Wednesday 2 January 2008

update 2 jan 08

Adam has been losing around 2 pints of blood a day since Christmas Day and today the docs decided that he should have his endoscopy to see if it was possible to find the bleed and indeed repair it from inside.

The procedure was due for the afternoon and so I was at home for the first night since Christmas Eve last night, had a lazy start to my day planned, ran a bath., made a cup of tea……. Then got a call from Pauline around 09.40 who said, they are doing it in half an hour!

As I was arriving at the hospital at 10.50 having exercised my running skills at every opportunity, Sarah, who I had called as Adam wanted here to be with him but was only just awake when I rang, also arrived having chosen what was obviously the more efficient route. Doh!

He had the endoscopy, should have taken 20 minutes and after and hour and fifteen I was fretting, they found a number of ulcerated sections of his gut and managed to cauterize some, clip a couple of others for good measure but they returned with him to say that it was very complicated and they were unable to close of the largest bleeding vessel so they would need to consider surgery or alternative treatment, Surgery not being an option as a result of his low platelets, we found ourselves bouncing around from floor to floor to find the ‘it’s down the corridor’ x-ray department that the nurses had sent us to in order to check the considerable pain he was in wasn’t anything sinister….

Eventually, we ended up 25 minutes later at the same CT scanner we started at, having been told he needed an urgent x-ray to see what the problem was.

CT scan over and the docs came to tell us that they recommended an angiogram procedure to place some plugs in the Artery that leads off his aorta to stop the blood flow completely to the area they suspected it was coming from. It would take just half and hour to an hour and they would use a vein in his groin to feed a pipe up to his aorta then find the appropriate artery and place one or more plugs in it.

2 and a quarter hours later we were all in the waiting room apoplexic with worry and speculating on exactly what could have gone wrong (note to self…. Try to remember not to worry till you have something to worry about!)

Eventually the boy returned looking a bit battle weary and very hungry; he was in a fair bit of pain and discomfort but seemed to be in good spirits. The docs told us the procedure went well and we will know by tomorrow how successful the procedure was.

So…that’s another of his nine lives gone and assuming the bleed is stopped there’s just the small matter of his rapidly advancing leukaemia to deal with, he had chemo yesterday and some more tonight, hey after a day like today there’s nothing better than a glass of the NHS’s finest Cytaribin….. 2007 was a good year I believe!

Love to all


Colin

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