I spent monday morning with a friend trying to tidy the front room and this time it looked like we'd actually made progress. We found room for AJ's double bass which is quite an achievement in itself!!
As hubby was off, in the afternoon we went into town and bought a few christmas bits and had tea and cakes in John Lewis - 'with the best view over Southampton'. If that's the best view then I dread to think what other views could be like!!!
Monday evening when I was putting the compression bandaging on, I wasn't sure if the top of my arm looked slightly pink but just went to sleep. When I woke up tuesday, it looked a little pink so I put my sleeve on and thought no more about it. The district nurse was, i thought, coming in early to do my dressing on my toe but she didn't turn up till noon. She was rather shocked by how bad my toe was and thought I ought to have more antibiotic. I also showed her my arm which rather shocked me as I now had a 6" red area above my elbow joint and a 3" one below. She arranged for me to see the GP at 430pm. After contemplating this, I then thought I should phone the chemo line which I did and surprise, surprise, they wanted to see me but not till 2pm. Luckily, a friend could take me there but I ended up waiting 2 hours to see a useless SHO who didn't seem to understand why i was so worried and also was not interested in he fact that since I'd had that gastroenteritis illness, I've found swallowing certain foods very painful. In the end, he gave me fluclox at 500mg 4 times a day and said to go home!! Poor hubby had to bring the children over to get me so we went into Burgerking on the way back.
I didn't feel happy about just having fluclox so phoned the GP who thought I should have penicillin as well so now have 2 sorts of antibiotics but orally and I thought when you had lymphoedema and cellulitis, they were supposed to give you IV antibiotics. The docs said they only did that now if you were neutropaenic. We drew round the area and will wait and see what happens next!!
I phoned the secretary to see if the referral to the marsden had been done and it hadn't and she said she had only just recieved the dictaphone tape. That was 12 days after I first saw the consultant about being referred to the marsden so am not happy.
Wednesday - felt very low and couldn't get motivated at all. I sent out an SOS to 3 friends who all came over to help at different times and do different errands for me. Then they took me out for lunch so I had to get dresssed at that point. It was lovely to go out for lunch again though.
I had wrapped up my knitting for a friend to do as I can't do that now cos of my numb fingers. It made me feel very sad as it was yet another sign that my life is ending - this feeling started on monday after I'd thrown away all my university stuff and school governor stuff. It is not being helped by this lack of movement in the referral to the Marsden and being told by the secretary that she will phone me when she comes across this letter. In other words - it felt like she was saying - 'don't keep phoning me cos you're delaying me'. I feel as if I'm on the bottom of the pile and they are in no hurry as i'm incurable.
The only good thing was that the specialist chiropodist clinic phoned and gave me a cancellation appointment for the next day.
Today, I went to the chiropody centre for an assessment and they will take both sides of both of my big toe nails off and chemically treat them so that they don't grow back at the sides. At least, they do it under local anaesthetic as I think it will be so painful. They will probably do this in about 2 weeks.
Have now spoken to chemo clinic and the onc has said he has dicatated the letter it is just a case of the secretary typing it!!
Off to shops now for food and buying pressies for the chemo team etc.