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Well if I’m going to join this community and update my blog on a regular basis I guess it makes sense to go back to the beginning and provide some background information.
Basically my Dad hasn’t been well for a long time. He had a suspected stroke in June 2006 and has never been quite right since. He’s had a lot of uncontrolled muscle spasms, tingling sensations in his limbs, his jaw locks and unlocks itself … and he’s always refused to seek any form of medical assistance as he tried once and was basically laughed out of the surgery by his GP as a hypochondriac. A bit too much for a proud man to handle.
Over the last year or so his pain has been getting worse – he likens it to constant, exceptionally bad cramp (when I described labour to him he said it sounded much the same – but for his it is near constant, and has been for about 12 months). The pain is everywhere.
Unfortunately, for various reasons, I hadn’t managed to speak to Dad for almost 2 weeks – he spends quite a lot of time in bed, unable to get to the phone due to his various ailments and I’m rushed off my feet with my two daughters (25 months old and 15 weeks old) so sometimes we have a tendency to miss each other.
On Wednesday (8th June) I received a phone call from him saying that he was going into hospital to have some tests done. It was completely his decision, nothing to worry about and he was just waiting for the ambulance to collect him. He didn’t know how long it would be, or how long he would be in hospital for, but he was OK – no need to worry and my Stepmum would be in touch that night to update me. On the whole he seemed relatively upbeat.
That night my Stepmum did not phone me – I had to call her and she seemed confused as to why I would be calling (usually we get on fine so I was taken aback by her off-hand manner). Anyway, I asked her what had prompted this trip to hospital. Apparently Dad has been scheduled to have a bloodtest for some months but had repeatedly had to cancel it. I’m not entirely sure what the bloodtest was for (he does have Type 2 diabetes so it could be a checkup for that?) and on this particular day he had managed to get himself dressed to get down to the surgery but had collapsed because he was in so much pain with his spine.
My Stepmum had phoned the surgery, spoke to the receptionist and for the first time had explained when cancelling the appointment that Dad was too ill and in too much pain to attend. The receiptionist then explained that the Doctor could just come out to him if that would be easier and do the blood draw there. My Dad agreed and the Doctor came out to him.
From there the information dries up a little – I gather the Doctor expressed concern about how much pain my Dad appeared to be in, and was exceptionally concerned to see his general state of health (I have since found out that he has lost 2 stone in 4 weeks and is now wavering around 10st 5lbs … not much for a 6ft man who used to be quite heavyset). The Doctor asked Dad what he wanted to do and suggested hospital as an option – Dad agreed.
I have subsequently found out that Dad’s been struggling to eat, that he’s in so much pain that he can’t walk and he can’t sit up for more than 30 seconds at a time because of the pain. Yet my Stepmum never thought to call someone sooner.
All I knew at the end of Wednesday was that he had been admitted onto the GP’s “holding ward” and no one knew what was going to happen from there.
On Thursday I had to phone my Stepmum again in the evening to find out how Dad was doing. She said that at 2am Thursday morning he had been moved to a specific ward (having Googled the hospital ward it turns out it’s for acute respiratory disorders) and he had had an x-ray which had showed “a mass and shadow” on his lungs. He was scheduled to have a CT Scan the next day.
On Friday he had the CT Scan but we were told that he wasn’t going to get the results until the consultants did their rounds on Monday morning. Thankfully my brother had managed to visit him that day (he lives 25 miles away, compared to my 200) and I found out that Dad had a personal phone by his bed which I could call if I wanted to speak to him. I then managed to talk to Dad and found out that he had been put on liquid morphine to help with the pain and he was now just in discomfort rather than the agony he had been in.
On Monday (13th June) I spoke to Dad and he said that the CT Scam had shown that he had “a mass of shadows” across his chest that needed further investigation so he was being scheduled for an MRI.
The MRI was conducted later that day but the results didn’t come in until Tuesday. When I phoned the ward just to see how Dad was doing the Staff Nurse said that the consultant wanted to talk to a family member (but not my Stepmum at my Dad’s request) and that they couldn’t do it over the phone for data protection reasons. My brother than took time off work to drive over to the hospital but nothing much was said. The results of the MRI were fairly inconclusive as it appeared they couldn’t distinguish between organs, normal tissue and would “could” be cancerous tissues/cells/tumours. They did however say that whatever was wrong with Dad was exceptionally serious and he was not a well man. They were fairly confident that they had found various shadows in the pleural cavity, which appear to have spread to the centre of his chest and was possibly pressing on his oesophagus (which explained the difficulty he was having swallowing, and why his voice was hoarse at times). They scheduled him for a biopsy on Wednesday.
I spoke to Dad yesterday (Wednesday) and he said that he had been told that he was going to have a lung biopsy later that day, but that the consultant wanted him to have another CT scan that would focus specifically on his brain. They had expressed concern over something they had found on his spine – but he couldn’t elaborate more.
Last night I phoned the ward to see how he was after the biopsy – I didn’t want to disturb him as I imagined it had been a difficult day and he would need what little rest he could get. The Staff Nurse said the biopsy had been completed in the afternoon (results expected in 3-5 working days) but that they had wanted to take him for the scan at the same time and the biopsy would have to take priority – so he was planned to have the scan in the morning (ie today).
I phoned the ward again this morning just to see if he had been for his scan – as I thought I’d wait to speak to Dad when I knew he wasn’t going to have to go through anything else that day. She said he still hadn’t gone down (it was almost 12pm at this point) and that he was currently waiting to talk to someone from radiology – she couldn’t tell me more at that time.
I then phoned Dad tonight and he confirmed he had had his scan. He also said that the radiologist had decided that he would start radium treatment tomorrow. He mentioned that there was a clump of crushed muscles at the top of his spine that they wanted to treat and that radium would probably help with he pain management. Perhaps I’m using the wrong words for a search, but all I can find for radium is the treatment of cancer. He starts the first session tomorrow, and needs to have 3 sessions in total, but I don’t know how far apart they are or anything more.
I’m actually going to leave the girls with my husband tomorrow and set off to see Dad at 5.30am in the morning to get there for visiting at 2-4pm. Hopefully I’ll be able to catch a consultant to try to get a better idea of exactly what is going on as I confess I’m quite in the dark at the moment, feeling very confused and a little scared.
