6 doses down: 14 to go.


This morning I woke up at 7am! With it being a Saturday morning, the whole house was still in a slumber, with only myself, my Mum and my dog making noise. It was eerily peaceful. I rang the hospital transplant unit and spoke to a staff nurse, explained my situation and asked if it was ok for me to come over and get a doctor to place another line. She said it was fine and to come over as early after 9am as I could as that way I'd have a chance of catching the doctors. Check.

At the weekends, the clinic is shut so you need to ring for access (the unit is off the clinic). A Philippine nurse greeted me and brought me down the ward. She told me they'd been expecting me. I waited half way down the corridor while she went and spoke to her nurse colleague.

"It's the one...you know...no veins..."

"Oh yes, yes. Oh that's her? Will I get the basin?''

Then the two glanced at me, saw I was looking at them and then both, identically smiled sympathetically at me. It would appear the team have been informed of my lack of veins. Ooops. One nurse then went and got some tea for us while another got the basin ready. I was to bathe my hands and arms in hot water to bring up the veins.

On two separate occasions two different people said to me 'So you're the one with no veins' and "I hear you have pretty bad veins". Was this published in the newsletter one wonders?!

Anyway, nice doctor did *amazingly* well, found an unknown vein and struck gold. He made the comment that I had very sensible veins. I take this to mean that if a loony pounced on me on a dark night and stabbed me a million times, there would be little chance of me bleeding to death.

We had a slight accident when the line thing broke and blood spewed everywhere. I didn't know I even had so much blood, it never seems to come out on clinic days...

Well fingers crossed!