Back inside

Sorry again about the lack of updates, I developed an infection on Thursday and this is the first time since that I've felt well enough to type anything.

My uncle John drove me into the hospital on Wednesday, quite late in the morning, for my day in. He hung around long enough to sort out my duvet and see me into the care of the nursing staff, but headed off soon afterwards as he's not one of my named visitors. The nurses lost no time in getting me hooked up with a line for my cytarabine, and set up a second line for my blood transfusions; apparently they wanted to get everything out of the way before my intrathecal at three. Thus, I got my chemotherapy in record time and had two units of blood pumped into me at a rate of one every two hours. I also met with the nutritionist again, and she was pleased that my weight was holding steady; she prescribed some Fortisips for use at home, all the same. After this, they wheeled me round and gave me my lumbar puncture and methotrexate, and then just left me to rest for a while. All the day's activity had worn me out a little, so I think I slept for a bit. I can't actually remember what I did for the rest of the day, so maybe I slept longer than I thought; mum probably came up to visit in the evening.

I was woken for my bloods on Thursday morning, but fell back to sleep until about ten o'clock; the rest of my morning was pretty uneventful. My chemo was scheduled for about two, but some emergency on the ward caused me to be forgotten about for a couple of hours. I was eventually remembered and dosed with cytarabine, and then I phoned mum up and had her collect me. She got me home for about six, by which point I was already feeling a bit rough; I'd been dozing off in the car. I went straight upstairs and slept until dinner time, but I wasn't really very hungry and left most of the potato and cauliflower curry which mum had made for me. I went back to sleep, but decided (nutritionist's orders!) that I'd better get something substantial for a snack; I ordered in a fish supper from the place up the road, and mum collected it for me. Once again, I didn't finish the entire meal; I managed most of it, though, and my sister finished it off for me. After I was finished, I went back to sleep. I spent most of the night waking up and thinking I might vomit, but I just put this down to post-chemo nausea and eating too much; when I eventually was sick, mum called the hospital just to be on the safe side. They decided that my temperature wasn't high enough to worry about, so just sent me back to bed. I spent most of the night waking up and wishing I'd vomit again, just to get it out of my system.

Friday morning came, and I got quite a long lie. I really was feeling pretty unpleasant by this point, so mum eventually insisted that I get up and move it into the hospital. My temperature on admission had jumped to 37.9, which was rather cause for concern when weighed with my vomiting and tiredness; the doctors came round in due course and started me on a course of massive doses of vancomycin, gentamycin and tazocin, plus fluids. Apparently the doses of antibiotics they give people like me are high enough that they need to test blood in between administrations, to make sure they've not boxed in my kidneys. Anyway, they got me started on those, measured my temperature again (38.4C, ouch), gave me a paracetamol and left me to sleep it off. And sleep I did; I can't have been conscious for more than about three hours in total over all of Friday. The treatment seems to work, though, and my temperature was already falling by the nighttime.

I've felt much better, today. They still have me on antibiotics, and I still feel pretty tired and lacking of appetite, but much better overall. Much reduced nausea and tiredness, for one thing, though the tiredness was quite nice in a way; just sleeping through everything was better than dozing through the way I did today. I got my chemotherapy quite early today, and later on a unit of blood. The blood is still going in just now, as a matter of fact. What with the chemo and antibiotics, I've been hooked up to a couple of lines pretty much all day; this looks set to continue for tomorrow, at least. Hopefully I'll get my freedom of the room again soon. For now, I'm going back to sleep.

Edit: oh yeah, I almost forgot about the title of this entry. Because of my infection, they won't be letting me out again for the duration of this treatment block; if I'd remained healthy, I'd probably have had another day or two outside, possibly just stretching to Christmas. As it is, I'm in from now until mid-January, which kind of sucks; I guess that's just the way it has to go. Oh well, I've put up with longer incarcerations.