T+26: An Extremely Strange Day

As Douglas Adams once wrote, postponing revealing the end of a story causes stress and is unhealthy. Therefore I shall jump straight to the end of today's events and say that we're now at home and Kay is tucked up in her own bed. But how this came about is somewhat less than simple.

Once I heard from Marion that we were sat to go home, I started packing everything up in the McD room and loading up the car. It seemed strange to me that Kay had so quickly got over the nausea after having suffered from it for more than a week. But that is indeed what seemed to have happened. I got to Kay's room around lunchtime. She was still in bed and still very flat, complaining of feeling very tired but no nausea. Also her blood pressure was on the high side. At that point we were waiting for a transfusion of platelets to start. Once the transfusion was running I started to ferry Kay's stuff back to the car and Marion chased up Kay's medicines and various other things.

You wouldn't believe how much stuff we have accumulated in 6 weeks. It took three trips before everything was loaded. After I returned from the 1st trip, Kay said that she need a wee. As she sat on the pot she started complaining of pain in her tummy. But she said that it was a different sort of pain, a stabbing feeling in the area of her stomach. The pain rapidly grew extreemly bad, Kay was lying on the bed screaming in agony. We rang for the nurse and I must admit that I felt very panicky. Just as the nurse arrived Kay suddenly threw up, violently and the NG tub came out again. This carried on for a few minutes and left Kay quite exhausted and Marion & I wondering what the hell was going on.

Kay fell asleep pretty quickly and a short while later the duty doctor turned up to check her out. She couldn't find anything and came to no particular conclusion but said that she would talk to the duty oncologist. So we waited and wonder whether we would be allowed to go home, whether in fact we should go home. A while later the oncologist turned up and we had a chat with her. She was not to concerned about Kay's state. She thought that the pain, sickness and high blood pressure might be related to the concentration of cyclosporine in Kay's blood. She theorized that possibly the dosage of cyclosporine had been increased too quickly and decided that they would take a look at Kay's blood to be sure. But in principle, if Marion & I were OK with it, we could still go home. I admit that I had cold feet about the idea, but after a chat the specialist suggested that we be initially allowed home "on leave", meaning that a bed would be kept available for us for a few days. Also we would be expected back on Friday for a routine blood test and possibly another platelet transfusion.

We returned to Kay and explained to her what had been agreed. She wanted a shower before going home, but complained that she felt very weak and could barely stand up and walk to the shower. She appeared to be very weak and her leg muscles looked rather atrophied. The specialist returned a short while later and check Kay over and explained to her (again) that she was satisfied and that there was a bed for her if anything went wrong. So that was finally it.

The last nasty job was to refit the NG tube. While Marion sorted this out, I took another load of stuff back to the car, checked out of the McD house and then moved the car to the main entrance of the hospital. I returned just in time to have missed all the staff saying bye-bye to Kay.

She was given a trophy for completing the treatment, which she's displaying in the photo above. We then piled out to the car (with another load of stuff) and then we were off home.

Kay fell asleep pretty quickly and woke up just before we get home. At home, she ran into the house and started searching for the cats, Charlie in particular. After that she headed into the garden and insisted on playing some football firstly with Marion and then with me. After that she was busy doing this and that until Natasha arrived home from hockey training. Nattie brought the rest of Kay's team with her, so Kay went out to the front gate and, at a distance, had a quick chat with her team mates.

Later we sat down to eat and Kay even managed to join in, although she eat very little of course. Still, I'm stunned. I started wondering if we'd brought the right child home. The sick, weak and tired Kay from the afternoon had vanished and in her place was a child who ate, kicked a mean football and went up/down stairs without showing any sign of weakness.

I'll put some more photos of all this up tomorrow, but for now I'm glad just to be hanging on the sofa at home with Kay & Nattie tucked up in bed upstairs.