Be careful what you wish for!

So here I am whingeing about being in limbo, waiting for something to happen and then it does… it really does!

We’re in Bungay with our neighbour Tom having a lovely lunch sitting outside the café in a sheltered garden.  (There is a story behind that maybe for another day but its late now and I need to go to bed!!) Anyway, we’ve finished eating and are getting through our second mug of tea putting the world to rights and my phone rings.  My personal phone hardly ever rings and when it does, it’s usually because I have been carefully selected to receive some valuable marketing information… this time was different.  There was no number available, that’s what comes up when the hospital calls.

It’s Dr Alexander the oncologist on the phone.  She tells me that she has the results of my scan and that it has shown something that we need to deal with.  There is evidence of a blood clot and I need to go into the hospital to see the acute oncology team to get some drugs to sort it out.  OK.  There is good news too, it shows that the lesions in my liver have got smaller.

‘Whoop whoop’ I say, ‘so when do I need to come in?’  ‘Now’ is the response.

Oh, that sounds serious I think.  I hang up and think about how I’m going to tell Phil.  As you will recall, he is very squeamish, particularly about anything to do with blood and I needed him to drive me to the hospital, calmly!  Luckily Tom had driven us to Bungay so he had a while to get his head around it before he actually had to drive.

I just said, ‘that was Dr Alexander, the scan has shown a blood clot so we have to go to the hospital to get some drugs to sort it out’.  ‘OK. says Phil ‘when?’  ‘Now’ I reply as casually as I can.  Poor Tom jumped to attention as if he’d had an electric shock!

Tom asked me a couple of questions about it as we were driving back but I told him I thought it was best that we didn’t talk about it until we got back home!

When we arrived at the hospital, we were checked in then waited what seemed like half an hour but was actually 5 minutes.  We are taken to a part of the wing we hadn’t been in before where it was explained that the way to disperse the clot is to inject a drug called Fragmin, that’s ok I think, I don’t have a problem with injections.  The nurse continues… daily, probably for up to 6 months!!  WHAT?!! inject myself?!! Then the nurse’s phone rang and she had to take the call.  I was thinking I’m not sure I can inject myself, I said to Phil ‘do you think you could inject me?’. He said ‘yes, if I can do it in the back of your neck whilst you’re eating!!’  (For a bit of background, Munch our cat has diabetes and we have to inject him with insulin twice a day, and that’s how we do it!)

Anyway, it turns out it comes in prefilled syringes and it just goes into a pinch of fat on my tummy (no lack of resource there 😉 ).  It is still a bit weird pushing a syringe into yourself, although that bit didn’t hurt, depressing the plunger was harder, you feel the drug going in like a wasp sting but it’s soon over.  You can opt to have a nurse come to the house to administer it on a daily basis but I think we’ll be ok.  We were packed off with our sharps bin and 10 filled syringes to get us started.

Once again, I had no symptoms!

When we got home, we stood in the kitchen and hugged.  ‘Wow, that was a bit scary’ I said, ‘that was terrifying’ Phil said.  I’m not going to complain about waiting; at least for a little while!

Talk to you soon

Lots of love Mand xxx

His n Hers Sharps bins (Munchie’s is the small one!)