Bad day

Today is a really bad day. Feel on the edge of crying constantly and keep obsessing about the funeral and imagining what it will be like. I think I just want it to be over with now.

I actually just went to the car park at work, lay down on the back seat of my car and lay crying for a while, it made me feel a bit better but I would have been so embarrassed if anyone had walked past.

I keep reading the texts that he sent me and looking at pictures of him, I don’t know if that’s a bad thing to do, it seems to upset me more sometimes but I just want to see them and remember.

I keep remembering key things that he said to me, like when he said when we were sat in his lounge once “I don’t want to die”.

I hate this all so much, I am so so sad, I miss him so much and really really want to see him again and speak to him again.

I never thought id feel this way but I am also desperate for a sign from him to know that he’s there or that he’s watching me. Affy’s girlfriend Alison told me that when her husband died she used to see signs all the time that he was still there. She said they came particularly in the form of electricity things like lights would turn off when she came into the room, or streetlights would flicker when she walked past. I want something like that but haven’t had anything. I know its desperate but I just think that it would maybe make me feel better.

I also have constant worried about everyone else. I feel like I’m just waiting for the next thing to go wrong with someone else. Nana keeps having pain in her legs at the moment, she’s just been to the doctor and found out that it’s probably the result of hardening in her arteries. I feel really worried about that now and that it might lead to a stroke or heart attack. I definitely couldn’t cope if this happened.  

My head is so so full at the moment, just want to stop thinking, the only time the thinking stops is when I’m asleep and even then I dream all night. I hope this starts to get better soon. I am acting just like normal with everyone but it’s so exhausting, I don’t really care about the same things any more. Well sometimes I do care about them but at other times I just feel like I’ve realised that nothing else really matters apart from Mum, Natalie, Warren and Nana being ok.

It's been exactly two weeks now

It’s been exactly two weeks now since he died and it’s been awful. Well not awful, up and down really, and I definitely don’t think it’s sunk in yet. I think about him absolutely all of the time, occasionally I realise I haven’t been thinking about him for a little while, but those little whiles never last longer than a few minutes. It’s the funeral next week, and I am dreading it so much. If I’m honest, when I do cry or get upset it’s generally because I’ve been thinking about or imagining the funeral and how awful it will be.  I keep imagining macabre things like the sight of the coffin being moved backwards.

It hasn’t really sunk in I don’t think, I can’t quite fathom that I will never see or speak to him again.

 The things that upset me the most, or that I think about the most are the facts that I am so scared of forgetting the sound of his voice, or his manner and the little funny mannerisms that he had, I wish so much that I had videos of him speaking so that I could watch them. We do have old videos of him, but I want just very plain ones of the way he spoke and the little things that he said ordinarily. I’m so upset that if I get married or have children that he won’t be there. I feel upset for Natalie that she didn’t have more time with him.

Most of all I feel upset for him at how disappointed he’d be to know he hadn’t managed to fight the cancer, as he was so proud of how strong he was and was so confident that he’d be ok. He would be so upset to think he’d failed.

I just really really want him back.

I think it's the end.

He woke up this morning different and I felt like I knew.

He was rattly and couldn't clear his secretions. He was agitated and trying to get out of bed and roll to the side. His breathing changed. It was noisy and he wasn't using his stomach as much anymore to breathe. 

The nurse hadn't been able to find his vein last night so decided to give him his fluids via a sub cut needle instead. 

She came and told us she thought he was shutting down. 

We went to the day room while they suctioned him and changed his bedding. She came to us and spoke with me. Neda didn't talk she was sat in shock. She cried as I spoke to her and told me she'd lost her parents and had only become a nurse because they'd asked her to. She'd nursed them in Fiji and then after they'd died she'd come to England. She was lovely with us. 

Neda was angry and felt they could have done more. 

The nurse said she thought it was imminent. 

I said I was going to my uncles funeral today and didn't know what to do. She said she thought I should maybe stay with him. 

When we went back into the room he'd been sedated and his bedding was clean and his breathing sounded better. 

Just a waiting game now. 

Mixture of emotions today.

The doctor came in the morning and hinted that treatment may stop tomorrow. They X-rayed his chest and did a blood test. The infection level had come down to 63 (from 177 on Friday) but the X-ray was very bad. It all looked grey. I spoke with the doctor briefly in the afternoon and asked if we could speak to them in the morning as it was uncle Alex's funeral in the afternoon. She said that was fine and we could meet at 9.30. I cried as I spoke to her and she was lovely back. She said she was so so sorry there was nothing more they could do. She said he's a very ill man. 

Dad came round for a bit in the afternoon and was talking to me for quite a bit.

Tina came and he had a lovely moment with her telling her how much she's gone through and how strong she was and what a lovely woman she is. He was saying god bless you to her and clasping her hand. 

Afterwards he was asking me how long it will take before he gets better. I was saying that I didn't know but reassuring him that he has lots of medication to help him relax and stop him being in pain. 

He was saying to the nurse that he hadn't gone insane or lost his mind. 

He told me he'd been through 24 hours of hell. 

He was paranoid about me conning him about his medicine. Thinking I wasnt letting him have it or was making him wait too long for it. I made him look at me and promised him I was being honest with him about it. After that he took my hand and then Cuddled me and kissed me and told me how much he loved me. 

He was asking the nurse how long he'd be in hospital for, she was very diplomatic and said she wasn't sure and told him that if some of his treatment stopped he could go to a step down bed. She didn't imply that he may not move. 

He told me how much he loved me and Natalie and how proud he was of how strong I'd been despite everything I'd been through. He said he'd never have got through everything if it wasn't for me. 

I told him how proud I was of him. I showed him the screensaver picture of us on my phone and told him I was always looking at it. It seemed to make him very happy. He said it was fantastic. 

He said to the nurse that he was one of the most intelligent people she'd ever meet apart from me. 

After that he slept and slept but seemed very peaceful. 

Mixture of emotions today. Dad came round for a bit in the afternoon and was talking to me for quite a bit.

Tina came and he had a lovely moment with her telling her how much she's gone through and how strong she was and what a lovely woman she is. He was saying god bless you to her and clasping her hand. 

Afterwards he was asking me how long it will take before he gets better. I was saying that I didn't know but reassuring him that he has lots of medication to help him relax and stop him being in pain. 

He told me how much he loved me and Natalie and how proud he was of how strong I'd been despite everything I'd been through. He said he'd never have got through everything if it wasn't for me. 

He said to the nurse that he was one of the most intelligent people she'd ever meet apart from me. 

After that he slept and slept but seemed very peaceful. 

4 o'clock

I remember reading and hearing lots of times that 4 o'clock in the morning is when people are at their lowest and most likely to die.

It's five past four now and I feel sick with dread. 

He's woken up and been awake for nearly an hour. Fluctuating between confusion but mostly lucidity. 

He's now got a productive cough but can't quite cough it up so swallows it again. 

He's telling Neda to teach me farsi and telling her off not for teaching me and taking initiative. 

He started pulling his oxygen mask off a bit but seems to have settled now. 

What a horrible terrible time. I can't bear being in this room, it makes me feel sick to my stomach but I can't leave because he sometimes asks for me and I couldn't bear it if he did that and I wasn't here   

Nana sat with him for a few hours earlier so we could have a break. He said he didn't want her to come but then seemed pleased that she was there. We sat in a room down the corridor not daring to go back in. It helped so much to have some time away even though it wasn't long.  I kept popping back in to see how he was. 

I wish so much Warren was here to sit with him. He can cope with things like this better than me. I am falling apart, he is calmer and also understands this process better. If he was here u could leave him with dad and rest somewhere and still feel confident that he was ok. I know he wouldn't leave him. He is coming tomorrow but I feel that might be too late. 

 I can't believe it might all end so soon. This is heartbreaking. I don't feel like if it happens I will ever recover. 

Things got worse

Well since I last wrote things got a lot worse. He has been generally deteriorating for about a week. His oxygen was going down and he was feeling really tired. On Monday he was coughing a lot, his sats had really dropped and he was feeling really drained. I phoned the cancer centre and asked if he should come in. When they heard what his sats were they said he was too ill to come to them and we had to phone 999 so they could take him to A&E. I phoned them and then got in the car and drove back.

On the way back I had a gut feeling that he was going to die that night. 

I arrived at A&E and was relieved to see him looking better than I expected but still very ill. He had a chest X-ray which showed an infection and they changed him to far stronger IV antibiotics. 

At about 2.30 they moved him to the acute medical ward. It was horrific there. He was moved next to someone who had his whole family standing round them and looked close to death. The man was shouting and repeating things and his light was on. A horrible place to have to spend the night. By the time we left at 3.45 they still hasn't even come to check him in. We went home and got some sleep. 

When we went in in the morning he was ok. Clearly very drowsy but talking a bit and not terribly different. They sent him for a ct scan which confirmed a pulmonary embolism though thankfully only a small one, and also that the infection was pneumonia. 

By that afternoon he had started to deteriorate. His temperature was high (38.4) and his pulse was 125. They started to panic a bit and I heard the nurse saying to the doctor "shall we move him to the other side"- which I later discovered to be intensive care. The doctor said that as his BP was ok they could leave him for a while and just monitor him. His mews score was 8. 

They gave him paracetamol and a fan to bring down his temperature which started to work. His pulse remained high though. 

I went to the corridor and cried and cried then saw his nurse on the way back. I asked her whether they saw people recover when they were in a similar situation to dad. She said they did and she wasn't too worried. She said it was a typical pneumonia presentation but that his antibiotics were strong so he should start to respond to them. This relieved me so much. They then came to say he was being moved to another ward once they had a bed free. It could be any ward in the hospital depending on which ward had a free bed the soonest. 

We went home at about 11 at dads request as he wanted to try and sleep. He said he'd text once he'd moved. 

At one in the morning I got a text saying he'd moved to ward 113 then at 5 in the morning I got a text from him saying to come in as soon as I woke up. I then got a text a few minutes later saying not to rush in and just to come later. 

I arrived at 7.30 that morning and he was so upset and stressed. A doctor had been in in the night and told him that his cancer was incurable and he was dying and had stopped his fluids and antibiotics and said to call his family in.  She'd then come in not long after and apologised and said she was wrong and had spoken to a nurse and didn't realise that his sats were always that bad. She then said it didn't matter about us coming in and they'd continue with the treatment. 

We spoke about it and he was really upset about it but being very logical and mentally seemed fine. It was just me and him all morning and we had a lovely morning chatting he said some lovely things to me and said how he lived for me and Natalie and how he couldn't believe the love i'd shown him in how much I'd done for him since he's been ill. A lovely nurse called steve was looking after him and he was chatting away to him and was just normal. His breathing was normal for him and the whole morning was fine. 

I went out at just after lunchtime to go to the toilet and when I came back he was in the bathroom and he was a deathly white colour. He'd gone to the bathroom to wash himself and hadn't taken oxygen with him. He got into bed and was fighting for breath and fell asleep. 

A while later Neda came and she was so shocked to see him. I was trying to reassure her that he'd been fine and was just very tired from going to the bathroom. It soon though became clear that he wasn't improving and we called the nurse in. He checked him over and confirmed that he was getting worse. Time passed in a blur, afshin and Alison came and we found ourselves in a meeting with the doctor and nurse who explained the severity of the situation m: his lungs were trying to cope with copd, cancer, a clot and pneumonia and that each one of those things was life threatening. The doctor asked me what I thought his cancer prognosis was. I said possibly a year at best after chemo for six months. He said he couldn't see at all that he would survival the six months of chemo. We put a DNR in place and agreed to continue active treatment for now. They said they'd spoken to ICU and they wouldn't accept him as they thought his condition was incurable. 

We went back and sat with him praying that the antibiotics would work and hoping for a miracle. 

Natalie mum and nana came and though none of them saw him they sat in the dining room on the ward. At one point dad perked up and so I went and got Natalie and they were able to have a nice few minutes together and to say that they loved each other. She left then. Mum stayed at the hospital with me until 12.30 and I kept popping into her for little talks or for a walk. 

Me and Neda stayed with him all night. She pushed three chairs together to make a bed. I slept on the chair next to him and we mostly had a good night he slept for most of it and seemed mostly comfortable. Afshin stayed also until 5 in the morning and then left. He stayed in another room though. 

Another day

Today was another bad day in a stream of bad days.

We arrayed the night again and it was a better night than before as he slept a lot more possibly because of the diazepam. The morning was bad though. He was spaced out all morning and the. When he finally came round he was agitated, distressed and disoriented. 

The nurse didn't want to give him more diazepam at first as she wanted to be sure it wasn't affecting him too much. He was struggling to swallow safely, it was horrible to watch. 

I felt so sad all morning and went outside to cry with warren. 

Later on the palliative care nurse came and said she felt he was very near end of life now. I asked if this could go for weeks and she said she thought not. She prescribed a syringe driver to distribute the mediation more evenly throughout the day. 

Later on there was a bit of a disagreement between me and and his brother as he didn't really feel the syringe driver should have been put in place without his permission. He seemed to think it was shortening his life. So horrible. We met again with the doctor and nurse and they seemed to talk him round. 

Looks like it might be a good day? 

Review meeting 2

Well the review meeting went well, well perhaps not well but much better than expected. 

They said he could go ahead and have the next chemo and that he could probably even mover to having reviews every month rather than every two weeks   They didn't do any more tests on him so they didn't really have any more information apart from what we told her. 

It seemed like more of a formality really. 

Just so so relieved he can have it. 

Long night

Another long night ahead of us tonight. 

Dad has felt gradually worse over the last few days and his oxygen has been decreasing. 

We called the on call doctor out who said he should be in hospital but we said that the hospital said he should stay at home. The doctor phoned back after and said we should phone the cancer centre. I phoned them and they said not to send him in unless his temperature went over 84. His sats are currently 78 when he's not on oxygen and 88 when he is. 

Apparently he probably either has a chest infection or fluid on his lungs. If it's fluid he'll need a drain which they can't do at the weekend. If it's a chest infection then he's now on strong antibiotics which should hopefully kick in by the morning. 

I am away from him at the moment as w has his consultant appointment tomorrow and I really have to go to that. 

Feel so awful being away from him. 

So so worried. Tonight will be a long night. 

Review meeting 2

Well the review meeting went well, well perhaps not well but much better than expected. 

They said he could go ahead and have the next chemo and that he could probably even mover to having reviews every month rather than every two weeks   They didn't do any more tests on him so they didn't really have any more information apart from what we told her. 

It seemed like more of a formality really. 

Just so so relieved he can have it. 

Review appointment

Just waiting now for our review with the consultant. Feel very sick and nervous but strangely not as nervous as I have done over the past few days. 

Maybe I've come to terms with how bad the news might be. Or maybe I've just been successful at convincing myself that he has made some progress. 

Praying with all my heart that he can see the progress he has made and lets him continue with the chemo. 

He does seem as though he may have a chest infection though... Worried about that. We will see 

Another day

Another day filled with panic and anxiety. This is starting to feel normal. 

Dad has his appointment tomorrow to review how his chemo is going so far and Woz is feeling slightly better though is not actually better. 

I spend every day feeling actually sick to my stomach with worry about what will happen that day. My heart rate is permanently fast. 

Dad sounded chesty today and is coughing rubbish up indicating that he may in fact have a chest infection. If e does there is no chance he'll be having chemo next week which will not only hold back his progress but will also devastate him (and us). 

W is due back to work two weeks today and I really any see how he'll cope. 

To top it all off I have a painful vein in my thigh and have bought myself to a walk in centre as I'm now paranoid that it'll be DVT or similar. This last few months have made me think that anything is possible and little things that might have worried me a bit before now seem possible and terrifying. 

Praying that this time tomorrow we'll have had the appointment and it'll be good news. Doubtful though... 

Current feelings

Today is a bad day, as was yesterday now I think of it. I have never suffered from panic or anxiety problems in the past, though of course have had periods of time where I have felt panicked and anxious and I guess this might well be just one of those occasions. But it feels worse. I have felt really since I woke up as though I have been kicked in the stomach. Completely floored. I am bumbling along as normal, acting at work as though nothing is happening to all my colleagues but I am overwhelmed by a horrible feeling of sickness and panic. My heart rate feels fast and I feel generally unwell. I constantly drift into imaginary scenarios in my head where I imagine different things happening and how we will all react to them. Sometimes (not often) they are positive, but more often they are horrible. Not just horrible though, macabre. I imagine things going wrong in the most tragic and sad way they possibly could. I imagine everyones reactions being as emotional and devastating as they possibly could be. I imagine ridiculous details, what I’ll be wearing, where I’ll be, exactly what I’d say, what day it will be on (usually an important day like someones birthday or Christmas etc). None of my work colleagues knows what’s going on yet I still feel angry that they don’t know or care about it. I ask people questions about what’s going on in their lives and encourage them to talk about the things that’re on their mind or are bothering them, then I feel angry with them for moaning when their problems seem insignificant compared to mine. I have become someone I don’t recognise.

I fluctuate between thinking that nothing matters apart from them both getting better and that I don’t care about anything else in the world, yet I spend other times mindlessly drifting through Pinterest and Instagram looking for home/clothes/garden/food inspiration.  

 

Feeling quite a lot better now since writing this, perhaps it will be helpful for me to write my feelings down more. I have, however just read that the outlook for the cancer of Dad's type and stage is that 7% of people live for 5 years after diagnosis. Not good.

Treatment

Diagnosis

So much has happened over the past couple of months and I really wanted to share it, for a few reasons; I want to have a concrete record of what’s happened in case I need it later but I also felt like it would help me to have somewhere to vent.

I’ll start at the beginning, my Dad has leukaemia and has had for several years (since 2012), his leukaemia- CLL was a chronic form that people can live with for years. Around 12 weeks ago he told me he’d had some swelling in his leg and was having a scan for it but was waiting for the scan to come through. He told me he’d been waiting for several weeks and asked if this was normal, I said I thought it probably was. I thought no more of it, thinking it would be something quite minor and not thinking there'd be a relationship to the CLL. A few weeks following that he phoned me after not being in touch very much and told me that the doctor was concerned that the leukaemia within the lymph node in his leg (where the swelling had been) had become active and that he might need some chemotherapy for it*. This set alarm bells ringing obviously and I became quite frightened. I arranged to travel home to see him that weekend but couldn’t as horrendously that same weekend my partner suffered a pulmonary embolism and was also very ill and couldn’t be left (I spoke about this in a previous post).

The weekend after this I went home to see him. I remember him telling me on the phone that he was in the cancer centre but nothing prepared me for how physically sick I would feel walking into that building and seeing the words above the door. I felt even more sick as I walked up the stairs and went through the waiting area before the ward entrance and saw a sign saying “this is a chemotherapy ward and therefore is not suitable for children”. I burst out crying and it took me quite a while to compose myself before I went in. He was in a ward with 3 other men but he seemed so well that I felt far more at ease having seen him and relaxed slightly. He still looked the same, he didn’t look like ‘a cancer patient’, though his leg was very very swollen (twice the size of the other one). I started to try to reassure myself that everything would be ok.

In the meantime I had to go home and tell my younger sister who was at this point relatively unaware about what was happening, that there had been developments. One of the hardest conversations of my life, she cried and cried and cried and we both cried together, then we composed ourselves and went to the cinema to watch pitch perfect two and almost pretended that none of it was happening. We went to the hospital together the following night and I think she felt reassured to see that he was better than he sounded, though she too suffered the same reaction on going into the building.

At this point they told dad that he could start going home during the daytime (as keeping him out of hospital minimised the risk of infection) but staying there in the evening as this would enable him to be monitored and have all the appropriate tests.

Very soon after this he was given a colonoscopy and they discovered some adenocarcinoma in the rectum. They did not think this was related to the lymph node but it was clear he needed further tests.  He was also given a bronchoscopy and we had to wait slightly longer for these results.

A week or so later they confirmed that the cancer they had found in the lymph node in his groin was a carcinoma and not leukaemia and decided to start radiotherapy. We were also given a date to see he consultant to decide how he would move forward with treatment.

 

Around this time I asked his haematologist if he could explain a bit more to me about what was going on, he asked dad if it was ok if he spoke with me privately rather than doing it in the ward. Dad said it was fine so we went into a little side room. In there the news was bad; they thought, but weren’t sure that the CLL was active. They knew there was cancer elsewhere in the body but were not sure of the extent to which it had spread. They needed more information about where in the body it was, whether it had spread both above and below the diaphragm and so forth. His manner was gentle and kind but the facts were bleak and hard to get optimistic about: “I would not be so unkind as to give you any false hope at this stage”, “his situation is complex and serious”, “treatment options may be limited”.

 

The date to meet with the consultant came. I knew instantly it was bad news, we were led into a room with the consultant, two nurses (one of whom was a palliative care nurse) and a box of tissues sat on the table. The news was bad; he confirmed that there was cancer elsewhere in the body and there was prominence in the lymph nodes in his chest, neck and stomach as the primary cancer in his rectum had metastasized to other areas in the body. He proposed radiotherapy (which had already started) for which there was a 50:50 chance of success, as well as chemotherapy for which there was a 60:40 chance of success. He advised there was no chance of a cure and that treatment was palliative only. He told us that even if the radiotherapy did work at reducing the cancer the leg swelling might never reduce. I asked about prognosis, he would (could) not answer though made it clear that the outlook wasn't good. We were assigned a palliative care nurse and sent on our way.

 

*Apparently after not receiving a scan for his leg he went back to the GP who informed him that they had in fact forgotten to send out the letter requesting a scan. they then took one look at his leg and sent him straight to A&E.

Pulmonary Embolism- diagnosis

Having not written anything here for a couple of years I felt compelled to write somewhere about the last week.

Thursday

One week ago I picked my boyfriend up from work and he was complaining of severe chest pain. He'd had the same before and been to the hospital and been told it was pleurisy and given Naproxen. This time the pain was bad but not as bad as before. we got home and he went out to his scuba diving club where he goes each Thursday night. he arrived home earlier than usual that night, complaining of the same pain, which had by this point worsened. He took some pain relief and I went to bed while he stayed up. In the middle of the night I woke to hear him groaning with pain, he went downstairs and was crying and groaning with the pain, He couldn't sit or lie down, and could get some slight relief by kneeling on all fours but could only do this for short stretches of time. I kept offering to take him to hospital but he thought the pain would pass. He still had one Naproxen tablet left which he took and this alleviated the pain to the point that I was then able to get him to the hospital - at this point it was 3am Friday morning.

Friday

We arrived at the hospital at about 3.30am and thankfully A&E was pretty empty (unusual for a British hospital), we were therefore seen quite quickly by a triage nurse who did an ECG, took his BP and gave him some paracetemol. The ECG and BP seemed clear so he spoke to the doctor who advised the'd take a blood test and do a chest x-ray, which we did. We then spoke with the doctor who told us that he would wait for the x-ray and blood test but that it seemed like a non emergency and something that should be followed up with a GP. That changed about an hour later when he returned with blood test results which showed 'sky-high' levels of D-Dimer in his blood. D-Dimer is a protein which can be found in the blood indicating the presence of a blood clot or a blood clot being broke down. He explained then that there was a possibility of blood lots on his lungs but he'd need a scan to confirm this. They injected him in the stomach with an anticoagulent in case it was a clot-they said it'd do no damage if it wasn't one. They sent us home and said we'd hear from the hospital soon to arrange this. We got home at 6am and went straight to sleep. Thankfully by this point the pain relief had helped him and he was able to lie down.

We slept for a couple of hours and were woken at 8.30 by the hospital phoning and asking him to come in at 10am. We arrived at 10am and went to the ambulatory care unit. they sent him for a scan and then we came back and waited to see the Doctor. When we finally went in to see the Doctor, I sat behind the Doctor as he sat next to him. He asked a lot of questions and was taking a really thorough case history and the whole time I could see the Doctor's computer screen and could see the scan on the screen with several clots. I felt sick particularly watching him sat there oblivious, probably expecting to be told the scan was clear. Eventually he told him the scan results- they'd found several clots on his lungs and he needed immediate treatment. He was prescribed Dalterparin injections daily for 5 days as well as Warfarin for at least 6 months, and some pain relief- Paracetemol and codeine. We collected the prescriptions and went back to be shown how to do the injections and home we went again.

I left him at this point quite pain free and so went to work for a few hours- I didn't mention anything to anyone at work and acted normal, still unable to fully process what had happened. I arrived home several hours later to find him in slightly more pain than I'd left him in but nothing like what he'd been in the night before. I said I was going to bed for an hour having not slept the night before and went upstairs. About half an hour later I was aware of sound downstairs so went down to see what was happening. He was doubled up in pain again, moaning, crying, and in a terrible terrible state. I phoned NHS direct who said to take him back to hospital so I took him To A&E this time at a different hospital which was slightly closer. This time A&E was very busy- it was a Friday night! However we got triaged by a nurse straight away who gave us a slip of paper saying a big '1' on it and 'chest pain, possible PE'. This seemed to mean we fastracked the queue significantly and so the wait wasn't too bad. They gave him some IV Morphine which relieved the pain considerably then sent us home saying the pain relief we had should be enough from there.

He tried to come to bed that night but still couldn't lie down so he slept sitting up on the sofa while I went to bed (getting up several times to check on him).

Saturday

By Saturday we seemed in a different place entirely and I was starting to feel positive that the worse had passed, we pottered around for the morning, he was in pain but finding it bearable. I went to the shops- we had hardly eaten since this all started, and he watched tv. He was taking his pain relief regularly and that seemed to keep a lid on it. By the afternoon at about 2pm things changed and out of the blue he became overcome by horrendous pain. He started screaming, swearing, turned bright red, was banging the wall, throwing things around, crying, his chest was visibly spasming, he ripped his top clean off his chest and was in a terrible terrible state. He couldn't speak to answer questions but eventually told me to call 999. I phoned and the lady on the phone said she would send an ambulance straight out. A first responder arrived within about 20 minutes and gave him some oxygen as his sats were 85, this helped a little bit but it wasn't until the paramedic came about 10 minutes after and gave him some IV Morphine that the pain really started to subside. Two more paramedics came and took him to hospital in an ambulance and I followed behind in the car, shaking with fear and crying and wondering what was going to happen. By the time I got to the hospital his pain was much better and he was in bed. He was unrecognisable from the person who'd been screaming our house down an hour or so earlier. The doctor came and to, him to stagger his pain relief, I said I wouldn't take him home unless they gave him something else as the pain relief they had given him was simply not working. Eventually they agreed to give him one more Naproxen and some Tramadol, We were sent home again wondering what would happen next. We both napped when we got back, me in bed him sat up still not feeling like he could get into bed. I dreamt the whole time wondering what was happening.

Sunday

Sunday came and went, we watched tv, he had moments of pain but things seemed to be getting better though I didn't dare believe it. I  got every cushion and pillow in the house and put them on his side of the bed and propped him up and on Sunday night he finally got into bed and slept there for the whole night.