Busy Week

So ends another week. It's been relatively busy, beginning with Carol having a blood test at the oncology department at Milton Keynes Hospital. I forget to call it Milton Keynes University Hospital, but it doesn't matter that much, as it's still a hospital, with or without the academic addition to it's name. Then we had to drive to Oxford to go to the Churchill Hospital so Carol could have a P.E.T. scan. All of this related in an earlier blog post. Then she had two letters to say she had two scans booked, one an M.R.I. and the other a C.T. scan, both at Milton Keynes Hospital. Just don't ask which is which, but it means things are moving towards the next stage of her treatment, but as yet we don't have conformation as to what it's likely to be.

I went to Aldi early this morning (Saturday), getting to their branch at Westcroft just after they'd opened at 8 o'clock. A good reason to be so early so as to beat the crowds as well as finding a parking space. At least you can get in and out of Aldi's relatively quickly and their prices are a good deal lower than Sainsbury's or any of the main supermarket chains. It's a small store, as all their stores are. A far smaller range of items, so you don't waste time deciding which item to choose. At the till they whip your items through and straight into your trolley and you pack it all yourself on a shelf away from the checkout, so this reduces the queues. Such a simple idea and it seems to work. They put larger bar codes on their packets which means it's easier for the checkout staff to put the items through. 

Earlier in the week Carol had a text message from Daniel, to say that he was going to visit on Saturday (today). He's got a new job, at long last. He's been doing night shifts in a hotel in Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, a Holiday Inn. He's being attempting to find something better for some time. It's working as a bar supervisor at St James's Park, the home ground of Newcastle United Football Club. To him it's a dream job. He's a mad Newcastle fan and has been since he was a boy. Although he would love to find a job he's been to university to study, computing, this will at least mean he's doing daylight hours and will actually be in charge of staff and not just a dogsbody which is how he's been treated at the hotel. He texted to say he'd be arriving around midday, but wouldn't say exactly when, but got here around 12.30. He came from the station by taxi cab, arriving with a huge bunch of flowers for his Mum.  We didn't do much. We stayed in the house as Carol wasn't feeling that well as a result of the final chemotherapy cycle. Alfie, our little Yorkshire terrier was pleased to see Daniel. We weren't sure he would remember him as it must be two or three years since he last visited.

He has an odd way with males, not me, of course. He can be a little off when Chloe's husband, Steve comes to visit. I don't know why. He gets very close to your face and shows his teeth. Is it a sort of territorial thing or something? I'm not sure. Anyway, we took Daniel back to the station as he was going into London.

Pothole Repairs, Oncology and Oxford P.E.T. Scan

I just had to mention this. We were going out in the car the other morning, I forget where, but it doesn't matter. We were going out at the Saxon Street exit. We saw a man in one of those hi-vis jackets. He had some sort of paint spray device in his hands. I had to look twice. He'd been spraying paint around some of the potholes around the entrance. We've been mentioning the fact that the road on which we live is full of potholes and the fact that they need repairing. Most are along the centre, the point where the two sections of the tarmac meet. No doubt this was a cheap method of constructing road surfaces back when the estate was built, must've been in the 1970's. But the 'seams' (I can think of no better way to describe it.) are coming apart. It's like driving in some sort of Rift Valley. The surface is worse when you come round from the Marlborough Street entrance where we usually come back from Oncology or other hospital appointments. It's just really awful. So, at a later time when we came back home we saw the man (and no doubt a partner in crime) had been really busy as there was some considerable amount of spray paint along the road which would be to show the workmen where to fill in the holes. But the fact is, most of the road surface needs completely resurfacing and not merely patched. It needs doing properly and not just a 'quick fix.' Saying that, some sort of repair is better than none at all, and it's far better to do it in the summer because if it's left until the winter, when it's likely to freeze, the road surface will break up even more.

Another bright and sunny morning. We went to the oncology department for gone 10 o'clock. The place was virtually deserted and Carol was dealt with for her final blood test. They are reducing some of the chemotherapy to help prevent her numbing fingers which should help.

We went to the Shell filling station in Grafton Street on the way back from the hospital. It's surprising how far you can go without filling the Renault. It seems very economical, thankfully.

We were scheduled to go to  Churchill Hospital in Oxford for Carol's 3.30 p.m. P.E.T. scan and we were all set up to go. Then we got a telephone call to say that they had a cancellation and could we make 2 p.m.? We could, and were out of the house within 15 minutes. We took the SatNav (which has been christened Dora, after Dora The Explorer, but it was quite difficult to set it up as we were driving along, but we stopped in a lay-bay on Standing Way and managed to get the postcode of the Churchill and then set off in earnest to get to Oxford on time.

We got to the hospital with barely 10 minutes to spare. The problem was parking, as is generally the case. We drove around the site and found several carparks, but full. Not a single space. Then we drove around to what must have been the furthest point of the site and managed to find two spaces and then rushed round to the reception area. We walked through the hospital to where Carol had her first P.E.T. scan. You have to telephone a special number to register your arrival. Why no human on these reception desks? Is it a way of not employing a human to do this job? You don't always manage to get through. Making things quite frustrating and stressful. Why not have a computer touch screen as they have at our doctors' surgery or at the In-Patient clinics at Milton Keynes hospital. Not that they always work successfully. Just as we were waiting and I was about to settle down to sit and wait in the waiting room, a small nurse turned up to tell us we needed to be in another building, possibly because one of the scanners wasn't working. So she led us outside and we got to this other building and had to enter using a keypad on the door. Carol had to fill in a form before she was taken through to the scanner and I was left to my own devices for a good two and a half hours.

What amuses me is that, because they inject you with a radioactive substance so that the scanner can do it's job properly, patients who are injected with this substance are not supposed to mix with other people for a few hours afterwards. They use separate toilet facilities and so on, and must not sit in the waiting area after being scanned. Last time Carol had the journey back to Milton Keynes in that awful ambulance, driving at speed and being treated more like a sack of potatoes than as a patient with feeling and at the same time very uncomfortable. You aren't supposed to sit next to anyone more than six feet apart or something. But then she was right next to me all the way out of the hospital, walking along the corridors and out to the carpark and then sitting next to me in the car. A rather crazy ruling, did it not matter about me becoming contaminated by radioactive material? Taking Health and Safety rules too far and I bet the radioactivity had far less strength than is already in the environment, in, say, a luminous watch face or other electronic gadgetry. What about a computer screen, such as the MacBook Air I'm using to write this?

Having left the scanning department we walked towards the entrance along a long corridor. Hospitals always seem to have endless corridors. I know they have lots of departments and they need to be linked together, but endless corridors are just, well, endless. Then when we got outside, having been into the coffee shop to have lattes and a nice iced bun, we were confronted by the prospect of wrestling with a parking ticket machine. We extricated the ticket which was issued when we entered the car park when we arrived, but we didn't have sufficient change to put into the machine to pay. It was similar to the system in Milton Keynes hospital, whereby you put your parking ticket into the machine and it tells you how much to pay on a digital screen and then either pay with coins or use your debit or credit card. Simple. We went into the reception area to see if we could find an A.T.M. but the one in W.H.Smith was either out of order or had no cash in it. Nowhere else would come up with a solution to our problem. Smith's also didn't do 'cash-back' which some shops do. We went back to the ticket machine and spoke to the gentleman who was on the end of a switchboard somewhere in cyber-space and said he'd let us out with paying. Which was what happened when we eventually got back to the car and drove out, with the barrier lifting when we spoke into the machine.

By the time we got out onto the roads of Oxford and were driving back to Milton Keynes, things were getting very busy. The traffic was building up as people were leaving work to return home. We decided to stop to have something to eat at a K.F.C. on one of the main roundabouts on the outskirts of Oxford. The point where the A44 meets the A34. The build-up of traffic was quite intense and it took us some time to wend our way round the roundabout and get into the carpark near a Travel Lodge and next door to the Peartree park-and-ride carpark which we've used on a couple of occasions when we've visited Oxford in the past. It was a relief to be out of the traffic and to sit down and have something to eat. Carol hadn't been able to eat or drink since breakfast (she'd had something to eat at about 8 o'clock and then she had a KitKat chocolate bar which I'd bought at the Shell garage when we'd bought diesel there.

By the time we'd finished in K.F.C. the roads were calming down and we got on the A34 and then onto the M40 for a few miles until we reached the road back towards Buckingham and then home to Milton Keynes.

An Ordinary Couple of Days

 We've been attempting to clear some of the untidy weeds and long grass at the bottom of the garden. Yesterday fairly early on I continued with cutting back the brambles and weeds around the shed (such as it is. Totally derelict. You can't get into it as the door is completely off it's hinges.) The grass and other weeds can be trimmed back once the brambles and other tough growth is removed, otherwise when you use the trimmer it will break the blade.) Carol gave me a hand, but it was getting really quite hot so we gave it a rest and will continue. The job is best done in stages, perhaps 10-15 minutes at a time. I just hope the weather remains fine so we can get the job done. No good attempting to do this work when it's wet.

On Friday Carol got a telephone call from the nurse/coordinator at Milton Keynes Hospital, saying that Oxford Churchill Hospital had been trying to contact her. No doubt this would be when we were at Oncology, as we were there on Monday for her blood test, Tuesday for chemotherapy and then on Thursday to have the pump removed. We should have taken one or other of our mobiles with us, but we don't always carry them around with us. We neither of us are tied permanently to such technology as most people are. Just another item to carry around. When we go to oncology we take a bag of things to keep us occupied for the couple of hours we were there. On Tuesday we were at the hospital for at least five hours. Books, our Kindles, and other items such as sweets and my wallet to pay in the Friends' shop. The telephone call was to call to set up a P.E.T. scan at Churchill. The doctors want her to have this scan before the next chemotherapy cycle. It took several attempts to actually get through to the department to speak to the secretary who books such appointments. On first attempting to get through Carol just got a recorded voice, saying 'I'm on leave but will be back at my desk on Monday,' But she wasn't there, and the same recorded message could be heard. It took at least thee attempts to actually get through to speak to this person and an appointment was made for this Monday afternoon. So we will be going to oncology at Milton Keynes Hospital at around 9 o'clock first for her usual blood test and then we'll drive to Oxford, giving us enough time to get to the hospital and park the car and then get to the imaging department for the scan. But because it's relatively late, and it takes around two hours, we're not likely to get home until past 7 o'clock in the evening. 

So, once the scan is done and the final chemotherapy cycle is complete, another few boxes are ticked off and Carol will be ready and waiting to get conformation of dates for the two operations she will have to remove the remnants of the cancer so this horrible period of our lives can be completed and we can get our lives hack on track.

Frustrating Wait

Last Friday we had an appointment with one of the oncology consultants in the Macmillan Unit at Milton Keynes Hospital. We were given really positive news that the cancer has been shrunk considerably, due to the chemotherapy treatment that Carol has been receiving for the past few months. In fact we've reached the ninth cycle of twelve. We were told that an operation would be performed to remove a considerable amount of the cancer at Milton Keynes Hospital and that Carol would then have radiotherapy on her liver to remove the remaining bits left and that would be carried out in Oxford. We would get a telephone call on Thursday of this week to give us details after the surgeons had met to discuss the case. But we waited all yesterday (Thursday) for the expected call, but nothing came. As you can imagine, this has caused a certain amount of frustration, as Carol is keen to get things moving, so that, hopefully, by September at least, she can think about returning to work, even if it's for a few hours a week to begin with. We had to return to the oncology suite at 4.30 this afternoon (Friday) so that Carol could have the pump removed. She mentioned this to the nurse who removed the pump, and as a result she rang the colorectal department to find out what was going on, and why she hadn't had the promised telephone call. It turns out that the hospital has had nothing from the Oxford hospital and are consequently waiting to get some sort of go-ahead as regards the continuing treatment. So, we will have to telephone on Monday to get some sort of answer. Also, we heard that Carol will need a further P.E.T. scan at Churchill Hospital in Oxford in the next week or two, which she's had before.

A rather wet and depressing sort of day today (Friday). Having had really warm weather last week, it's a sort of backwards step, weather-wise.

Road-Trip To Oxford Possibly The Worst-Ever

Carol had to go to the Churchill Hospital in Oxford this morning for what's called a P.E.T. scan. I had to be at Milton Keynes Hospital really early. Infact I was there at 7.45. We were to be taken by transport, not an ambulance but a minibus. The driver arrived in Carol's room with a wheelchair at about 7.50, a good deal earlier than expected. I had imagined we would have the minibus all to ourselves, but I must have been deluded, considering this was N.H.S. transport. Carol was taken in the wheelchair down to the exit on the floor below and we were loaded into the vehicle (loaded is perhaps the best way to describe it. It was somewhat like being treated like a load of baggage and not a human.) Carol had a special air cushion to sit on and was strapped in with a seatbelt and I sat facing backwards, not a position I am keen on as it's an odd experience, travelling along and getting a view of the road behind, not facing forward. I'm not all that good at being driven and can get travel sick, but it wasn't too bad this time. We left Milton Keynes via Standing Way and had to pick up a lady from her home somewhere in Emerson Valley, and fairly near Morrison's at Westcroft. From there we drove out towards Buckingham to pick up an elderly lady. But the driver didn't hang about, driving at a great speed. Unfortunately the vehicle had virtually no suspension, and we bounced about all over the place, flung about inside that vehicle and Carol didn't feel in the least bit comfortable as a result. I was just as uncomfortable, being flung about in such a wild fashion. I realise we had to get to Oxford on time for the various people on board to attend their appointments, but there was certainly no need to be treated in such a callous manner.

We arrived at the first hospital, John Radcliffee, to find that the place where ambulances and other hospital transport arrived was taken over by vehicles which had no right to be there, such as taxi cabs. The area just blocked up with traffic. It seems that cab drivers imagine they can do as they please and ignore notices which clearly state that the area is for dropping off and collecting only and not a sort of private taxi rank. Anyway, it took some while before the driver could find out where the elderly lady had to be delivered. He'd unloaded her from the vehicle in her wheelchair, using the lift on the tail of the vehicle, pushed her into the entrance of the hospital to discover he was in the wrong place, so had to wheel her back out and reload her into the vehicle. Yes, it does sound as if she was a bag of potatoes, the way she was bundled about. Poor woman, it must have been very uncomfortable for her, but she didn't complain. Probably because she had no choice. So we were rushed around the hospital site (at such speed it felt the vehicle was likely to loose bits on the way) and ended up at a different part of the hospital complex and the poor lady was again unloaded and wheeled into yet another department.

The other lady, whom we had collected first on our journey out of Milton Keynes, was then taken to the John Radcliffe hospital which was a short drive from the first hospital. I don't know which department it was, but she was an MS patient. Carol was then taken to the Churchill Hospital (I think I'm beginning to get somewhat confused by all this and can't remember clearly what happened, even though it was barely 24 hours ago, but all this was done so fast, it's become something of a blur, as you can imagine.) At the Churchill it took the driver quite a long time to find the right entrance and the right department. To be honest with you, I don't think he had the faintest idea where anything was or where he was going. But Carol was taken out of the vehicle in a wheelchair and pushed into the hospital, a fairly long walk, with me attempting to keep up. The driver went at such a speed it took me quite an effort to keep them in sight as they eventually disappeared into the main hospital entrance and along a lot of corridors (hospitals have far too many for my liking) and we ended up in the scanning department.

Carol was registered. A lengthy questionnaire and then we had to sit and wait in a rater soulless waiting room. I'm sorry, but a little more effort could me made to make these places a bit more interesting. A pile of ancient and tattered magazines and a television on showing daytime programmes. (Incidentally, returning to this from an earlier post. How come they have televisions on in these areas of hospitals which are free to view, whilst the one's over the beds you have to pay for? Doesn't make sense to me.)

The scan was going to take two hours, so I had a choice; to wait where I was and read a magazine and watch television, or to wander off and find something to eat and drink. There is a range of options in the entrance, similar to what there is at Milton Keynes hospital, except I saw a W.H. Smith and even an M & S at one of the other entrances (I'm lost now. I'm not sure which hospital is which, we were flung about so rapidly.) But in the end I decided to remain in the waiting room as I have a propensity for getting lost and if I'd gone off in search of food and drink I'd most likely not have found my way back. I read a few of the magazines (I should have taken a book to read with me, but that's my fault.) and 'Bargain Hunt' came on at it's usual time-stop of 12.15, which is what we'd watch if we were at home. I also chatted to some of the other people waiting with me, which also helped to pass the time. Carol went off with a nurse (I presume she was a nurse.) as they had to prepare her for the P.E.T. scan (I'll have to do a Google to find out more, particularly what the initials stand for.) It stands for Positron Emmission Tomography, although knowing that isn't much help to me.

They injected her with what, apparently, was a radioactive dye, which goes into the bloodstream and is what shows up on the scan. As I don't understand the technology, I can't describe any of it on here, and I wasn't allowed anywhere near the machine that was used. A nurse came back after a while to say that Carol would be back out after two hours, so the wait began. By about 1.40 she came back, sitting in a wheelchair. Apparently she had to wait for an hour-and-a-half before the scan could begin, because the dye needed time to circulate in her blood stream.  She wasn't supposed to sit in the main waiting area or use the toilet. Presumably because of the radioactive dye in her bloodstream. Why? Was she going to contaminate any other people sitting in the waiting area? What about me? Didn't it matter that I was going to be in close contact with her? The radioactivity was supposed to wear off after a couple of hours (not exactly sure how long and I was never told.) So, she was going to be sitting in the minibus with other people returning to Milton Keynes, so didn't they matter? Also, what about the driver? None of this makes sense. Anyway, we were taken (by another driver. I don't know what happened to the first one.) back to the minibus and reloaded. We picked up two more people (one of whom, a lady, was already installed in one of the seats on the minibus, looking totally perturbed and not exactly happy.) Then we were whisked off to collect another person, a man, and were on our way. We stopped at one point as the driver thought he had somewhere else to go to collect someone else, but then we just left Oxford (at around 2 o'clock.) and headed back to Milton Keynes, but not using the exact same route we had used on the wait out earlier in the morning. We got back to Milton Keynes at around 3.15. The driver wanted to follow the computerised list he had been given, and the lady who was on the bus, who lived in Tinker's Bridge (and area virtually next door to the hospital.) thought she was going to be dropped off first, but because Carol was in a great deal of pain by  now, due mostly to the rough ride in the vehicle, the driver decided to divert and drop her off before the other lady, who was complaining of being cold and making other noises. She hadn't bought a coat with her, which was a bit stupid in my opinion, due to the fact that it's mid-November and the weather is very likely to be cold at this time of year. Anyway, Carol was unloaded (yes, again, made to feel like a parcel or bag of King Edward's.) and we went into the hospital and back up to the ward. Poor Carol was hungry, she hadn't had a bite to eat, wasn't so much as offered a cup of tea in Oxford after the scan, and there was nothing so much as a coffee machine in the department we were in. She asked a nurse if she could have toast and marmalade to eat, which didn't appear. Then, to add insult to injury, she had to remain in the side-room, and had to use a commode when she needed the toilet. All down to the fact that she was radioactive and wasn't allowed to use the communal toilets in the ward. Still, didn't it matter that I was with her? Or the driver? Or the other passengers on the minibus? Will someone explain all this to me, as it is such a mystery.