A day from hell

A day from hell

The day from hell started the night before in the ER sitting for 6 hours among a colorful assortment of folks packed into a small waiting room with a dirty floor- the scenes icing on the cake was a homeless man and his dog seemingly well known by the ER staff …. and another fellow wearing an artic coat 3 times too large for him while he toddled around backward in a transport wheelchair while he held the brake. What a damn site.

Finally, we scored a corner with a power outlet and I got Cathy’s pure wick machine going. We fit right in.

Around 0200 we scored a room in a packed hallway. Old artic coat man had a bed against the wall just outside, so we got the pleasure of even more of his company and entertainment as he heckled pretty nurses who walked by.

In our little cubby, it was no party - hours on hours of trying to get pain under control. The battle only interrupted by the occasional trip to the CT scan. By late morning, Oncology makes their rounds and forms up the pain plan & some more diagnostics  because they have seen something that needs further evaluation. By late morning her nurse gives her meds and she is off for another CT. I run to the hotel for a shower and clean dry socks.

Back by lunch and it’s time to move to another room. Nurse Alicia in C Pod was about the only bright light this day- a kind nurse who genuinely seems to care and went out of her way to make her comfortable. Alicia and I finally got pain in the box, I think.  The supporting staff was awesome, and the room was large and clean. And the nurse cared. Things are good. Maybe we can make it thru this day.

No. Oncology team comes in with hat in hand and briefs us that there has been a problem with T cell shipment to manufacture and the cell harvest will have to be redone on Monday and we cannot start KD pace till we get another round of tcells. You can imagine how high in the rafters I was hearing this news. Unbelievable.

We finally get past this bad news and Alicia and I get more practice on pain management while we wait for MRI at 1900. By 6 a fella shows up and says it’s time to go upstairs to your real room…. Just when I was getting to know the nurses here.

 A small army of nurses and transfer to their bed is complete and we are off. Luckily Alicia’s best friend is on 10th floor and Alicia made a call. Friends - it’s good to have some.

We roll into new floor and shift change is happening - yeah. Tess, night nurse and Nadia - Alicia’s friend rolls her into a big room and starts to work. No sooner than they get going - MRI shows up. We have about 2 hours of pain relief left on Cathy’s clock - so we are on the clock. The nurse cut their work short and we are off again to MRI land. 

By 2050, techs come out to get me and are calling for nurses. You can’t really appreciate crazy until you have witnessed my wife in real pain. I guess we really did not have 2 hours left afyer all. Cathy has bone cancer and is laying on a hard plastic narrow table . I can only imagine. 

She is insisting on sitting up, flailing arms and fighting me . If we let her sit up, we have to start over. If we can keep her on the table it will be over in 25 minutes. I think the nurse is coming . We’ll keep her on the table . Nurse shows just in time - a-little juice to bring her out of the rafters. Ok - that buys us a half hour  - get to work boys.

 Finally, by 2100 ish & we have her back in the room. Ok next pain med is at 2200. Let me lay down a minute while Cathy is sleeping…. It was a good nap, paid for with a night filled with a series of 2 hour blocks of crazy. It seems the night nurse is missing the next dose of meds by half hour at least so we shoot behind the duck all night long. “I was late giving her meds, my bad”  Really? My bad? This is Vanderbilt sister - you just can’t say my bad. Good nurses - they are a treasure.

Maybe tomorrow will be better.