Perspective

I've made a mistake with my blog posts today. I described Kay's condition as "critical". In fact I just discovered that she has spent most of the day classified as being in "acute danger". Her condition has only just been reduced to "critical". Acute danger means that we had to be with her every minute, for obvious reasons I think. Critical means that we're allowed an hour or two off.

In the course of the years of Kay's fight with leukemia and its consequences I've had conversations with doctors and seen expressions in their faces that I have interpreted as "dire". But today I had a a couple of conversations that take the biscuit c.q. win the cigar in terms of dire:

1) When I arrived this morning I immediately saw that Kay's numbers were worse. I asked to talk to the duty doctor and he told me that they were of the opinion that she would need to be intubated pretty much immediately. He also told me in a round about way that this was going to be a very risky procedure that she might not survive. I asked if I should get Marion and he said very firmly, Yes. This is a conversation that I don't want to ever repeat.

2) A little later the head of the IC arrived. He took me on one side and told me in no uncertain terms that a) intubating Kay was likely to kill her and b) that once on ventilation it was pretty unlikely that she would come off it. He literally said that "In the ic unit we go for very small chances and we'll do our best in this case". His face was worse, a mask of professional detachment that said everything I needed (or rather, didn't need) to know.

3) The Prof of Oncology turned up to support us, the gentle man. We discussed the situation with him, but frankly, we're way beyond oncology now. But I asked him what was going on, what would happen. He replied that they would have to see how Kay responded but that at some point they would have to assess whether it was reasonable to continue treatment, whether her system could take any more. Again, the solid poker face that said everything. Last chance saloon with the odds stacked against us.

So far Kay has beaten the odds. But she's still in critical condition and we have a very long way to go before we're even back to where we were at the beginning of this week. The consequences for her body of all the aggressive medicine is unknown but far reaching. For instance, she's on morphine. She's pumped so full of fluid that her face looks like she's been 57 rounds with Mike Tyson. It will be a long time before the consequences of these things have been worked out. Then there's the effect on her bone marrow. That's easy. She's getting every antibiotic and antifungal medicine on the books. So at the end of this she'll have no bone marrow left.

Thus, even though she's been downgraded from acute to critical, don't get your hopes up.