Cancer 157

Some good news, I have been discharged from the district nurse service, not because I am any better, instead I am doing the tasks. The good bit is that I am well enough and trusted enough to do the tasks, and that it will give me a little more flexibility – not much because I still have to do the tasks on the same day – every Thursday – but I won’t have to wait around for the nurse.

Every week I have to flush the two Hickman lines. This involves cleaning them, changing the bungs on the end of each line, and flushing them through with saline and heparin.

Every other week I take the blood sample, it is a little weird drawing off your own blood but there we go. I attach a needle free connector to one line and fill three syringes, discarding the first. I then label everything, put the samples into a sample bag with my blood form and take them to the GP surgery. I can do all this first thing so the day is free.

The other week is chemo disconnect.  The bottle of flourourocil that is attached on Tuesday is disconnected 46 hours later on Thursday afternoon, when it is theoretically empty. Disconnect is simple, I unattach the bottle from the line and dispose of it in a sharps bin. The procedure for disposal of the chem bottle is strict. It goes back to the hospital for disposal.

This means I am free from the moment I leave the hospital, and we can get away. I generally feel rough at this point but we can now go away on the Wednesday, still on chemo but with the kit to dispose of it.

It is effectively an extra two days of freedom each fortnight. That might not sound much but when the routine is  every fortnight for the rest of your life then two days is immense.

I am lucky that I am still well enough to make use of this new system, that the drugs are still stopping the cancer growth. I don’t know how long it will be before I can’t do these tasks and the nurses will return, but for the moment I have parole and I am going to use it.