78. Pincushion again

It’s been almost a week since the hospital trip.  The anti virals did their job and I really didn’t get any symptoms of covid.  A very slight runny nose every now and again.  I probably coughed a handful of times.  A couple of times I coughed up some nasty stuff.  Saturday, Sunday and Monday nights I did get some fever spikes but panadol brought them down within a few hours.  I was mainly tired but by Tuesday was feeling a bit more like myself. I did a RAT and it was negative.  The anti virals gave me some diarrhoea, or maybe it was the antibiotics.  Or maybe it was just both.  Of course they did!!  Thinking I didn’t have to take the abemaciclib and having a week off of possible poo explosions was wishful thinking.  My poor gut is being abused quite a lot.  The anti virals gave me a chalky metallic taste in my mouth and it reminded me of the chemo.  Not that pleasant.  They also make me feel a bit nauseous sometimes too.  The trade off for not getting serous side effects and possibly needing an ambulance trip #4.  I did have to change my breast surgeon appointment on Monday and my psychologist appointment on Tuesday to a later date though.  I didn’t want to get anyone else sick.  The good thing is it appears that the parents escaped getting covid too.

The GP visit on Wednesday was good.  He checked my vitals.  BP 103/79. O2 97%. 36.3C.  He reads through my hospital discharge letter and looks at my health record to check for the tests he is meant to look at.  They aren’t on there.  He says he’ll get them chased up and if the UTI was resistant to the antibiotics I had been given then he would ring me and give me another script.  He was a bit miffed that the hospital hadn’t done scans on the lumps or checked for blood clots so ordered me a chest CT with contrast, ultrasound doppler on leg and ultrasound on the back lump.  He wrote URGENT on the CT and leg ultrasound referral and said that meant that I get preference.  I called up the Engadine place I’d been to once before. I didn’t want to drive to Miranda again, especially seeing as I do think I got covid there.  Parking can also be annoying.  I’m glad I rang as I had to fast for 2 hours before the CT so was booked in for 3.30pm.  They could also do the ultrasounds as well.

I didn’t have to wait too much past 3.30pm to be called in. The waiting room was mostly empty, it was cool and breezy. I didn’t feel like I would catch anything there.  The staff also were wearing masks here. Made me feel much better.  I probably would’ve gone here for my cheat wall ultrasound except I was told it was better to go to the same place I’d had my original ones as they have all the scans to compare them.  

CT scan first.  The guy asked if I’d had a chest CT with contrast before and I said yes, last year when I had gotten sick and it turned into pneumonia.  He put a cannula in the same spot as the hospital did last weekend.  I did tell him that it had been used and he said it felt ok.  Then he said “I think I’ve hit a valve. I’ll have to put in another cannula so we don’t blow a vein.”  I tell him all the other places I’ve had cannulas and he chose the vein on the top of my hand, below my ring finger.  Left side. I can have blood taken from the right side but I can’t have anything pushed into the right arm due to the no lymph nodes under the arm thing.  He gets this cannula in ok and flushes some saline through.  Says it is working ok.  I say I don’t have any pain for this one.  He leaves the one in the elbow in.  “Are you bleeding?” He suddenly asks.  I don’t know, I’m lying down on a skinny bed masquerading as a pin cushion.  He realises that he has blood on his gloves and then he’d put it on my top.  It’s an old shirt.  I tell him it’s ok.  Inside I am laughing.  I can’t just go and get a cannula and a scan.  Something always happens. I really don’t make these things up but I am glad I am writing them down.  

He goes out of the room and like the other CT scan you have to breath in, hold your breath and then breathe out when the machine tells you.  The bed moves up and down pushing me into and out of the scanner.  Then it happens again but this time with the contrast.  It feels super weird, the hot rush through the torso, down the body and then you feel like you’ve peed your pants.  I hope I didn’t?!?!  No, it’s gone away now.  The guy comes back into the room and says the image isn’t very clear and they need to do it again.  I laugh silently again.  Straightforward tests - never!  He says to breath in, keeping my mouth open and just a gentle breath.  They change the amount of contrast too and how quick it goes in.  The whole thing happens again.  This time the image is better and they think it’ll be ok but will keep the cannula in until the doctor says he is happy with them.  The guy takes out the cannula in my elbow but leaves the ones in my hand.

Then it’s the ultrasounds. I go across the hallway.  She decides to do the back one first.  I’d gotten Mither to draw a circle around it as I know the rooms can be a bit dark.  She liked that.  She puts on the gel, smears it a bit and then presses down a bit harder.   “It’s a lipo….no, what IS that?”  She sounds confused and shows me on the screen that there is some sort of weird looking funnel shape going up to the surface of my back. “Did you get bitten by something?”  I said I didn’t know.  She is still confused and takes some measurements.  There is a bit of fluid in there too.  

With the leg I have to take off my shorts.  This was just like the scan I had on my left leg when Dr Michael was concerned about the varicose vein popping out randomly last year when I was on chemo.  The scan starts way up the top of the leg crease and then little by little all the way to the ankle, checking the veins “wink” when pressed.  No blood clots.  The lump she thinks that is a lipoma but it’s inflamed with some fluid around it.  All done for those scans but I’m not allowed to leave the building until the doctor has cleared my CT scan.  Besides, I still have the cannula in my hand anyway.  

Twice one of the CT technicians come and ask me questions the doctor has requested. Where was the chest pain I had, how long did it last, how many times and how strong have the heart palpitations been, have I been dizzy, what was I doing when I was dizzy….Eventually I’m told that the larger blood vessels appear clear and I can go.  Final reports will be with my GP.  He told me that if there was anything urgent he would call me but if not then I could wait until I see my usual GP on Feb 5th when I got for my next zoladex injection.  So far I haven’t heard anything so that is good news again.  

I had a thought when I wrote my blog post and titled it “good news” a few weeks ago that I may have been tempting fate and how long would the good news last.  Not really pessimistic thinking, more pragmatic. A lot of people said to me “I hope 2024 is going to be so much better than 2023” or that they knew this year would be better.  Someone said when they heard I’d been sick “but this year was meant to be so much better than last year”.  I don’t feel that it is helpful for me to think that way.  This year can’t be the magical year where everything goes back to ‘normal’.  I don’t want to go backwards.  What is normal anyway?  It means and feels differently for each person.  I don’t want to be normal, I just want to be me.  I didn’t quite think that the “good news” post would be followed up by an ambulance to the emergency room post but I did understand that life isn’t always good and that there might have been a slight downer.  This is my normal at the moment.  That normal may change but I think it is good not to get stuck on certain thoughts and just be and feel as needed.  

Outside of the medical stuff that took over my week again I have been moving some more furniture around in my room.  Mither and I decided that the temporary set up of me moving into this room after my little room got flooded twice in 2022 wasn’t really appropriate and that we could make the big room I am in into two “rooms” by moving bookcases and other furniture around.  Slowly things are being moved, boxes are being looked into (after YEARS) and things are being thrown out, donated or kept.  I am looking forward to having a less chaotic space so that I can have a place for my creative ideas, start updating my resume and thinking a bit more about getting into the mindset of a job again.  

I’ve done some slow stitching too.  The weekly stitching from k3nclothtales on YouTube has been very fun to do and last night I finished week 3 and week 4. https://youtu.be/eaclhFZjZBA?si=VJvqoZph1w8mKRSK If anyone wants to have a nice hour relaxing watching and listening to K3n sew. Now I have four 12 inch by 6.5 inch panels and I have been thinking about how I would join them together and which quilt as you got method I would use.  I found an old sheet when going through my stuff and I am considering “putting it in tea” as K3n says.  That could end up being a really cool effect on the fabric and fitting to use it in a K3n project as she puts lots of her fabrics in tea.  

Next Tuesday I will be having my third sewing class with Suzannah at her shop in Sutherland.  I need to do some sewing on my top I am making and cutting out some shorts too.  That is a plan for this weekend.  Any of my sewing projects I put up on instagram if people are interested to see what I’ve been up to.  

Yesterday I had to take my car into the tyre place as I thought there was a slow leak in the front righthand tyre.  It had felt a bit squishy and looked a bit flat during the week.  I’d pumped it up but it was really low again. When I got to the place the lady said “Oh yeah, there is a bolt” and points it out.  It was very obvious so it must’ve been underneath when I had looked before.  20 minutes and it was all fixed.