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#15 – Excursion Time

28th April 2019 – Not an ideal start to my Sunday morning when I am woken up at 2.30am with pain in my upper abdomen. I had a new injection last night to boost my White Blood Cell count but apparently that shouldn’t cause any pain. So I took a Targin (long lasting pain medication) and tried to get back to sleep. By 5.30am the pain had worsened so I took a different pain med (Endone) which is meant to work faster to reduce the pain. Unfortunately that didn’t do anything and by 6.30am I was in “Mum’s Ambulance” with Anthony and off to the Emergency Department at the Royal Melbourne Hospital. Considering it was a weekend we were very lucky as there was no one else waiting. Although if there was a wait, I had my EMERGENCY FAST PASS ready to use!

Firstly, my blood pressure and temperature were taken and I was given an IV drip to keep me hydrated. I was then given Morphine and thankfully that dropped my pain level from 8 to 4 pretty quickly and within the hour it had dropped to zero! I also had a chest X-Ray to rule out any heart problems as this can be an issue with cancer patients. I had to have a cannula put in which was annoying – since I have a PICC line already – but I don’t think the staff at Royal Melbourne are familiar with using them. Although they obviously weren’t that great at cannulas too as I wound up very bruised from it. Once the cannula was in, I had a contrast injected and was ready for my CT Scan. Luckily the nurse warned me that I’d have the taste of metal in my mouth and also I’d feel like I was peeing myself during the scan! If they hadn’t pre-warned me, I would’ve been extremely embarrassed when they came to get me off the machine as it honestly felt like I had wet myself 🤦‍♀️

I was then wheeled across to Peter Mac by the worst bed driver in history. I had been feeling nauseous since arriving at the hospital and had dry-reached quite a bit so the constant jerking while being moved was really not enjoyable. He did have to stop and wait a few times for me to potentially vomit though so he probably wanted to get rid of me as quickly as possible… During the day nothing much happened. My obs were checked every few hours but apart from that my pain was completely gone and the nausea was settling, although they still wanted me to stay overnight. I literally didn’t eat anything or drink anything for the entire day which was a little worrying but I just didn’t think I could stomach anything without feeling sick 🤢

At around midnight I was woken to have my obs taken and then again at 4am. The early morning wake up also included the nurse taking about 8 viles of blood for all different tests. In the morning the doctors came and checked up on me and said they weren’t sure why I had been in so much pain. They had seen some of the test results but not all of them so came back around 2pm to update me. The afternoon update was actually from my oncologist so it was good to see her and for her to see me in person. She let me know that my blood tests showed no issues so it wasn’t a cancer related pain and it was a relief to hear that the cancer markers are still dropping! The best guess as to what caused the pain was gastric issues, which in the grand scheme of things is great. There are plenty more horrible reasons that could have caused the pain so I was quite happy to hear that all I need to do next time is try some Mylanta!

After the discussion with my oncologist I got some different medications to take home as the ones I had clearly didn’t work for me. It had been a very emotional couple of days so when we got home we went straight to the couch and cried 😭 It was good to let out all the built up emotions and we both had a great sleep at home that night.