T+57: Waiting for T-Cells

This stay in hospital is mind-numbingly boring and therefore probably the most difficult yet. Yesterday Kay developed a light fever, 38.5C, again. She's still on oxygen and in general shows no real sign of improvement. I'm beginning to suspect that we'll not see any sign of improvement until she starts making T-cells, which is probably still many weeks away. However I asked the duty oncologist about it this morning and she said that the biggest issue is Kay's need for oxygen and that in principle she should be able to recover sufficiently not to need it. But I'm unconvinced, it's not clear to me how you can recover from a virus when you're body is not able to produce an anti-virus defence. But I guess time will tell. For now time is passing very slowly indeed.

Yesterday afternoon Kay complained that she felt sick. During the evening this feeling increased, so much so that she slept in fits and starts. Around 12.30 this morning she started crying from the pain. The doctor was called and she prescribed a painkiller. But whil this was being prepared I talked to Kay and told her that perhaps she should consider what Shrek always says: "Better out than in!". Kay, who had been lying down, decided to be brave and sat up. Within seconds she started being sick. But is was a very odd kind of sickness, initially nothing came out. After a few body wretching spasms she brought up stuff that had the consistancy of peanut butter! I've never seen anything like it and neither had the nurse. It was obvious that this stuff had been lying in Kay's stomach for hours causing all the pain. The moment it was out she began to feel much better. Unfortunately the effort of ridding herself of it also brought the NG tube out as well.

The question was, and remains, what could cause the liquid feed to turn into sludge? No-one has any idea. The preferred theory is that she's under hydrated - her urine has been rather dark of late - and that maybe the fluid is being absorbed first by her body, leaving the solid content to coagulate. Today I've been giving her extra water with her meds and she will shortly be put on an infusion. But really this is a shot in the dark. Again, we'll see. Since she's completely dependent on this stuff it would be useful to find out what's causing the problems.

But apart from the latter moment of 'excitement' there's really nothing happening. I remember an episode of "The Young Ones" called "Boring", in which everything they did turned out to be "completely boring", (which became something of a catch phrase for us afterwards). That's how this feels, but it seems to extend to everything, even as far as South Africa. Last night I tried to relieve the boredom by watching the England match... enough said I think. This afternoon I switched my allegiance to my adopted nation, but even though Holland won 1:0, it was still as boring as the England match to the extent that I dosed off somewhere around the end of the first half. I think that the wait for T-cells is going to be a very long and tedious one.