25.Wrinkles, tinkles and miracles

Night 1 at home after release. (Night 14 after treatment)

All snuggled up under half a ton of duck feathers I slept so well, until now.  It's still dark and all is quiet so it's the middle of the night as far as I'm concerned.  I try to turn over and pain like I've never felt shoots down my legs; my knees hurt, my hips hurt and attempting to move in any direction is excruciating. Two words shoot straight to the front of my mind:  serum sickness.  Just my luck that it decides to rear it's ugly head the first night I'm away from hospital.  I have no choice, I need to get up and go to the loo so I'm just going to have to grin and bear it.  I manage to sit up and spend the next 5 minutes sitting on the edge of the bed, contemplating whether my legs will actually hold me when I try to stand up.  They really do hurt.  Reasoning with myself (which can be very tricky at the best of times) I decide that the worst that can happen is that I land in a heap on the floor so I take a big breath and go for it.  I managed to stand, however walking was a different kettle of fish.  I couldn't really say that I walked down the corridor, it was more of a bent over shuffle as I couldn't straighten my legs, and each step seemed to be accompanied with a groan as I bounced off the corridor wall.  I made it to the bathroom without waking the rest of the house up which was the mission, hooray! 

Now, anybody who knows me well and has had the misfortune of having any kind of mishap in my presence will tell you that if ever anything goes wrong, my reaction is to laugh even though I know the situation is usually never funny in the slightest.  The more that goes wrong the more I get the giggles. For all those people I have laughed at, you can rest assured that you now have got you're own back.  Wee completed, all I had to do was stand up and make the journey back to bed.  I went to stand up and I couldn't.  My legs had decided enough was enough and were just not going to co-operate. I tried to see the funny side and in typical me style started to giggle, here I was in the middle of the night stuck on the loo, unable to stand, oh man, what a site.  My giggles got louder but very quickly turned from a small giggle to hysterical laughter to hysterical crying as I realised this wasn't funny, it really really hurt and I quite literally couldn't move, the pain searing down my legs was unlike anything I'd ever felt before.  Andy heard my hysterics (and they must have been loud to wake him up) and came rushing to find a blubbering me sitting on the loo unable to move and now totally panicking.  He was such a star, he completely calmed me down and we decided that the only thing I could think of that might ease the pain a bit was to soak in a big hot bath. Andy ran the bath and practically lifted me off the dunny and helped to plonk me in the bath.  It did offer some kind of relief and after all the crying I was exhausted.  "I'll come back in 20 mins" Andy said.  I lay there in the hot water trying to remember everything I'd read about serum sickness.  Next thing I new I was waking up like a shrivelled prune and the nice hot water that I'd been wallowing in was now cold water and not so nice.  I'd fallen asleep and so too had Andy, 20 mins had turned into 2 hrs.  I looked at my hands and they were wrinklier than a wrinkly thing.  I still couldn't move and there was no way I could get out the bath myself , I had a momentary panic as firemen and a big winch flashed across my mind along with a headline in the local paper, shit, how embarrassing would that be, so I shouted for Andy and he came rushing through, eyes still half shut.   My legs were most definitely still not working and hurting a lot again so that heavy lifting training Andy did at work all those years ago came in very handy, quite how he got me out the bath I don't know but he did and the assistance of the local fire brigade I'm glad to report was not required.  I think it must have been a bit like one of those miracle stories you hear on telly, you know when people suddenly become able to lift cars that have squished someone or something, well whatever super power they suddenly possess got a hold of Andy at this particular moment in time because I'm a big lump and I'm telling you, getting me out of the bath that night was nothing short of a miracle!

By this time it was 7a.m. so I phoned the hospital and told them about the serum sickness.  I was going in later anyway as my platelet count was rubbish and I needed to have daily platelet transfusions still.  Moo phoned to see how I was doing and found the whole loo story rather amusing and the two hour bath even funnier. 

I endured the trip to hospital, making sure we most definitely did not take the scenic route this time, but stuck to the straight roads instead.  It was dishy Dr Bevan on duty when we got to hospital and after much humming and hawing he prescribed me something to take at home for the serum sickness.  I didn't bother to look in the bag until I was in the car, blow me down it was morphine, and not just one bottle of it.......3 bottles of the stuff.  By the time we got home it was evening again so after a large swig , erm no, sorry, a carefully measured 10ml cup full I plonked into bed and had my second attempt at a good nights sleep.