T+110: Home and Away

Kay got to go home for Sunday and Monday, another brief but welcome break from a too long stay in hospital. She rode her new bike briefly but spent a lot of the time at home sleeping.

Unfortunately on Monday she started to feel nauseous and first thing on Tuesday was sick. The symptoms associated with the nausea were different than she has previously experienced -yes, we now able to discern different flavours of nausea - this time it was a constant feeling, not one that built up during the day. I had to take her back to the hospital for 9am, so we decided not to pump her full of medicine before the trip, not least because I didn't want the inside of my car coating in a mixture of exotic medications.

When we got to the hospital Kay was extremely unhappy and, frankly, unwell. She was in a terrible mood and refused to cooperate with just about anything. This, combined with the need to start the BK virus treatment, meant that we ended up running way behind with her medication. In fact that whole day was one big struggle with Kay's nausea and bad temper. At the end of my day there - Marion arrived to take over in the early evening - my nerves were jangling.

Kay however had done me a great favour, she had saved the worst for Marion. She was sick several times during the evening and Marion ended up having a worse time of it than I did. During the course of the night Marion too started feeling nauseous and developed a splitting headache. On the way here this evening I've developed a headache that has hardly been touched by Ibuprofen and I'm now starting to feel my stomach as well. We also heard that one of the other Mum's got something similar. So the provisional conclusion is that maybe there's some kind of bug floating around, though it would be worrying to think that it was working its way round the ward.

Kay & Marion spent most of the day today horizontal and sleeping. In the afternoon they both seem to have brightened up. Kay no longer feels nauseous, she just has some pain left over in her tummy. Marion was active enough to try and do some shopping. But then she was let down by her car, which refused to start. She ended up having to phone Volvo customer care and within 10 minutes the local Volvo garage was with her. The car it seems has developed some fault that involved it being towed away and Marion having to arrange to get a hire car. Whoopee.

But then just think, normally at this time of the year we would be in France and we would have had to do all that in French, whilst suffering the awful weather that they have there in August. And I don't know about Marion but I've forgotten my French since we were forced to abandon lessons last October. So, we have to consider ourselves to be very fortunate, stuck here in sunny Holland in a hospital room at a constant 23C. Whoopee again.

On the medical side everyone seems generally content with Kay's state. The acute BK virus symptoms have abated. Yesterday Kay's white cell count had reached 0.7, higher than in a long time but still damned low. Essentially what we're now waiting for is the boost transplant. Then we hope that the recovery process will accelerate. The other good news is that her medication load has been decreased. Blood pressure and bladder medication has been stopped. We have also agreed that if everything remains the same, Kay will be able to go home every Sunday and Monday for the foreseeable future (ie next Sunday & Monday, maybe. Ha!)

So, all in all, things have been worse. My laptop just told me that I have 14 mins of battery time left, so I'm posting this without re-reading or spell checking it - too lazy to get the power supply out.