how they phrased it. Even when he put me on speaker and I explained (in tears) that I couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe and was in the process of being diagnosed with secondary cancer. Nope, I was to call 111, who would assess the situation and ask a clinician to ring me back. There was a LOT of swearing going on round about now (not to the operator – I’m not an animal), but a LOT of swearing nevertheless.

When Fanners arrived, 111 called back and someone there saw sense, sending an ambulance to me within 8 minutes. Cut to three ambulancemen crammed into my bedroom to save the day.

Getting me on my feet sent the pain to a whole new level. The only way to get me up and out was for two of them to grab an arm each and pull me into a standing position. Oh. My. God. They offered me a chair downstairs, being carried by their charming colleague John, but my stairs are pretty precarious, so the thought of being tipped out half way down was more than I could bear. So off I went, one step at a time, out to the back of the ambulance. So. Much. Pain.

(Incidentally, when we got in the ambulance, the nice ambulanceman asked me on a scale of 1 to 10 how much pain I was in. I said 7. I can only think I didn’t want to cause a fuss… This is in brackets cos I have no recollection, but apparently Fanners and the ambulance crew exchanged some pretty odd glances. When he asked me what the pain was like when he pulled me to my feet, I said it was a 15. Turned out that was a much more acceptable answer).

So, off to A&E with an oxygen mask and the cashmere blanket (I’m so North London). They also gave me gas and air, which I was really looking forward to, but it didn’t make a dent – mainly cos I wasn’t able to breathe it in so got none of the benefit. Curses.

We arrived at A&E – more throwing up, more swearing, and an apology to a little old lady in the room next door for my appalling language.

When we were eventually seen, it was by a doctor who was seemingly blind. Ordinarily your blood oxygen levels are supposed to be 98 – 99%. Mine were 79%. But because I was wearing nail varnish, he kept blaming that for the monitor they put on your finger not reading it properly. So then he decided to take some blood from an artery in my wrist. Bloody. Hell. That. Hurts. But because my oxygen levels were so low, he didn’t believe the blood test (he popped his head round the curtain, nodded in my direction and said “look how pink she is – she looks completely fine”. I had a temperature of 38 point something). So he decided to do it again. Luckily, a lovely nurse spotted my face, ran off and grabbed some numbing spray, so I was saved the pain. If anyone EVER waves a needle in the direction of an artery, deMAND numbing spray.

Off he pottered to get the results, coming back immediately to clamp an oxygen mask on my face. Turns out the machines and the test were right, and I was struggling by on not nearly enough oxygen.

So there we stayed for the next few hours. Me dozing in and out and rattling with pain-killers, Fanners on a hard plastic chair trying (and failing) to get some sleep and reading out loud to me from my book. Fanners, if I haven’t said it before, is the best bloody sister money can buy.

After a bit they came to get me and sent me for a chest x-ray. Which was fun in itself as even with pain relief getting from lying to sitting and sitting to standing was excruciating. And for some reason I only really wanted Fanners to help me, so I was being a right moany cow.

Turns out the breathlessness came from having an entirely collapsed left lung. I say entirely collapsed, I’ve seen the x-ray since and there was a bit of a gap the size of a satsuma, but to all intents and purposes I was functioning on one lung.

As soon as the clinics opened in the morning (i.e. about 9am – so I’d been in A&E for 8 hours at this point), Dr S and Vivienne came to visit. Turns out that the cough I’d had for a few weeks wasn’t a side effect of my blood pressure tablets, it was probably a sign that the cancer was hovering around my lung as well. And when I was flooded with fluids for the calcium treatment, they’d gathered in my pleural cavity (between my lung and my ribs), where cancer cells had been irritating the lining and essentially forming a big blister. So the 2 litres of fluid added to that and my poor wee lung just gave up. The next step would be to find me a bed and drain the fluid from the gap.

This was also the point at which Dr S said “I think it’s probably time you rang your mum and dad and told them what’s going on, don’t you?”

Yup. Probably not a bad idea.