Kaz received a little pot of liquid (Gastrografin) in the post yesterday. She has to mix it with squash and water up to a pint and drink it at 10pm tonight, in readiness for her CT Scan in the morning at 8:30. Will she glow in the dark tonight?

On arrival tomorrow she has to drink another cocktail and then wait an hour for that to circulate before having her scan.

Good work to the hospital for getting her in the CT scan so promptly.

Today we attended Kaz’s first follow up appointment after her surgery.

Her wound needed aerating and some more fluid was removed. They are happy with the progress so far and her next visit will be in four months time.

The slightly worrying news was that thirteen lymph nodes were removed from under right arm and three of them were described as ‘positive’. Thank goodness they were taken as a precaution.  A CT Scan will be carried out because of those nodes, another unnerving time to come.

The first of many prescriptions for Hormone tablets (treatment type number 3) was written and tomorrow she begins taking one tablet per day for the next five years!

An appointment for her course of radiotherapy will follow soon, that will be treatment type four, as predicted by the surgeon on the very first day.

On the plus side, Kaz’s hair is like a new born baby’s now and growing well.

Around 10am today the District Nurse removed Kaz’s drain. She is very relieved and glad to see it go.

The next step is a follow up appointment on Wednesday at the hospital.

On the plus side, I’ve learnt to read ‘woman’ over the last few days. I’m sure you all know that washing machines are written in ‘woman’ and it is a tough language for men to learn. But I have a vague idea what Cottons and Synthetics are now and some other technical values like temperature and spin speeds.

Thankfully my Mum has offered to do some of that other difficult alien task for men… ironing I think it’s called. Apparently it involves using an electrical appliance of some sort and a board?

Today another Nurse attended and found that a further 30ml had drained overnight, so the drain stays in another day. Kaz is clearly disappointed, but it’s <30ml in a day is criteria to remove a drain as a general rule.

The Nurses have been great so far, very reassuring and have helped a lot. They do a tough job very well.

Today has been one of the worst so far, but not because of medical problems. For some reason the District Nurse failed to show and Kaz got more and more upset as time passed. She was hoping to have her drain removed today.

She called the doctors Surgery at 15:30 and came up against a *receptionist. Apparently the Nurses work until 18:30 so no worries yet. Wrong! She didn’t even ask Kaz’s name or offer to check if she was on their list of calls for the day. The receptionist must have realised Kaz was getting upset by this time. A case of ‘not my problem’ I think.

18:45 and still nobody has been, and now the Surgery phone is on night service. Thankfully the out of hours Nurse was contactable and did attend around 21:00. She took the precaution of not tampering with the drain at that late hour on a Friday, which seemed fair enough to us. Plus it is still draining.

*Receptionist : Some of the most two faced people I’ve come across, all smiles to the customer and then snide remarks when they leave. Some aren’t even ‘all smiles’ for the customer!

I collected Kaz from hospital today as expected. One drain has been removed and a second one remains in until Friday. She seems very well, and is clearly glad to be home.

Kaz’s operation has been carried out. She’s back on the ward and sleeping. Another hurdle cleared.

At 10am this morning things were a bit uncertain when the hospital informed us that they would need to call us back later when, or if, they could make a bed available for Kaz. The next hour or so passed slowly and finally the call came that things were going ahead and a bed would be ready at noon.

We arrived to find the bed wasn’t actually quite ready. No real problem there, we waited in the day room and various people came to see to Kaz. Her blood pressure was taken and described as very good considering her expected anxious state at that time.

The bed was ready at 1pm and her operation was scheduled for 2pm, so not much time for waiting and worrying, which was good. She took her pre-operation tablets around 1:15pm and I said my goodbyes and left her to the ordeal.

The new year brings us to the most worrying part of the Kaz’s treatment, the operation. Tuesday 8th January is the Kaz’s pre operation assessment.

Roll on Steven’s birthday on Valentines day, hopefully we’ll all be a lot more relaxed and recovering from this ordeal.