A mammoth undertaking

By Gillian

Today Chris had four hospital appointments in two hospitals in two separate counties. A very busy day!

He started the day in the Oncology ward at Cheltenham hospital, where he has been for the last two nights having his fourth cycle of chemotherapy. I drove down there to pick him up, arriving at ~10:30 this morning, to find the nurse just finishing plumbing him back into the 5-FU WalkMed pump. The team at Cheltenham knew that we had appointments in Worcester later, so had prioritised him in order to get him ready to leave hospital as early as possible. Once we’d packed up his bags, we were ready to go by 11am.

Then we drove up the motorway to Worcester, arriving around 11:45 for a 12 noon appointment in the nuclear medicine department. They injected him with a radioactive tracer to help the contrast for his bone scan later in the day, and instructed him to drink at least 2 pints of fluid over the next three hours to flush his kidneys and protect his organs from the radioactivity. He was also warned to stay away from pregnant women and small children for the next 24 hours, and not to fly within 3 days (or at least to expect serious questions from Airport Security if he did and set off the radioactivity detectors……)

After lunch we went up to the next appointment, for an MRI scan. This was scheduled because our oncologist is concerned about the fainting fit that Chris had a few weeks ago, and wants to check that it wasn’t due to an undiagnosed brain tumour. We’re all hoping that it was just “one of those things”, but if it is anything more serious then the sooner we know the better.

Unfortunately, no one had told the MRI team that Chris is permanently plumbed into the metal-containing WalkMed. They couldn’t let him into the scanning room, as the magnets would have ripped the battery out of the pump. But neither could they temporarily un-plumb him, as the unused 5-FU would have to be replaced with a completely new bag, and they couldn’t get hold of someone to authorise a new prescription. So after a lot of hanging around, it was decided that the best thing was to re-schedule the MRI for next Wednesday, when Chris has his bag changed anyway. So while he’s temporarily un-plumbed, we’ll nip along the corridor to get the scan, then go back to have the PICC line dressed and the new 5-FU prescription hooked up.

Finally, we went back to the Nuclear Medicine suite for the bone scan. We already know that Chris has a secondary tumour in his spine, as we’ve seen the sclerotic patch on his last CT scan. But the oncologist wants to know if there are any further bone tumours that could be contributing to his back-ache. We should get the results of that scan next Wednesday, when we can discuss treatment options (probably radiotherapy).

All in all, a very full day and we were both very pleased to get home!