On Thursday and Friday, Alex had been feeling very well. One big adjustment now was the huge amount of tablets he needed to take in order to keep the pain at a manageable level. We ended up with a very colourful spreadsheet that enabled us to make sure we remembered where we were up to and could keep track easily of any time changes made.
After such a long time in hospital and mostly away from his business, there was plenty of catching up to do. Any heavy work was now completely out of the question and it's great that I can help where needed. So I had a quick crash course. Every job has it's own shorthand. For over 20 years, RTW for me was Round the World and then it changed to Return to Work. In that same job, I became what I laughingly dubbed a TLA Specialist (to the Eagles, this is a Three Letter Acronym). Suddenly, I am now in a world where Pink is not shortened to P. For now, E is Pink; P is Green; N is Lilac and D is Yellow. Hmmmm ...
Yesterday morning though, Alex woke at 2:30am with excrutiating pain in a new area in his back. Hours perched on the lounge did nothing to ease it, nor did the tablets. As the day progressed, we kept hoping that the tablets would kick in and the pain would dissipate. It was quite serious because he couldn't walk upright, and it was incredibly painful to move at all. It took ages to get him out of bed and to the lounge in the first instance and virtually impossible to move from there.
Alex of course was hoping that he would not have to go back to hospital. But after another serious attack, I called an ambulance. The 2 guys arrived and took a while to stabilise him at home. After a while, he was able to be transferred to the ambulance and I had my first trip in the front of an ambulance.
We did have a bit of a laugh that this time it was Alex arriving at RPA Emergency in an ambulance, so now we're even!
A few hours in Emergency, another X-ray and lots of morphine. The general prognosis was that the cancer has grown/moved and has hit a nerve. This scarily makes sense.
Late last night he was readmitted and thankfully he now is in a private room, with regular morphine to keep the pain at a bearable level.
No comments:
Post a Comment