God I Hate Surprise No.3

I went home after my last apheresis session on Thursday morning feeling pretty good. About mid afternoon I fell in a hole, I was hit by sudden fatigue and elevated and rising temperatures.
As I was out of the risky neutropenic phase it made no sense, especially the speed at which the fatigue and elevated temperatures occurred, it was like someone had flicked a switch.
As chemo patients often lack the ability to fight infection the standard procedure for high temperatures is to call the hospital immediately, however, as my blood counts were now good their advice was to just monitor the symptoms because my body should be able to fight back, which it did, a couple of hours later the symptoms were gone (someone flicked the switch again).
All good until late evening when the neck and shoulder pain I'd had a few days earlier returned with a vengeance, this was the first real discomfort I have had during my latest treatment, fortunately the right combination of pills allowed some sleep.
Fronting up for chemo the next day I had the opportunity to explain what was going on to 15 different doctors and nurses on 15 separate occasions... (15 is possibly an exaggeration on my part).
More blood cultures, more samples, more swabs, more tests, more prodding, thankfully no probing.
This time around the ultrasound found a small bloodclot in my neck at the permacath site. This means it had to come out.
Removal of the permacath involved the doctor grabbing it in both hands, placing his foot in the middle of my chest and pulling for all his worth. No success. So, as he was a little on the small side, a couple of the better fed nurses grabbed him around the waste and... I'll shut up now.
The unplanned removal of the permacath has some ramifications:

• The chemo I have can only be delivered via a permacath or similar CVAD (or Central Venous Access Device for those of you who can't be bothered looking it up).

• As it is now after 5pm on the Friday of a long weekend, the chances of having another CVAD installed before Tuesday are zero.

•  That means my chemo will be delayed (this is no big deal in terms of the overall treatment plan).

• The delay in chemo start does not mean that I get to go home now and come back on Tuesday as the blood clot still needs treatment, so instead of a three night stay it is probably going to become an eight night stay. Bummer.

I hope the above does not come across as 'poor me' as that is not how I feel. The upside is that the permacath hung in there just long enough to complete the stem cell collection, if it hadn't we would have been starting the whole process from scratch with less chance of a successful collection, and without a good stem cell collection it would be a case of 'no high dose chemo, sorry, better luck next time, next patient please'.
This post is just an attempt to share with you a bit about what can occur for a some of chemo patients, especially those whose bodies have suffered through multiple relapses. Its the rollercoaster ride to end all rollercoaster rides.
I am a little bemused about it all though.
Cheers, Pete