Please accept my apologies in the blog post delay. I have not been feeling too well ☹
In the days following my second Chemo session I began to feel much less nauseated and as my appetite improved so did my energy levels. Three days after the treatment I was feeling relatively energetic and my husband and I went out for a drive that morning.
When we returned home I did feel tired so I decided to rest in bed for a few hours. However, by 7pm I was feeling weird. I was so HOT. Craig came to check how I was and couldn’t figure out why I was so warm. We took my temperature as we had been advised to. It was 37.9c a little high so he opened the window to cool the room down, he covered me in cold flannels and replaced the duvet with a light sheet.
20 minutes later … NO difference, my temperature continued to increase to 38.3c. It was now 9pm on a Friday night. He was very worried about me, I was quite delirious apparently. He made the call to the emergency Chemo line. They took all of the relevant details from him and advised that I be brought straight to A+E.
We had an emergency bag packed for just this occasion, so a quick check of it and we were off. On arrival at A+E Craig went in to register me with reception. It isn’t ideal to sit in a busy waiting room with lots of sick people when your immune system is already depleted.
Once registered I was escorted straight to a consultation room to be triaged; I had my blood pressure, heart rate and temperature checked and they took a brief medical history.
From here I was transferred straight into ‘Resus’. They had no single clinical room so there was nowhere to isolate me other than Resus.
There was one other patient there, however they were being transferred onto a ward, so we had resus to ourselves…for a while.
The nursing and medical staff were excellent. They took bloods and a urine sample to check for any signs of infection that could have caused my temperature spike. They started me on IV antibiotics and a saline drip as a precaution.
My temperature had lowered but they wanted to minimise the risk of an infection developing, I was so tired and drowsy. I slept intermittently.
My bloods came back ....normal, although I scored exceptionally high on my white blood cell count. As much as I wanted to get over 100% on a test for once in my life, I had to explain that I was actually cheating due to my white blood cell booster earlier in the week … darn it!!!
Over the next while my obs were taken and my temperature returned to normal.
We were given Tea, toast and Jam as it was late and the length of time we were there. Nice bonus!!
Whilst we were in resus, a 16 year old who had been found unconscious on the railway tracks (due to buying illegal drugs) was brought in by ambulance. Apparently the 2nd time this week. To be shortly followed by his friend in the same situation. Both were abusive, difficult and borderline violent. Not a pleasant experience and very eye opening for us both. But it does go to show what A & E staff have to cope with.
We had been there for about 5 hours when all of the test results came back normal…...The doctor said and I quote ‘you seem quite sensible so I think we will send you home’. I think I will quote that on my CV in future lol!
The relief was amazing, it was our first wedding anniversary the next day so I didn’t want to be stuck in hospital… at 3am Craig drove me home. For the rest of that day I felt so tired…typically I bruised very badly from the cannula in my hand.
Our wedding anniversary was rather uneventful in the end, we were both exhausted. So it consisted of sofa surfing, eating and sleep. But at least we were together…
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