We’re back up and running…

…well the broadband is!

I am feeling much better, I had a bit of a panic on Saturday morning.  After a pain-free day on Friday and an encouraging chat with my doctor about the new potential alternatives to the daily injections of blood thinners, I woke at around 04:00 with pain in my side again.  The painkillers had worn off but I could also feel some rattling which made me think that the infection was still there.  I knew that I was due to take my last antibiotic that morning and was concerned that if the infection had not cleared up I may end up in the state I was in last Saturday and I really didn’t want to go there again!

I called the acute oncology team and luckily, I spoke to Hannah who had admitted me last week.  She said that it sounded like I may need some more antibiotics and could come into the hospital but would have to go through the protracted weekend admissions process again and it may be easier to see the out of hours GP.  I said I’d give it a go.

Our GP surgery is part of a group for out of hours support.  We had never used the service before but it was very efficient and I was in Long Stratton seeing a doctor by 10am.  He was excellent, asked loads of question to understand my history and listened to my rattling lung.  He concluded that the rattle was not infection but associated with the clot and it was just the pain from the clot that needed a bit more control.  I had explained that the orimorph I have was not getting rid of the pain, so he prescribed tramadol one or two tablets that can be taken every 4 hours to fill in the gaps where the ibuprofen is wearing off before I can take another.

As I said before, the anti-inflammatory action of the ibuprofen is what seems to really help with the pain.  The doctor did warn me that the tramadol could cause nausea… he wasn’t kidding!  I was not concerned about nausea because I have a well established method for dealing with that… eating!  I had not counted on this nausea being different.  It is somehow more bilious and eating does not help, in fact yesterday I threw up again.  I hate throwing up.  I’m not taking any more tramadol!

Yesterday morning I had a lovely and very timely call from Pat my Red Arc nurse.  We hadn’t spoken for a while and as always she actively listened and helped me rearrange my thoughts 🙂  She also gave me some advice about the pain relief and suggested I could have a go with paracetamol instead of the tramadol in the gaps which seems to be working.  I did have some pain when I woke this morning but I slept until about 06:00 so that was awesome!

I do have nausea again this morning though and I don’t know why.  I expect it will be gone tomorrow 😉  I had stopped eating too much citrus as someone had told me that was a good thing to do.  I couldn’t find out why and had assumed that it was to do with sensitivity in the stomach as I went through chemo so I started eating them again this week – they really are at their best at this time of year and I had been craving the freshness of flavour… I think I’ll take a couple of days without eating one and see if that makes a difference.  I can’t think of any other changes  I’ve made to my diet.

I have been taking it really easy to allow my body to recover.  Phil’s Mum and Sister are coming to stay today having recovered from their ‘flu’ bug so we will have a nice relaxed few days with them.

At last, it seems that the weather had finally caught up with itself; we had a splattering of snow on Saturday night and it remained cold on Sunday although it has warmed up a bit now – I took this photo on Sunday morning.

In other news, I am getting in touch with my inner primate.  My hair regrowth is coming on apace and I have ‘fur’ for want of a better word, growing all over, nice!

Talk to you soon

Lots of love Mand xxx