A change of scenery - part 2

An evening in the AMU isn't great fun, lovely though the team there is... after being booked in, getting more bloods taken (this time from the PICC line so they could check that wasn't the source of infection) and various sets of observations, the promised antibiotics finally arrived about 11pm. Dear husband eventually went home, starving and shattered, protesting that he would stay if I needed him, but he really needed his bed and there was no point in both of us being trapped... I managed to blag a sandwich about midnight but was still feeling pretty grim - 6 hours in hospital with no pain relief at all was a bit wearing. Eventually a nurse came to do my regular obs and I bleated about the pain, and some pills appeared very quickly after that. Just after 1am they put a litre of saline up to drip into my arm and as the paracetamol started to work I finally fell asleep.

It seems that this morning my white cell count is low but not scarily so, and there might be sign of an infection, so I am still stuck here on IV antibiotics. They now don't want to use or flush the PICC line until they get the results of the last samples back. There is talk of moving me to the haematology ward, but they are playing musical beds for a while so nobody knows when that will happen.

The doctor arrived a little while ago to insert another cannula, as the one they put in yesterday is not happy. Although it's working ok, it's been leaking badly into the surrounding tissue, and does give me some pain when the flow rate is a bit high, so it was decided to fit another one. She spotted a nice fat vein on the back of my left hand and wrapped her very funky multi-coloured tourniquet around my wrist. I looked away while she stuck the thing in, bit my lip to mask the desire to swear as she stabbed me... wasn't to encouraged when she said "Oh dear!" under her breath. The thing had gone in about half way then stopped, so that had to come out and we had to start again. Then she went for the inside of my right elbow, always a good bet - exactly the same thing again, half way in then stopped. At this point she decided she had done as much as she can, and with profuse apologies left, taking her multi-coloured tourniquet with her. I thought I was safe for a while, but about two minutes later another doctor appeared with a tray... I was starting to get a bit hacked off with this, having a PICC they won't use, a cannula that hurts me and two new holes dug in me, the human pincushion role was not such fun. However, this guy didn't take any gip from the vein in the back of my right hand and the thing went in with no further protest.

It's now 3pm and there should be more painkillers soon...