Archive for June 2016

Lest we forget

Posted by on June 25th 2016 in In the News

Europe is much bigger than just the EU:

Anyway, that's where we were a few days ago.

Any idea where we'll end up?

As I recall, the Referendum was only about membership of the EU, and not about membership of the Council of Europe, the EU Customs Union or the European Economic Area, each of which are bigger bodies.

Same for Article 50. As far as I can see, It's a process for leaving the EU, not for leaving the other bits.

Comments welcome.

There's a cool clickable regularly-updated version of this Euler diagram at:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Supranational_European_Bodies

Kicking AML’s Ass: Cycle 4… The end is nigh

Posted by on June 25th 2016 in A bit of a rant, Health, or lack thereof

A quick update...

The Hambleton Suite staff fixed the CADD pump. Turned out that they had filled, primed and programmed the pump properly, but whoever had turned it on had, for some unfathomable reason, forgotten to press the "start program" button. It put me a day behind schedule and meant that the last dose was still going in on Ella's 21st birthday but it wasn't too much of a spoiler.

So, that was the Cycle 4 chemo all finished!

On June 10th I felt that I wasn't firing on all cylinders during the thrice-weekly consultation so they admitted me back on to Ward 41, did some blood-cultures and pumped me full of Vancomycin. The following day they said that they had grown a gram-positive bug from my PICC line.  The Vanc was changed to Teicoplanin. By Monday I felt much better so I was discharged, but I would have to attend daily for Teicoplanin shots.

It didn't really work. On June 17th I was admitted again.

The day after, the bug had been identified as coagulase negative staphylococcus. Ooer! They pulled out my PICC line due to sepsis. From then onwards, IV Tazocin and IV Teicoplanin meant cannulation which, as previously, didn't go down well with me... it took seven attempts to get a line in, it worked only once and there had to be two more attempts before a good placement was found. Nine holes during 24 hours. No wonder I don't play golf 🙁

The day after was Fathers' Day. Another key calendar day trashed by the NHS. Well, half-trashed... the kids came in to see me, but it's not the same as being at home. I didn't get to see my dad. Then again, he was on holiday in Italy.

Anyway, the daily CRP infection-markers rose again and again. The doc said that I'd probably be in for the full week. That led to another problem - I had to apply for an emergency proxy vote in order to exercise my democratic right on Thursday. I had to get my case worker to find out about the process and to print the required form, and then get one of the staff nurses to support the application.

Typically, as soon as the application had been posted my infection markers dropped and my blood counts started to rise. I was discharged on Wednesday and managed to vote without proxy on Thursday.

I went back in for a quick blood-test and consultation on Friday, it was all looking good so I got sent home.

So, I have a weekend of not being allowed to do much at home, followed by a Monday consultation.

I suppose it could be worse.

United States of Europe

Posted by on June 7th 2016 in In the post

I'm not going to declare whether I'm for Bremain or for Brexit.

All I will say is that I am against piss-poor vote-dredging using crap like this leaflet which arrived today:

On closer scrutiny, one sees Old Glory on display at a supposedly-EU top table:

WTF? Really?

Kicking AML’s Ass: Cycle 4… There will now be a short intermission

Posted by on June 1st 2016 in A bit of a rant, Health, or lack thereof

The first two doses went in just fine, some nausea and epic vomiting as expected but OK after that.

Today I went back to Hambleton to have the pump reservoir fitted for doses 3 and 4...

They were having problems fitting the new reservoir to the pump. Their not paying attention to their own instructions didn't help. Eventually it was fitted and I was sent home ASAP.

We were on our way home when the pump, in idle-mode until 8pm, started beeping every five minutes. I called for advice, there was nobody there with suitable training to help me over the phone. Moreover, there would be nobody there with suitable training to help me directly if I got back in the car and presented myself and said pump for further investigation. The advice was to "turn it off, lock the lines and go back to Hambleton in the morning".

I turned it off, locked the lines and then took the liberty of taking the whole damned thing off my body and dumping it in a big yellow and purple "Infectious Substances" bin.

See what I did there? I used the same rash caution that they used when they removed perfectly-functional PICC lines due to their not following their own "Suspicion of Sepsis" rules correctly 🙂

Or, as I prefer to view it, tonight I had a choice... sleep downstairs on the settee with a malfunctioning beeping pump full of poison, or sleep upstairs safe in the arms of my beloved.

It was a no-brainer.

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