Sunday, June 6, 2010

Gosford Hospital, It's the Place to Be

Wow, it's been a while. I do have some decent excuses. First I was too depressed to type, then I was too sick, then I was trapped in hospital and deprived of internets. That covers about 83% of the time and the rest of the time can be explained by my general laziness and preference for playing Bejewelled Blitz to doing anything remotely productive.

So, when I last posted I was still in Westmead waiting for my head to shrink back to its normal size and for the doctors to decide what was going to happen. Thankfully I didn't have to wait too long for the head shrinkage to happen. I did have to wait until the end of the month before a plethora of debating doctors finally decided what to do with me: start a round of chemo while I was still in hospital and send me home a few days later with blood thinners to break up the clot. I have pledged to marry (or at least dedicate a day out of every year to the worship of) the haemotologist who decided that my port-a-cath was safe to use, because it will make it so much easier to keep going with the chemo (well that was the plan anyway. As usual, it's not the way things have turned out) because otherwise I would have had to rely on my one remaining "accessible" vein, and getting a needle in there is like, well trying to get something to fit where it won't - you can choose your own metaphor: camel through the eye of a needle, square peg round hole, my grotesquely swollen lymphodematic legs into their compression stockings.

When I came home, my parents had converted their own bedroom into a fully fitted out sickroom. They put an elevator under the mattress so that I can sleep sitting up, a shower chair in the bathroom and a wheelchair for getting around outside the house. I feel bad about stealing my parents' room, but the truth is I'm grateful not to have to walk so far to the bathroom because it is kind of an effort. Showering and dressing for me has about the same effect as a hardcore one-hour workout. When mum first suggested moving into her room, my first instinct was to say no, but I think I've finally realised that at this point in my life I need to give up the idea of independence and accept the fact that I need to be looked after. I'd hoped not to reach this point until I was in my 80s, but here I am.

After a few days of being at home and my breathing getting bad enough to stop me sleeping more than a couple of hours a night, I headed down to Westmead for my second lot of chemo. The doctor gave me some liquid morphine to try and help with the breathing and therefore the sleeping, but things kept getting worse. The thing with me is though, I feel so crappy most of the time that it's hard for me to notice when my condition deteriorates from general cancer crappy to hospitalisation-level crappy. Thankfully after watching me nurse a bleeding nose and struggle to breathe or move for a few hours, my mum's friend who'd been looking after me during the day recognised that I needed to be around medical-type people. As soon as she said it, I realised that I didn't have the strength to walk. When I got to hospital it was kind of cool to find that my ER doctor was a girl I went to high school with. Or at least it would have been cool if we didn't have to meet each other again while my nose was being packed with gauze and I was being pumped full of blood and platelets. Apparently what happened was that the chemotherapy, as well as killing the cancer, also tried to kill my blood. I spent two and a half weeks in Gosford Hospital while the doctors got all my blood levels back to normal. While I was in Gosford I got to know the oncologist a bit and he seems good, so I've transferred my care from Westmead to here, just to save on travel and make things easier on me and the people who have to drive me places. Plus it's a lot easier for me to be at Gosford if I need to be in hospital, being closer to home and also the fact that they let me have a carer stay with me overnight, which I was pretty grateful for, because even though my mum drives me crazy by asking pointless questions and taking forever to get ready for bed, it really was comforting to have her there, especially the first few nights when I felt like death.

So now I'm back home, with an oxygen machine which makes life a little more comfortable (I have yet to name my new gaseous friend - open to suggestions). I'm heading back into hospital tomorrow to start a new chemotherapy program. The doctors weren't happy with the way the last one was going, so they're hoping this one will work better. They're going to poison me as an in-patient this time so that they can keep an eye on me and make sure that I don't wind up with severely broken blood again. While I'm not thrilled at the prospect of another week of paying $5 a day for bad daytime TV and eating powdered mashed potato, it's probably for the best. Since the oncology ward is the land that internet forgot, I won't be updating again for a while. There's so much more I want to write, so hopefully this new drug won't knock me around too badly so I'll have enough mind grapes left to post again when I get out. And I'll try and refrain from playing Bejewelled.

5 comments:

  1. Oh Kea... strongest lady I know. Move over Xena, it's Kea, warrior princess. Kea of Arc. Superkea. Endure that powdered mashed potato... and I say play as much Bejewelled as you damn well like ;) You rock my world.

    PS Maybe your O2 tank could be called Otto (sounds like O2, gettit...? Bad Dad joke there) x

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  2. What about Cylindie? Keep on writing on, Kea! Feel better soon :)

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  3. Oh dad jokes, my favourite of all jokes.

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  4. Hey Kea, I just wrote a long comment to realise I didn't hve an account silly me! Cosidering you love dad jokes, I asked the most lamest dad joke teller of them all, my own dad, he said to call it oxymoron, its lost on me but he assures me its a good one. mum says its great yu haven't lost your sense of humour!
    Love Lauren

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  5. It is a good one, Tahlia suggested the same thing!

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