A rough week then a visit to the Emergency Dept

This has definitely been my hardest non-chemo week.  So far I have not recovered from the last round of chemo, I have felt quite ill most of the week (as if I have a cold or mild flu) but I am very sure the problem is just the progressive effect of the chemo on my body.

Making matters worse, I have had a painful left knee for most of the week, just moderate pain, but it has slowed me down and is quite debilitating.  I have had this sort of pain in my left knee before, since an ankle injury about 5 years ago, so I was not too concerned.  By Saturday morning the pain had resolved and my left knee feels fine now.

However late Friday a sharper pain appeared in my right knee, it was much worse than that in my left knee and made movement very painful.  On Saturday I found that panadol did provide some relief - panadol does generally work well for me.  Come Sunday morning and my knee was up like a balloon and I felt I needed to take some action.  My chemo "rules" require me to call the oncology unit if anything unexpected happened, so I called them at 8:00 AM this morning and explained the situation.  By 8:30 AM they called me back, after referring to an oncologist.  They strongly recommended that I report to the Emergency Department of Christchurch Hospital.  They suggested I turn up at 11:00 AM as by then the Registrars and Consultants would have finished ward rounds and should be available for me.

We arrived at about 11:00 AM and were taken straight in to the ED, due to my green chemo card which puts me high up on the triage process.  I did feel a bit sorry for the others still waiting.  I was taken to an isolation room, to keep me away from all the sick people there.  Much blood was taken, tests were done, and fluid taken from my knee.  In total 60ml was extracted from my knee, to relieve the swelling.  The fluid was a light straw colour, which was good, apparently.  After another hour the results of the tests on the extracted liquid was that I have gout. I was not impressed at all, but apparently it is not unknown for chemo to trigger it.

The recommendation from the ED Doctor was to reduce alcohol, particularly red wine, shell fish and tennis.  This will be very hard to do for me as I don't drink any alcohol since going on chemo, don't like shell fish and the last time I played tennis (badly) was about 40 years ago.  They prescribed prendisone  and Ibuprofen.  I am not happy about the side effects of prendisone and will wait and see if there is any improvement on just panadol and ibuprofen  before I try it.

This week is a biggie in terms of hospital visits;

• Tuesday - CT Scanning
• Wednesday - Chemo starts
• Thursday - Meet with Sugeon to look at results of CT scan and consider and maybe plan surgery to Lung and Liver
• Friday - Chemo pump removed.

I will post an update here after the Thursday meeting.