4 Very Scary Days

Tonight I came out of hospital. And geez, what a scary episode it was....

I'd been taking my temperature every day last week as I had a bit of a cold and was worried it'd turn into an infection or virus (read the blog entry 'Please don't put the words Cancer and Just Died in the Same Sentance - and you'll know why I was taking my temperature daily, to be over cautious as an infection or virus can get very scary!)

Anyway, it had been fine all week but Saturday evening it rose a little, so like every cancer patient knows... you have to call the hospital to tell them. So I did, and as usual, they asked me to go in to have my blood count checked. The reason for this is that chemo kills all your cells, whether they're good cells or bad, it zaps them. This includes your white blood cells which are your immune system, so for a week or so after chemo, my immune system is down but slowly builds back up, usually mine recover well but as I was about to find out on Saturday evening; this time, they hadn't....

My blood count was really low, 0.2 and I had a slight temperture, so the Dr told me that I had to stay at the hospital for 24 hours to be monitored. So the hub left me in my room at Velindre Cancer Care hospital for the evening, at this point I thought everything was going to be okay.

However my vains were weak, and 2 nurses and a Dr tried to inject me for a drip and geez, what pain that was! 6 holes later a bruised hand and arm and my vains were having none of it, so I had to have it where they took blood halfway up my arm which meant that I couldn't bend it. Bloody nightmare! I'm left handed, but couldn't use my arm to eat, flick through a mag... it was really weird but hey, it was only going to be 24hours so I thought I would put up with the inconvinience!

The following day they checked my blood again and it had dropped again, my immune was nonexistent and at this point, my temperature was bubbling. Panic took over, all I could think about was the story I was told in April about a cancer patient who had a a low immune after chemo, got an infection, which turned into a virus, which turned into pneumonia, and she died.

Throughout the day I cried; I had no idea where this infection had come from, people take it for granted that when they have a temperature their immune can fight it but for me, something small that had started growing over the week was now growing fast and my body was shaking, my teeth were chattering and although I was freezing cold, my skin was on fire. I had no idea what I had, in fact I'm still waiting for the test results to come back, so I was scared of what it was, how serious it was, and could my body recover and fight it.

My parents couldn't even come to visit, my dad had a sniffley cold so anything like that was too risky, I wasn't even allowed to leave my room. So for 4 days I lay in bed feeling sick from the anti-biotics, resting, and then every few hours I'd have a fit of shakes and a high temperature and wait for it to pass. They injected me daily with a bone marrow booster to help my blood cells and I had to have 24 hours of normal temperature to be able to leave.

So today, after 4 nightmare and very scary days, I came home.

I've never thought about loving my body, but now I do. Even in its ugliness of putting on so much weight during chemo, I still love it. They say true beauty is on the inside, and my body, that was able to fight and recover all of this, is beautiful.

So now, I think it deserves a treat, I think I'll buy it a new wardrobe!