Sarah just left in a big yellow taxi. The fact that she was picked up at all was a minor miracle.
After the huge drama she had leaving NZ we kind of hoped that things would go a lot smoother on the return. I think Sarah was going to post something about her trip here, but didn't quite get around to it.
Here's a quick summary.. locked out of the flat on the morning of her flight, after forgetting her keys,
Wellington airport closed by fog and all flights delayed, finally managed to get a flight to Auckland and then just as the plane was about to leave she was asked to get off as they had allotted the same seat to two people with similar names. She was then put on a later flight that would arrive after her flight to San Francisco would have departed. Upon arrival at Auckland she found that the San Fran flight was delayed by two hours due to a computer fault. So she was still able to catch it in the end. She said she has never been so stressed in all her life.
Today was much like that.. We were told that I had to report to the Klinik today for my vaccine treatment and a shot of Neumega. I expected that it would take about an hour. Sarah and I had planned to spend the day together, have a nice lunch at the Cafe in the Park and then spend the afternoon relaxing back at the hotel. Well, that was all fine until Dr Glonti got wind of our plans and decided he wanted me to spend the afternoon with him and that infernal Pizza oven of his!
We had also planned to pick up our laundry this morning from the little shop on the main road where we had dropped it off last Friday. Unfortunately they had mixed the colours with the whites and had to do it all again. The lady behind the counter said it would not be ready until 5pm. Much to late for us. After much brow beating in Genglish we agreed that two o'clock was the latest we could let her have it, as Sarah still needed to pack as well. When we got the laundry back to our room we found half my underwear was missing. Either Dr G has been stalking me, or the woman has a fetish, either way I'm rationed down to just 3 pair. Not sure what the nurses would say if I went commando for a few days...
So there we are at the Klinik and it's 1pm. I told Dr Drasynski that I did not want to stay the night as I did not think I required 24 hour care just for a vaccine shot. Especially when that one night's cost was almost as much as my air-fairs. He put up quite a fight, even got Christine in to bolster his argument. But I stuck to my guns. I've had the vaccine shots before and all I got was a slight back ache. Certainly nothing to be hospitalised for! Heck up until I came here I was having crippling back-aches almost every night!. They made me sign a waver.. just so I don't sue them if I die in my bed tonight from a headache.
So Sarah got to watch me cook in the oven. I thought it would only take a couple of hours and that we would still have plenty of quality time together.. Sadly it was nearly four hours before we walked out the klinik doors into the warm evening sun. Being cooked at 39.2C all afternoon really gives you a chilled feeling for an hour or so until you get back to normal body temp. (36-ish)
From there we walked the short distance to the 'Cafe in the Park' and took a seat outside so I could warm myself like a lizard on a rock. Was such a great feeling. We placed our orders, checked the time and figured we had an hour and a half before the taxi arrived at the Hotel to pick her up. Forty five minutes later and our meals still hadn't arrived. Sarah started to get a little stressed. At fifty minutes they arrived and we thought.. OK we still have forty minutes to eat, walk back to the hotel, finish packing, a nice long hug and then into the taxi.
So far so good. We get back, she finishes packing, we hug and we walk down to the car-park to await the taxi that we had booked through Karina at the klinik. 6:15.. and no taxi. 6:25, still no taxi.
I went inside and asked Alexander if he could track it down for us. He had a ten minute heated phone call with the taxi company before it was sorted. Apparently a cab had been dispatched to another hotel and then left when no-one came out. Then Alexander had to give instructions on how to find his hotel. He was more angry than we were!. Five minutes later and a big yellow Mercedes station wagon roars up the drive. Sarah now had just one hour before check in. It would have been a fast drive! She's gone, hopefully the drama's have ended too. We shall see.
Lets go back to the Klinik.. I've finished my vaccine treatment and I asked when I'm going to have the Newcastle Disease virus? Dr Glonti seemed confused. He tells me it's not part of my treatment plan and that it isn't used for Hodgkin's. So I asked him why did they get me to sign a consent form and have Christine explain it all to me three weeks ago? He had no answer.
Christine stopped by while I was baking in the oven, and asked me to sign the waver form. So I asked her why I had been told I was having the NDV treatment, had it explained to me and then asked to sign a consent form if I wasn't actually having it? She had no explanation other than to say it was her fault and she had made an assumption. Oh well.. No bird flu... so let's just scrub everything I've written about it from our collective memories shall we? Will save me re-editing half a dozen blog pages!.
Then comes the Neumega injection.. well actually it didn't come, again. You may recall that every day for the last couple of weeks I have been promised it and it has never arrived.
Well apparently there is none in the country and because it is so expensive so one carries it as a stock item. It is now due to arrive next Friday, one week after I've started chemo cycle two.
That will really be an interesting ride folks! We are starting chemo with a platelet count of 66 as of yesterday.. I'll be racking up platelet transfusions at $1200 a pop like they are going out of fashion! ..and how much are those Neumega shots each?? when they are so expensive that no one carries them in stock!. Well It will certainly make for good reading next week. We are in for another roller-coaster ride. I'll certainly be holding onto my seat!
I'm sure it's not the klinik's fault, and we will be just fine.. but why does all this crap have to keep happening to me? I often regret not having started this blog way back in 2005, there are so many little things that I've forgotten about. Bad advice, wrong treatments, wrong diagnosis, Doctors too scared to look outside the square when confronted with a challenging case.. I really do hope that when I walk out those klinik doors in 3 weeks from now, I'll be turning my back on all this and it will all behind me like a bad dream.
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