2 a.m eternal

We got back home from the hospital at 2 a.m. this morning to find Julie, still up and reading her book, having done our washing up. I have said it before, but how we'd get through this without our dear friends and family, I don't know!

Last night, the area around Quentin's PICC line (which stays in for the 3 weeks) was sore and red and hard. We were due to see Dr Savage today anyway but Quent felt it couldn't wait 12 hours and we should go to hospital straight away. If Quent thinks things are worse than I do, I panic. We called Julie, who ran along the road straight away. Then we jumped into the car and got as far as the Hogarth roundabout before coming back again to gather our wits and paperwork.

We consulted the "Taking care of your PICC line" book and it said to go straight to hospital if it was painful, red or swollen. So we set off again (around 10.45pm).

Apparently such symptoms indicate either infection or blood clot. They took bloods from Quent's line and the other arm to compare and contrast. At 1.30am they told us the bloods looked OK so it was probably a clot. They gave him antibiotics and blood thinning drugs and let us go home.

This morning I had to drop Quent off at 9.30am for his special blood clot scan - followed by his appointment with Dr Savage. Oakley and I were going to see Charlie and Lola at the theatre. Although I have attended nearly every appointment with Quentin, none has ever clashed with Charlie and Lola before. Quent lost.

I spent a reasonably stressed morning trying to contact Quent to see how he was. I was getting very concerned by 2pm when Oakley and I got home. But I found an ansafone message from Quent saying I would not be able to contact him as Allied Telesis has switched off his phone. Aha.


All I know at this stage is that he sounded chirpy at 1.35pm when he was waiting to see Dr Savage. He didn't tell me anything else but I will let you know as soon as I hear from him again.