No ambulance available!!! - To tell the truth, I knew I wasn't well at Monkey World but as it had taken so long to organise, I wasn't going to cry off. I went to bed Saturday night exhauseted and feeling a bit as if I was going to get flu. I wasn't surprised - the zometa (bone building drug) can do that. My mouth had also become so sore and where there wasn't a mouth ulcer there was redness so all in all I felt bad. I woke up at 2am feeling hot - actually boiling was more like it!! I took my temperature and it was 39 degrees. I couldn't stand up and felt like ****. We called the helpline and unsurprisingly, they said I'd have to go in. There was no way at that point that I could get out of bed let alone get downstairs and into a car. We called an ambulance and was told it would be about an hour!! Saturday night - of course - drunks and fight victims get priority over someone with on chemo with a high temperature!! After about half an hour, I felt no better and so told Hubby to phone back and tell them I was worse and had chest pain which he did and hey presto an ambulance came. They didn't ask where my chest pain was and we didn't tell them it was over my scar area but where needs must .............
The ambulance journey was very bumpy. If you are in an ambulance with a broken bone, it must be awful. I felt I was being flung all over the place. The crew said I was the first genuinely ill person they had seen all night. As usual, by the time I was in hospital, my temperature had come down and the junior doctors couldn't find any veins. After about 3 attempts he succeeded but was unable to get a cannula in to get a drip up. I wasn't bothered by this stage as I was feeling better.
The hospital stay was quite uneventful apart from having an ECG and its result. I suppose this was the penalty for telling them I had chest pain. Sunday night about 10pm, the junior doctor came to ask me if my previous ECGs had been normal. To the best of my knowledge, I wasn't aware of any problem. I was tired so put his strange comment to the back of my mind. In the morning, I saw another junior doctor who showed me the ECG. I had inverted T waves in V2 and V3 which was very odd as it can be a sign of a heart attack. I asked him what it meant and he thought that maybe I'd had a heart attack in the past but wasn't very bothered. I felt very worried but then remembered that both herceptin and epirubicin can cause heart problems so feel this is the most likely cause.
I came home monday evening. My ususal crowd of helpers all had their mobile phones off or where uncontactable so couldn't get a lift home. Do you think they did this on purpose???? Poor hubby had to come out with the children through rush hour. It was a real question of getting the timing right as AJ and Woody were swimming with the Beavers at 6pm so it was a quick Burger King and off to drop them at the pool.
Nothing like getting back to normality