Monday 11 March 2019

58. Another decision

I’ve been plagued with a cold since Friday. It doesn’t comply with normal cold rules - I have a stream of watery fluid if I lean forward and have emptied a whole box of Kleenex Balm tissues as I can no longer risk using the same tissue twice. However, I’m also bunged up, having sneezing jags and occasionally coughs. So, it’s just a cold and my new ear thermometer records temperatures between 36.4 and 36.8C. All good.

Not as far as D is concerned. ‘Have you taken your temperature? What if? What if?’ Aargh.
So I rang the hospital this morning to alert them: I have a stinking cold, a normal temperature but I’m worried about spreading germs to the other patients. What’s the procedure please? After the inevitable request for me to take my temperature again, it was agreed I should come in, they would put me in a side room away from others and a doctor would check me out before going ahead with chemo.

I didn’t even take the lorazepam - what was the point if the doctor said no? So Kiera and I sat in a small room where I could blow my nose to my heart’s content, wait for the blood results (80 minutes?), explain to the Child Doctor that I was happy to have the treatment so long as my blood was up to it (it was) and ask him about my increasingly delicate skin, about which he expressed little concern - it’s all dead anyway, so that’s why it seems to shed excessively with such treatments. Actually I’d been referring to a bleeding mole but I can wait till Friday’s review with Dr U.

Decision? It was easy. If I took a week off, I have another 8 weeks to go. If I had the chemo, I am a  THIRD of the way through stage 2 of the chemotherapy. No brainer to me. Now I just need to find a way to rid myself of this bloody cold!

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