I normally try and follow the same routine on the weekends as far as the blog goes.
Update Thursday night, then update again Sunday night. That way I'm all caught up before the new working week starts and any strange goings on get picked up along the way.
You'll also be aware if you follow this evolving masterpiece, that weekends tend to go a bit haywire for no apparent reason - or nothing apparent on Friday's anyway.
This last weekend started no differently than the others. Throat had a bit of a niggle, but not really any worse than a normal head cold. Two weeks of treatment down and had caught up with Tatiana on Friday to sort out some life insurance things.
As in the past, Saturday morning was to be the litmus test of sorts. Woke up to the mother of all dry mouths. Tried drinking water, but that too was proving to be a challenge. Ended up taking me a couple of hours just to get the throat working well enough to allow me to swallow some panadol. Continued efforts to drink water had minimal success and by the time Sharon & Phil arrived to do the section, speaking was becoming somewhat of a challenge all to itself.
I read all the bits & pieces of literature I've received along the way, and nothing specifically dealt with this. Sure, there is mention of the issues that normally arrive week 4-5, but this is only week 2, and things had been fine Friday.
Decided to see how things settle on Saturday and would go to hospital on Sunday if there was no marked improvement.
Cutting to the chase, there wasn't any improvement - in fact you'd probably argue it had gotten worse. Late start (feeling like rubbish - broken sleep, etc) and Ruth S and I are off on our hospital odyssey.
Arrived 3pm "ish", they had a quick look at me, rang the on-call oncologist and explained my situation, then sent me to the waiting room to...wait.
Seems there is only 1 oncology on-call at the weekend and the ward was full, so they'd come and see me when they could. Ruth S and I pondered what would have happened if I was running a temp (no worry - had taken it before leaving) and we settled in for the wait.
I will at this time just drop in the little gem that this is being written from memory on Thursday. Started around 9am, but have struggled to make real progress due to medical breaks and the fact I keep falling asleep.
At some stage they called us in and took us round into ED proper - figured we might as well wait in some degree of comfort. We worked it out later that we sat there for 2 hours before so much as a nurse came and talked to us. Once Ruth S made this point, we got pretty good service, except for the ED doctor who seems to make an effort to avoid us.
End result - we left just after 11pm armed with scripts for morphine elixir and paracetemol elixir. Seems can also give the difflam spray a go. Morphine to be taken every 2 hours, paracetemol every 4-6. Don't see how this is going to help with already screwed sleep patterns.
We decided Ruth would drive me to the RT appointment on Monday and we'd stay home for the day to try and catch up on sleep, etc.
Best laid plans and all that.... to be continued
I read all the bits & pieces of literature I've received along the way, and nothing specifically dealt with this. Sure, there is mention of the issues that normally arrive week 4-5, but this is only week 2, and things had been fine Friday.
Decided to see how things settle on Saturday and would go to hospital on Sunday if there was no marked improvement.
Cutting to the chase, there wasn't any improvement - in fact you'd probably argue it had gotten worse. Late start (feeling like rubbish - broken sleep, etc) and Ruth S and I are off on our hospital odyssey.
Arrived 3pm "ish", they had a quick look at me, rang the on-call oncologist and explained my situation, then sent me to the waiting room to...wait.
Seems there is only 1 oncology on-call at the weekend and the ward was full, so they'd come and see me when they could. Ruth S and I pondered what would have happened if I was running a temp (no worry - had taken it before leaving) and we settled in for the wait.
I will at this time just drop in the little gem that this is being written from memory on Thursday. Started around 9am, but have struggled to make real progress due to medical breaks and the fact I keep falling asleep.
At some stage they called us in and took us round into ED proper - figured we might as well wait in some degree of comfort. We worked it out later that we sat there for 2 hours before so much as a nurse came and talked to us. Once Ruth S made this point, we got pretty good service, except for the ED doctor who seems to make an effort to avoid us.
End result - we left just after 11pm armed with scripts for morphine elixir and paracetemol elixir. Seems can also give the difflam spray a go. Morphine to be taken every 2 hours, paracetemol every 4-6. Don't see how this is going to help with already screwed sleep patterns.
We decided Ruth would drive me to the RT appointment on Monday and we'd stay home for the day to try and catch up on sleep, etc.
Best laid plans and all that.... to be continued
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