I was going to write this whole thing
chronologically, but it turns out I keep getting re-admitted, so for now let’s
just talk hospital admissions. So far, I’ve been admitted three times. The
first was the most eventful, so I’ll stick to that for now. So, in the time-honoured
words of Jim Bowen…
Aaaaaand 1…
So…. Dr S and Vivienne came to see me at
about half 9. I’d been in A&E since about 1am, and the bed manager was
still looking for somewhere to put me. I barely had a clue what was going on,
so doped up was I on pain killers and lack of sleep. Poor old Fanners though,
had another five hours ahead of her and she knew exactly where she was and how
long she’d been there. How she wasn’t swaying rhythmically on the spot and
banging her head against a blood pressure monitor I’ll never know.
About 2ish, they came to get me and take me
up to a ward, after a stonking 11 hours in my little A&E bunk. Walks had
come to the rescue once more and appeared at the hospital with Fanners’
toothbrush and the like, and the three of us were taken upstairs. To a private
room. A lovely private room with it’s own bathroom. Where a nice nurse called
Nick came and told me he’d be looking after me, and a nice doctor called
Jonathan came and told me he’d be popping me with a pin* and draining the fluid
from my chest (*not his exact words) in about half an hour. Fanners and Walks
unpacked my bits, tucked me up under the cashmere and all was well.
For about 10 minutes. Turns out it’s much
more important to keep these private rooms for people who are infectious or
susceptible to infection, rather than just sleepy and sore – something I got to find out
firsthand a month later. So I was turfed out onto the main ward with the
normal people. And when I got turfed out onto the main ward with the normal
people, I got lost. Not physically (I couldn’t move), but y’know... They lost
my notes, so the nurse refused to give me any pain-killers. Jonathan and his
pin went AWOL. Fanners went mental. In the nicest, politest way possible, the
way that implies that if things aren’t sorted NOW, it’s all going to kick off.
I was essentially oblivious, but there’s a certain way of closing a hospital
curtain with a whisk that even I knew meant that someone was gonna get it. I
have no idea how long it took, but eventually one of the crisis care team
arrived and seconds later a syringe of morphine was being jabbed into my arm.
About 4ish, Jonathan re-appeared in a
flurry of abject apology. For all my whinging and claiming at the time he’d
abandoned me, he’d found the one person in the hospital who could supervise him
inserting my drain and stuck to her for the past two hours like glue. Where she
went, he went. And where she went, he told her that she should really be
heading in my direction. He must’ve been beyond irritating. But it worked, and
the two of them appeared in my little cubicle with an ultrasound and a handful**
of tramadol (**not a handful).
The tramadol were mental. I was propped up
on the table facing the wall. First of all I kept telling Analie to look at the
way the paint was moving on the wall. Then I’d slump and start snoring. Then
I’d jerk awake and get a fit of the giggles at the poor old lady in the next
cubicle who was having a few… let’s just say… bowel problems. Loud bowel
problems. Then back to the paint, slump to sleep, wake to giggles. This carried
on throughout, with poor old Jonathan fighting to keep me in one position so he
could actually get the drain in and hit the fluid, and Analie trying to loosen
the death grip I had on her hand. From what I could tell, he was inserting
needles in the same place, each with a bigger and bigger bore, until it was big
enough to fit a tube through. All while looking at my chest under the
ultrasound to make sure it was hitting the right spot. All while I was
wriggling about off my box on tramadol.
When he did hit the right spot, it went
everywhere. Yellow liquid at high pressure - all over my feet, all over the
floor. Another fit of the giggles and an announcement to all who would listen
that I’d essentially weed *** on my own feet (*** without tramadol, I’m well
aware my bladder and lung are in entirely different places). I think it was at
this point lovely doctor Jonathan was beginning to wish he’d spent a bit longer
finding his partner in crime.
Drain in, a squirt of oral morphine, a
completely mis-timed (and probably highly inaccurate) question and answer
session with a couple of medical students (“Are you in pain?” was greeted with
a snort, quickly followed by a wince), and off to bed. At this point, the cashmere was taken home (better
safe than sorry) and off I drifted for the night.
Next morning and Fanners had the horrendous
job of ringing Ma and Pa on their jollies to tell them that muggins had gone
and got herself another hit of the Big C. (We didn’t want to ring them the day
before when they’d have no choice but to dwell on the news overnight before
being able to get a flight back in the morning). And that phone call led to a
Planes, Trains and Automobiles-esque voyage across Greece to get to the airport
and back to Stansted where Walks was waiting to whisk them down to the
hospital. Analie rang them at 7.30 in the morning and they were by my bed by
half five. Luckily they appeared with a “What the bloody hell are you doing
back here?” – not sure I could’ve handled anything else…
Meanwhile I was scooped up and taken to
another ward, one that was to be my home for the next week and a half. A window
spot with a view of London and the loveliest of nurses to pull me upright when
needed (couldn’t manage it on my tod) and I was settled. I can’t even describe
how much respect I have for the nurses – they have to do what I would consider
to be the most revolting of things, and throughout they have smiles on their
faces and time to come and give you a hug when you’re staring out of the window
in tears and visiting hours and a Ma Booth cuddle are still three hours away.
And from that point, the days passed, as
they surely do. Once in a while a CT scan or a chest X-ray to provide a point
of excitement (I made new best friends with 3 of the porters who had to wheel
me round from A to B and back again). On one horrendous day, the ward
consultant (a man who knew nothing about me or my history or my prognosis) took
it upon himself to come into my cubicle and force his registrar to tell me that
the CT scan had shown cancer in my liver. This was the first we’d heard of
cancer in my liver, my oncologist hadn’t been told, and this muppet had no idea
whether it was another metastatisation of the breast cancer or how it would be
treated. I went mental (there was a lot of swearing – sorry Ma B), and a lot of
“Get OUT. Get out NOW. I DON’T want to see you in here AGAIN”. We were a mess.
I mean, really, what do you do when someone announces that kind of news out of
the blue? Other than shout, swear and cry, obvs. A lot. Of all of those three. For
a good half hour.
Luckily, Vivienne (breast care nurse)
appeared to pour oil on our troubled waters – it had appeared in the liver, but
it was another manifestation of what was in my bones and round the lung, so
would be treated in exactly the same way and was eminently treatable. While she
was explaining Fanners appeared, whisked the curtain closed in that special way
of hers, and the pair of them trotted off to find the two doctors who’d
considered this to be the world’s best way of announcing a diagnosis and tell
them exactly what they (and we) thought of them. Luckily, the poor chap who was
tasked with telling me realized that things could’ve been handled a touch
better, and has since become one of my favourites. The other bloke though, the
ward consultant who as far as I’m concerned bullied him into it, can do one.
More boring days, a touch of pneumonia and
a bleed from my liver biopsy that caused me to do a weird faint thing, and
finally, finally I was allowed home. It helped my cause that Ma and Pa B
arrived in my cubicle at the same time as Dr S to announce that they’d
hilariously fed the wrong cat the night before and encouraged him on to the
sofa for cuddles, only to look up and see poor old Oliver at the window looking
on in abject disbelief… It was time to go home. Home for one night in my own
bed before heading back in in the morning for chemo to start all over again…
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