It’s been a nervous 24 hours here since the cold reared its head and it was made all the worse last night after I spotted a problem with the line into my port through which I give my IV’s.
I noticed while I was doing my afternoon dose that the line had gone a little cloudy, but didn’t think much of it. By the evening dose, it hadn’t cleared up (as sometimes happens) and had a couple of distinct breaks in the cloudiness which started to concern me slightly.
Anyone with a port-a-cath will tell you how protective they are of them, not least people in my position as the loss of use of a post through breakage or – God forbid – infection is a serious problem: replacing ports is not the kind of thing that can be done on a whim and while it isn’t what you’d term “major” surgery, it’s certainly more than most doctors would like to be performing on someone with end-stage lung disease.
With all these thoughts running through my head, I took the executive decision to not give my next dose of IV’s until I’d been to Oxford to get it looked at and replace the needle and line for a new one.
After a late-night phone call with Mum, we hastily arranged a lunch-time pick up when she finished work (trampling all over any other plans for the day she may have had) and I settled down for the night after pumping another mini-monsoon of First Defence up my nose and downing a handful of Vitamin C caps to try to ward the cold off, too.
For once I slept absolutely beautifully. Without my morning dose of dugs to do, I slept clean through till 10am, when K’s alarm woke me. Lucky it did, really, because it didn’t wake her, so she’d have been in a spot if it weren’t for my eagle-eyed sense of hearing. (Yeah, I know, that confused me, too.) That said, I’m sure she’ll jump to defend herself having already been out of bed once to answer the door to a nice delivery man.
A quick call to my team in Oxford and the ever-brilliant Cass opened up a slot for me early in the afternoon. I checked with Mum and we were all good to shoot on over once she’d got her morning at work out of the way.
I got up slowly and rumbled around the house, hesitantly waiting for the cold to hit with full force, but nothing really materialised. My sinuses were much less clogged and though I struggled a little with my physio first thing, I managed to clear a good bit and get my nebs done before Mum arrived. I grabbed some Lucozade for the journey and hopped in the car, leaving K at home for a study session with a college-mate.
Cass looked me over and gave my port a quick once-over and agreed that it didn’t seem to be anything too untoward, although she’d never seen anything like it either. She swapped my needle out and reaccessed me, giving it a good flush to check it out and all seemed well. We agreed that although the cold doesn’t seem to have taken hold, an extra week on the IVs wasn’t going to do any harm. I can’t have been there more than 20 minutes before Mum whisked me off again, but it was worth the 3 hour round trip for the piece of mind it gave me.
We got home just before half-three and I connected up my afternoon dose of IVs and hit the sack to recharge my batteries. I woke an hour later feeling really quite energised, hit my nebs and did some physio before dinner.
I think – touch wood – I’ve managed to ward the cold off, so am hoping that another good night’s rest and another day not doing too much should keep me back on the well-wagon and I can look forward to another weekend with family and friends.
Off to catch tonight’s episode of Heroes now – we’re all addicted and we’re only a few weeks from the end of the season! Hooray!