Sept 29th - Don't judge a book buy it's cover

So I hate to say it but this "Cancer Center For Excellence" was starting to remind me of your typical small town ER. The evening of the 28th did not go as planned as I had previously stated, they made me fast all day and then didn't do my catheter insertion because of a "miscommunication". But my night only got better from there. I had a bad reaction to the E chemo and had a really bad asthma attack. I called the nurse in and by the time she got there I was wheezing so hard I thought I would pass out. She doesn't normally do chemo so the first thing she does is run out of the room to try to track down my chemo nurse (who apparently is away on break). So this nurse who didn't know what to do and saw that was barely breathing left me alone for over 5 mins when she could have just pushed the call bell on my bed and asked for back up.

Later on the same nurse hung the wrong IV bad for me. It was still a drug I take but not the one I needed at the time.

When the doctors did there rounds (none of mine where there, just the rest of the Lymphoma team) they first commented how lucky I am to be in this suite! I politely reminded them that I did not come here for luxury, I would much rather be slumming it down on the 14th floor with all the other Lymphoma patients and get better care.

The team of doctors promised to get me on the surgical schedule immediately and so I was fasting again. Turns out after repeated phone calls to my patient rep I was never but on the schedule at all for the second day in a row and just on a waiting list.

But they did make good one one promise. They changed my night nurse to a much more competent one and even arranged for my suite to be changed and moved me to the one closest to the nurses station.

I ended up going down around 5pm (after repeated calls and pressure from my Aunt and I) to surgery and had my catheter placed. At that point I had been fastin for 36 hrs with only one tiny meal in between. It was a little bit of a surprise when I woke up from surgery. The thing is huge, with long tubes sticking out of my chest. I really don't know what kind of clothing I am going to be able to wear!

But after coming back from surgery my night was pretty good for the most part. I am really sore from the surgical site, but being right next to the nurses station has been great and I like my new night nurse. So maybe this is the changing of the tides for this place.