"Don't catch the bus!" they said, "the hospital will provide transport!"
I had to have a blood transfusion yesterday, you see, and Judy was away in London at a conference so she couldn't give me a lift.
Here's what would have happened if I'd caught the bus. I would have got up at 7.00ish, had a bath and a leisurely cup of coffee, got dressed, walked - slowly - round the corner to the bus stop, caught the bus to Summertown, caught the hospital bus from the same stop in Summertown, got off at the Churchill and gone about the business of being transfused.
Here is what happened. I got up at 7.00ish - by the way, that's going to be a shock to the system if and when I eventually go back to work - had a bath and a cup of coffee, got partly dressed and waited for the hospital to phone and tell me if someone was on their way or not.
At 9.00ish I got a phone call from the driver to say he was about five minutes away. Scrambled into rest of clothes - yes, nanny.b, I did remember to put my knickers on - and raced downstairs just in time to answer the door to a teenage girl who, fortunately, did not turn out to be the driver. The driver was an oldish bloke in a private car, and what she was doing with him I preferred not to ask.
He had another person to pick up in Bicester, so off we set, round and round the one-way system in ever-decreasing circles, until his satnav brought us up on the wrong side of a solid brick wall. The driver couldn't phone for directions because the woman's line was engaged (she turned out to have been on the phone to the hospital asking where her lift was). So, off we set once again, in even more diminished circles, until we ended up on the other side of the wall, which turned out, rather distressingly, to be what had once been a beautiful estate that had been sold off for development and turned into sheltered accommodation. To add insult to injury, the sheltered accommodation had been designed to look like almshouses. Nothing like rubbing it in ...
Second patient acquired, and off we set. There is little to relate of the remainder of the journey except that the driver kept skipping track after track on his music player until he settled on a string of Country & Western numbers. And not alt.country, either; this was Jim Reeves, or maybe even Roy Rogers, or someone of that ilk. Horrid.
I finished treatment just after 3.00 in the afternoon, and then had to wait for the return driver, which, after a while, turned up in the form of an ambulance crew. A whole ambulance for one person seemed excessive, but no, they had other pick-ups to do. Or did they? They stopped at the Warneford, got out, and went into Reception. Reappeared shortly, sans patient, apologised, and wandered off in another direction. And were gone a good 20 minutes.
I have claustrophobia. I think it's worth mentioning this. I didn't actually try the door, because knowing for sure that it was locked would have been worse than wondering whether it was or not. By the time they came back, I had Schrödinger's claustrophobia with a vengeance. And they still had no patient.
So then they phoned their control room, who didn't know anything about the patient but promised to find out. In the meantime, could they pick up a couple of patients in Banbury - which is where they would've been taking the Invisible Patient, if they'd been able to find him - and bring them back, one to Bicester, the other to the JR in Oxford. The Oxford patient had an eye emergency. It's a long way from Oxford to Bicester to Banbury and back again. It was about 4.30 by this point, and the crew knocked off at 6. The driver shrieked. The other guy said yes to the first one (the driver shrieked some more), but no to #2. Moral: never have an eye emergency in Banbury.
And off we all set again, this time to the Nuffield, where they succeeded in collecting a wheelchair patient and getting him properly strapped in. By this time the control room had called back to inform them that they wouldn't be picking up the Warneford patient because he hadn't gone in that morning. Which meant that they wouldn't have to go to Banbury to drop him off. Except for where they did now have to go to Banbury to bring back the other patient. The driver shrieked again at this. Once she'd calmed down, off we set, straight into the full flow of rush hour traffic.
(At some point in all this I made the mistake of sympathising with the driver about the bad day she was evidently having and being treated to a full-on rant about her partner, who she clearly couldn't stand. Eh, well, love, best get it off your chest.)
I finally got home at around 5.30, knackered, spoonless, and with a splitting headache. I went to bed.
"But the transfusion?" I hear you ask breathlessly (leave the breathlessness to me, okay? You don't really want it), for I know you are longing to hear.
The transfusion. Much like chemo, but with plasma, not poison. It didn't hurt - apart from the cannula, which she put in my hand (I've begged them not to do that), and the blood pressure cuff, which has left a big band of bruises round my upper arm - and my arms are not that fat! It does not, however, seem to have made a blind bit of difference, so far as I can tell. It must have had time to circulate by now, but all I have to show for it is an achy arm. No spoons. Nothing.
"It must have done some good," said the nurse, "you've got a much better colour now." I didn't have the heart to tell her that that was down to being hot and itchy from having been in bed fully-dressed for several hours.
Also yesterday: although Judy's conference appears to have been very successful, and she made a number of what I hope will be extremely useful contacts, she came home to an email from her University to say, in effect, whoops, we forgot to invite you to your own graduation. I was not so tired that I didn't get utterly furious at this. She worked bloody hard to get that doctorate, and if they don't add her on to the next upcoming ceremony, I shall gather up all the spoons I can muster, go up to Luton (first find out where it is), and punch someone in the face.
Not with the hand that had the cannula in, though, because that's still owie.
We had to go back to the Churchill today - it's my home away from home! - to give my pre-chemo blood sample. And now we have the weekend to while away.
Someone amuse me, please. Aside from all else, the transfusion didn't cure the breathlessness, which I had hoped it would, so I am not only still scared but now disappointed also.
On the upside, the Gentleman Caller has just gone out for Indian food. I can mostly taste things now, so I may as well make the most of it before chemo on Monday, and the whole round of nasty side-effects starts up over again.
Tralalalala, what fun we do have.
