Pick yourself up.... Dust yourself off.... And go again

 I’m currently lying in a hospital bed in the critical dependency unit at Clatterbridge relieved to be here and reflectively amused. Dropping off to sleep last night my phone rang late. Both kids in house, tick. I checked phone and it was a call from Clatterbridge at 10.30pm at night. What on earth was going on? Pretty sure my consultant wasn’t calling with his bedtime cocoa in hand. ‘Hi Mrs Miln, I’m a registrar from Clatterbridge. Can I ask you have you got pains in your chest or are you struggling to breathe?’ ‘Well up until 10 seconds ago no! Now I feel like you’ve just sat on my chest and have your hands round my throat. Why?’ ‘We’ve picked up from your scan Thursday you have a blood clot on your lung and we need to treat it urgently to get rid of it. 3 months of injections.’ A discussion around avoiding Chester A&E ensued and I said it’s fine we’ll come straight to Clatterbridge now. On reflection and only on reflection as I’ve had a sleepless night thinking about the lit...

As you all know I’m a pretty positive person but the last 4 weeks have been horrendous. Staying on treatment and not missing one is such a psychological roller coaster. Unfortunately I turned up for my day 8 second chemo, bloods were good but I had a temperature. I say a temperature, just 0.3 over! Temperatures on chemo are a no no so within 10 minutes I’m sat on a ward with IV antibiotics pumping into me. So after taking bloods etc they couldn’t find an infection and I was so frustrated but they still wouldn’t give it to me. The next two weeks we’re a bit of a haze. I struggled with the effects of day 1 chemo, I was down in the dumps, I had gastritis, thrush, loads of tablets to take and I didn’t feel like I was getting anywhere. In the middle of it all I ended up for an evening in A&E after my vision started blurring and I was struggling to keep on my feet. After another drip of antibiotics and fluids they established I was dehydrated so easily remedied. In amongst all this the p...