Hi,
well the day has come!
I can't say I am not concerned but it would be a huge exageration to claim I'm scared of it - I am anything but as chemo may prove to be my very best friend and save my life - despite all the grave warnings of sickness, hair loss, being ill, feeling terrible and the like - all give you a temperature be it a bit high or a bit low failure leaves you COLD!
So this is the first step to recovery, even if due to the sheer incompetence of the National Ass for Wales management of what was once a National Health Service - and was meant to be just that under the Beverrage Plan until the idiot Aneurin Bevan was given the job of implementing the policy which having failed to understand it - in part from inate stupidity but much as a result of his Champagne Socialist prefferences and idiology not to mention the input of his Marxist wife Jenny Lee.
The result has been that The NHS has become an over managed, mismanaged political football surrounded by Political idiologies and acting through its multi layered Kleptocrtatic QUANGOcracy as little more than a sponge to mop up unemployable quasi socialist middle class management of clearly low grade.
How come I find 3 stories of A&E in a pile of cardboard boxes as a permanent potacabin encampment at The Royal Gwent if it were not for missmanagement?
The huddle of cardboard boxes bolted onto the Velindre Hospital as a CDU (where I have my chemo.) with ramped bits of board to join up the levels on uneven ground. I gather this cardboard city was a temporary measure whilst further facilities were built but 3.1/2 years on there is no sign of the building and the ceilings in the cardboard boxes is buckling and breaking up.
One only ever notices ceilings in Hospital Beds and Honey Moon Suites!
This is a product of The Devolved Irresponsibility of The risibly over styled dump for useless space wasting of The Welsh Assembly Government.
A useless QUANGO in itself - merely a means of rubber stamping EU Directives and bribing yet another army of unemployable lick spittles who have, so I am reliably informed in print by The equally idiotic Lib.Dims. have wasted £1Billion of health SERVICE money in the last 12 months!
Sadly I am not surprised - When you note the huge amount of time, effort and investment that has been put into re-badging The Gwent Hospital Trust as 'The Aneurin Bevan Hospital Trust' and kitting out all the nurses in new uniforms and re-liverying all the Hospital and Trust vehicles - Did this help a single patient? Did it clean a single filthy ward? Did it save a single life?
I believe you will find that every question gets an emphatic NO.
However for lack of competent management and utter dishonesty and failure to supply the hospital with the requisite CT Scanner or for that matter manage additional shifts to ensure clinical needs were met - I for one may prove in the long run to have been killed by the self serving utter incompetence of Health Care Wales which sees itself as a job creation and marketing organisation designed to display the incompetence and irrelevance of most forms of Consultancy and Administarion, when particularly exempt from accountability as is too often the case in the feather bedded world of The Snivel Cervants.
Well off to Velindre we left with time to spare expecting to arrive at 12:45hrs. for 13:00hrs. - NO SUCH LUCK!
Just before the Coldra Roundabout the traffic ground to a halt - so we phoned to say we would be late but no idea when the CDU was great and just reassured us it would be OK they would fit us in. As a result of some rather 'rapid' driving after we passed the single lorry sitting undamaged in the center lane about 5 miles on, we were a mere 20 minutes late!
No problem we gather as Pharmacy is running 1.1/2 hours behind (A Management problem due to lack of allocation of resources in staff numbers to maintain the right output for clinical need) - IS THERE ANY PART OF THE NHS NOT BEING DESTROYED BY ITS OWN USELESS MANAGEMENT?
Well after much time wasting eventually we set off on the treadmill, so to speak.
Bed allocated and then the tedium of signing my life away admitting I knew the risks and knew this was not a cure and knew etc. etc. etc. and now sign this form.
I kept thinking if they can't manage to keep the ceiling boards up and house the unit in something more solubrious than a glorified packing case wjhat chance they had a clue what they were doing with the medical treatment!!
Anyway medical steps:
01: Place fist and forarm in a bucket of hot/warm water for 5 minutes to relax and open all the veins (that'll fool them!)
02: Find a suitable vein on the back of the hand and see if you can make it hurt as you insert a cannula needle:
03: Flush the vein for a few minutes with saline.
04: Switch to a bag of chemo that goes in at 999mg an hour so about 40 minutes!
The first bag was the Gemcitabine which is using a saline carrier - no effects discomfort or pain
05: Flush the vein for a few minutes with saline.
06: Switch to a second bag of chemo that goes in at 999mg an hour so about 40 minutes!
The second bag was the Carboplatin which uses a glucose carrier base and is in a black bag cover as it is light sensative (I hope I have these two the right way around! More to the point I hope they did!!!!) - no effects discomfort or pain.
07: Flush the vein for a few minutes with saline.
08: remove needles/cannula & tapes and away to go ;-)
09: WELL NOT QUITE!
More 'debriefing' this time with a care packet and warnings that I may have all sorts of dire consequences like sickness & heavy periods!! well that's what the leaflet says! diarrhoea, flue like symptoms, temperature and durance vile!!
So here is a big bag of specialist anti sickness pills and our phone number 24/7 if you have ANY queries.
Well let the lions into the arena and as a gladiator about to do battle salute the Emperor:
'Those about to die Salute you Caesar'
It was more convincing in The Colosseum than in a cardboard box set up as a Welsh NHS chemo clinic I'm sure!
Well off home expecting to be ill at any moment and shiver and ache with the ague!
Eventually I went to bed at about 04:00hrs. having waited until I was feeling ill so that I could THEN try to sleep on and sleep through it - but no sign of the ill bit, so I gave up and went to bed!
I do feel sorry for Lee - I have no option but enjoin the battle but she has the onerous task of watching and hoping that all will be well, it must be very scarey for her after more than half of her life with me!
I just want to say sorry for copping out at times and leaving Lee and friends to cope!
Any help and support YOU can give her will be hugely welcome.
I do make a lousy patient!
.If YOU want to follow my fight against Cancer from when it started and I first presented with symptoms see The TAB just below the Header of this Blog. called >DIARY of Cancer< just click and it will give you a long list of the main events in chronological order.
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Thoughts and comments will be in chronological order in the main blog and can be tracked in the >ARCHIVE< in the Right Sidebar. You may find the TABS >MEDICAL LINKS< and also >CANCER LINKS< of help.
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YOU are welcome to call me if you believe I can help in ANY way.
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Posted by: Greg Lance-Watkins
tel: 01291 - 62 65 62
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