The 18th & 19th; Now I am sitting in a hospital bed.
The 18th of December. Guess who's back in hospital? Lucky me. Having added up all the symptoms, I decided that actually, going to A&E this morning was going to be necessary. If I do have a pulmonary embolism, or need inflating, we needed to get the ball rolling asap.
So after breakfast and coffee, Daddy brought Mommy and I down to the QE and here I will stay tonight. We arrived at 10.56, got triaged and had my obs done. My high heart rate concerned people despite me explaining it was normal for me. I spent most of my five hours sitting facing a corner in a sub-wait so I was exposed to as few germs from coughing people as possible. I had a minuscule amount of blood taken, enough for a D-dimer (a test to indicate a thrombosis) and saw a doctor who decided to admit me for the tests that I need. They'll want to do a CT scan which I can't have because I'm allergic to the dye, so if a PE seems likely, I'll have the one I had before with the radioactive gas.
I finished my book (Cats Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut), and eventually got a bed on CDU at half four. I filled in a form, was brought some dinner of chicken in a creamy sauce with green beans and mash which was actually edible, then we sat and waited for Daddy to come with my overnight bag.
Once he arrived, a doctor followed shortly after. He's from the liver team so has heard of me, and we went through all my symptoms and history again. He was mad that I hadn't had a chest x-ray yet as he could hear prominent crackles, but it's done now. I'm high risk because I've had a PE before, and my veins have been inflated before, and this doctor is sensible so I'm confident things will happen tomorrow. Hopefully it's simple. PE and clexane please.
The 19th of December.
Happy 9th Marrowversary to me! Nine years ago today I was sitting in a hospital bed, having Christine's stem cells transfused into my bloodstream; now I am sitting in a hospital bed waiting for another scan.
The doctor (Matt) came back last night to say that there was a shadow on my lung, so he wanted an ultrasound today to see if there was any fluid there. A porter came for me at half nine, but then we had to wait for a transfer nurse. After half an hour of him angrily pacing, a woman came up from ultrasound to help. For some reason, I had to go down on my bed, so two people were required. Anyway, a man scanned my right hand side and found no fluid so that's good. I returned to CDU, where I was seen by the doctors who have now decided that because my arm is still swollen, they want a scan of that, so I've been waiting for that all day.
Mommy came in with some lunch for me, and we sat around some more. Dr. Thompson decided to drop in to say hello and take the piss a bit because he is awful (but we love him). He feels that if there's no clot in my arm, there's no need to go hunting for one elsewhere, so tomorrow hopefully I'll just have my arm scanned and then go home on clexane and co-amoxiclav. Please!
Gareth had been in to visit the liver team so popped down to say hello and ended up staying for nearly two hours! Still, we had nice chats about Keith and the liver team and Christmas. I think it served as a nice distraction for us both.
I also had a visit from April who works here and follows me on instagram so I got to put a face to a name!
Loads of new people tonight. Go away.
