One hours sleep and a bag of vomit

I've broken my unblemished record. Despite all the chemo I've had in the last three years I've never thrown up.
However this morning my meds came late and although I was feeling queezy at around 7am I figured I could hold out till 8am when they were due. Unfortunately it was almost 9am before they came and not five minutes after taking them I started coughing and next thing ya know I've got squirrel cheek's and I'm desperately looking for a convenient place to convulse into. Luckily I spotted the small brown paper bag they give us for rubbish just in time!

I started my IV's sometime around 1pm yesterday and was under the impression that my last 4 hour drip would start around 9pm. I stayed up and waited expecting that I could sleep without having the IV line hanging off me. However late in the night I was informed by the nurse that I had a ten hour saline drip after that. By the look of it I'll be permanently connected right through till monday morning with perhaps a daily five minute break to shower and change clothes.

The little bit of sleep I did mange to get was constantly broken by a cacophony of beeps, buzzers, coughs, snores and door slamming. It was not until this morning when I was offered some ear plugs by one of the nurses that I actually got to nod off.

The IV's here use electronic pumps and they are so darn finicky. They keep getting air in the tubes and that stops the pump and sets off an alarm. I'm supposed to then press the nurses alarm but they never come. Last night I gave myself a crash course on driving the things and managed to clear the air lock by finding the purge option from the menu and then resetting the alarm and get the pump flowing again. This morning it happened again, so I reset it... five times it started and then stopped. Finally I gave up and pushed the nurses alarm. Twenty minutes passed and still no one came (unlike the seven seconds they took in Germany!) so I decided to open the front of the machine and see how the tube wound it's way through the pump and maybe locate the fault there. Big mistake.. there's a process for getting the door to shut again and It's not at all obvious. I was unable to close it before the nurse came.

Phyllis the nurse is about as butch as a gal can get without actually having a sex change. Short cropped, blonded hair and arms heavily covered with tattoos that would do your average trucker proud.
She growled at me and said to leave it alone and to call the nurse in future.. lesson learnt.. you have to stretch the tube and pull it tightly into the slot in order to re-prime the pump and close the door. (I'll remember that for next time!)