A dreadful day

I’ve been quiet on the blog for a while. Daily life with Anna is just very time consuming. And we’ve been trying to sort out lots of other practical issues to give us more support, more on that in another post…

Yesterday was a dreadful, dreadful day, one which I didn’t think Anna would survive. She went from being generally unwell on tue evening to a critical state on wed morning. She had been sick at teatime (not unusual), sick at bedtime ( not unusual) and sick during the evening (again, not unusual). During the night, she continued to be obviously uncomfortable and was sick again. But around 7am, she became unconscious and we couldn’t wake her. Her pupils were tiny, her eyes open but not seeing, she was unresponsive, floppy and finding it harder and harder to breathe. I called an ambulance and in the time it took to come we thought she had stopped breathing. The telephone operator was giving us instructions on how to open her airways when the paramedics arrived. We raced through the rush hour traffic with sirens blaring and Anna on oxygen, and went straight into the resuscitation room where Anna was hooked up to monitors. It was terrifying until they began to work out the problem. Her blood sugar level was so low it wasn’t registering, which meant she wasn’t getting the glucose fuel she required to keep her body working. That’s why she could hardly breathe. Once she was given glucose, the response was almost miraculous. She sat up, demanded milk and cornflakes and instructed all of us to feed her! I was briefly relieved but it became clear there was still an unexplained problem and since then she has had bloods taken for testing and cultures, an MRI scan, ultrasound and CT scan. No one has come to a definite conclusion about the cause but seems to be a combination of infection and neurological reaction to one specific chemo drug. I know all the doctors are talking about it, trying to solve the puzzle. Tonight, she is calm and sleeping but still on 2 hr observations until more is known. We are back in ward 2 for at least the weekend but now confident she will come through this.

Thank you to everyone who helped us through this particular crisis. And please keep praying.

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