(Original title – The Burrow)

So, this should have been an update about my surgery and recovery going well and blah blah blah. Instead, this will be a story of how cancer does not go to plan.

On Wednesday, I went to see my oncologist. It had been four weeks since I’d last seen her properly for an appointment, and she needed to review my blood work and check out my rack and give me an opportunity to speak to her about my concerns that I’ve had over the past fortnight.

I was told that my neutrophils (white blood cells) and platelets (the clotty buggers) were on the lower end of the scale, and she gave me her concerned look, and said I needed to do another panel of bloods immediately and she would text me with results before she went to bed. She said that it was likely surgery wouldn’t be going ahead, and that I would need to delay the second dose of my Palbociclib (Ibrance, my new fancy life-prolonging anti-estrogen drug) until after I had surgery, because it’s messing with my health. Levels need to be at least 1.0 for neutrophils, and over 100 for platelets.

Okay, fine, I can deal with that.

I run to get my bloods done, but drop off my new prescription for Ibrance at the pharmacy, and tell them I’ll pick it up Friday since they were due to close shortly. I’m the only person waiting to get bloods taken at Pathology, and of the two staff still on (one male, one female), the female nurse looked at my hands and decided she would rather clean the waiting area than deal with my probably difficult veins in my arms. The guy had no problem locating a good candidate and I was out in less than five minutes.

Around 6:40, my oncologist messages me to tell me my neutrophils were at 1.0 but were looking to be dropping, and her preference is to delay surgery. There’s no way for me to respond to the message, so I don’t.

Thursday I call the team who are doing my surgery, and explain to them about my recent blood test and for them to get the surgeon and anaesthetist to review them to give me the okay for surgery. An hour later, someone calls me back from the same team, but to run through a pre-surgery checklist and see if I have any questions. Just one – has the doctor and anaesthetist reviewed my bloods and given the go-ahead for surgery, or are they going to do bloods in the morning and decide then? An hour after that, I have my answer – check in for 7am, I’m first up on the afternoon list, and they’ll run bloods when I arrive.

Awesome.

I sleep like crap, Laura drives me to the hospital and I arrive at 7:10am. Two minutes to check in, two minutes to get up to level 6 where the surgery will take place, and ten minutes for a nurse to collect me to take me in to my bed. I’m late, I’m told – was I given 7:30am as the time to arrive? I tell her the conversation I’d had with the team the previous afternoon, and that’s news to her. I rush to change any way and take a seat while they take my obs (112 / 79) and 37.4 degrees which on the high side (0.6 degrees off being a fever).

This is not boding well for blood work.

A nurse finally comes and after some bumbling around to find out what’s going on and what tests need to be run, she tries to get blood from me. Having fasted since midnight, and it’s 8am by this point, I’m a little dehydrated. She has no luck. How about she goes and gets the anaesthetist to cannulate me and we get blood from that in one go, rather than have to stick me twice? I’m okay with that. She goes to get her, and comes back alone. I ask if she’s going to remove the tourniquet that’s still on my arm.

Oops.

The anaesthetist comes in, and she’s gruff, and I don’t like her. She barely looks at me, badgers me about why they need to take bloods, and pulls the tourniquet tight on my upper arm. I wince at that, but that’s normal. She stabs me with the cannula, and I cry out and want to rip my arm away. It hurts so much I almost cry. I’ve never had that much pain with a cannula before. But it doesn’t feel right. I’m getting that weird, warm, dull ache in my arm that is a sign of it not being in. I say this to her, and I’m told she’s drawn the blood and it’s fine and she’s getting good flushback which is a vital sign to a cannula working properly. I’ll be last on the morning list, as there is no afternoon list, so what I had been told was wrong, but only by a little bit. If the cannula is still super painful, they’ll put me to sleep using it, and then she’ll switch it out and do a new one while I’m under and remove this one. Okay, whatever.

At this point, the nurse fusses with some paperwork, the anaesthetist leaves, and I ask if Laura can go get a coffee and breakfast and come back in later. It’s 8:30ish by now. Laura leaves, and someone else comes in to run through some cognitive tests for an anaesthetic recovery research program I agreed to take part in. Halfway through, I lean against my arm, and realise the tourniquet is still on. It’s almost 9am now. The tourniquet has been on for at least 20 minutes.

Double oops.

I ask the research lady to release it for me and she does. We finish up, and my breast nurse arrives to have a quick chat. Laura comes back with Jane, the breast nurse leaves, and we all sit around talking for a while. As Jane is leaving, she looks at my arm and says it’s really fat. It shouldn’t be. She goes to get a nurse to check it out, and I explain that the cannula still doesn’t feel right and that the tourniquet was left on.

Two nurses come in to take a look, and I’m apologised to again and again. I’m told to keep my fingers moving and arm elevated for a bit, then I’m given a warm blanket to wrap around my arm to help the fluid move on its way. I sit and chill for a while, trying not to stress out, and the doctor comes in. She has bad news face. My neutrophils are 0.9 and trending downwards, so no surgery. I’m just not well enough to have it. It’s a blessing in disguise really, because I have a cough, and having abdominal surgery with a cough would just be asking for blown stitches and extreme pain. I’m thrilled because it means not having to put up with the cannula any longer.

I’m discharged, I pick up my drugs from pharmacy, and Laura and I go to breakfast / brunch on the way home because she needs coffee and I need food. We get home, and the sleeve of my hoodie has pulled at the tape holding on the gauze of the dressing over my cannula spot. I go to the bathroom to get a bandaid to cover it, and as I peel back the tape, a big fat droplet of blood oozes out.

And doesn’t stop oozing.

I try to raid my brother’s first aid kit for tape to hold it back down, but he doesn’t have any, and the gauze is quickly becoming soaked. I’m not prepared for a bleed like this at home.

Laura drives me to the emergency room at Footscray Hospital.

By the time we get there, I’ve had pressure applied on my arm and elevated it for about twenty minutes. The triage nurse has a quick look and it’s stopped bleeding, but applies a new dressing and recommends we wait for a doctor to take a look at it after I explain to her what happened at the Peter Mac with the cannula and the tourniquets.

The ED nurse who takes us in explains that what probably happened is when they first put the cannula in, they flushed it with a bit of saline. Because the tourniquet was left on so long, the fluid couldn’t travel out of my arm, so got stuck. It was likely saline mixed with blood that came pouring out, but it also looked like the cannula had tissued – which means it wasn’t in the vein properly. Still a good idea to come to the hospital to get it looked at given my platelets were low, but that it wasn’t likely to reopen and pour everywhere.

Phew.

All up, it wasn’t the worst thing to ever, ever happen to me, but I’m not going to lie – it was traumatic. I was told again and again by the anaesthetist that I was wrong, the cannula was fine, and that I was being a sook. It hurt. And the stress from having to have the surgery in the first place is not fun, and then to think you’re going to be okay with having it only to find out it’s going to be delayed for an unknown period of time is not something I was expecting to have to deal with.

I don’t feel like talking at the moment while I process all of this again. I’m just going to take a few days to pretend like it didn’t happen and find my groove again.