Cancer 117

Another unexpected trip to the hospital. I don’t like unexpected trips to the hospital. They are depressing. They show that there are flaws in the ways my body is adapting and changing to cancer. It also means I will be spending more hours waiting, and will be jabbed and poked around with more than I expect. On the other hand, if hospital staff are doing something to help me – and they usually are – then suppose it is worth it. It doesn’t mean I have to like it.

This morning the district nurses came round in force, three of them, to take my bloods and sort out my PICC line. Unfortunately, my PICC line was looking a bit of a mess. It has only been in since last Tuesday (9 days) but it has been bruised and battered, it bled for the first few days, and the area around the line, the skin underneath the dressing is redder than Lenin’s underpants.

I had already changed the dressing a couple of days ago. I cleaned the area with my wet wipes (usually used for cleaning my stoma) and put on the new dressing. I am quite a dab hand at it.

The district nurses – quite rightly – refused to deal with the PICC line, and told me that I needed to go to hospital. To make sure, they phoned the hospital, probably aware that I would hide under a blanket and avoid the trip if at all possible. They also had problems extracting blood. Because they couldn’t use the PICC line, they tried to bleed me in the traditional way. Three jabs with the needle later, at one point appearing to jab me in both elbows at the same time, they gave up and said the hospital could try.

I phoned the rapid response line. They asked me to come into the triage unit. I was there for two and a half hours. A few people looked at my skin and pulled faces, a practical nurse put a cannula in and managed to extract a little blood, and others swabbed and cleaned the area around the PICC line, put another dressing on and sent me away.

I left the hospital, no longer depressed.

A normal day in paradise.