JANE'S HAD A BRAKE !!

This is Martin writing and yes I have spelt brake correctly. Jane is currently in hospital with a broken left femur. Let me tell you what happened....

On Monday this week she finished her final radiation session. All was going well, the usual swelling and difficulty walking followed but with the thought ' it was all over ' tempered all of that. However on Wednesday her left leg became extremely painful and the swelling increased. So much so that we contacted the hospice where Jane was due to go for rest bite in a couple of weeks. The arrangements were changed and Jane was going to go in on Friday for a week to give everyone a rest. Wednesday night, Catherine and her friend Donna volunteered to stay up with Jane as the pain and swelling were getting worse. On Thursday morning I was informed that at 4am they had to call out a locum who pronounced that it looked like her leg was broken... What !! but she hadn't done anything, I want a second opinion..!!
I telephoned the hospice who said to take her to the local A&E to be sure. The ambulance duly arrived at 1045am and taking one look at her leg and her face, didn't try to move her but wheeled her straight into the ambulance using her own wheelchair where she had now been sat for 12 hours without moving.
A&E had been pre-warned by the hospice and she was wheeled straight into a cubicle where she waited.... and waited... and waited. It took another frantic phone call from me to the hospice who in turn telephoned A&E before they sprung, snail like, into action. I can go into lots of detail here but I wont suffice to say that in the end there were 4 A&E nurses, one consultant, a physio nurse and 50.. yes 50 milligrams of morphine before they managed to get her out of the chair and onto a trolley. The screaming was unbearable at times and I was in bits. A subsequent X ray proved her left femur was indeed broken right where the tumour had eaten away at the bone. Disaster!! Jane was put into a recovery room where she was monitored up and I spent a while explaining that she had actually seen a bone specialist a few weeks earlier and they had talked about this eventuality.
That evening she was transferred as an emergency to the hospital where that specialist works. Once again, I had to explain her case history and try to remember what medication she had been taking or was due.. (note to self .. write this down prior to anything else happening). There then followed a long, very painful and traumatic night.. for both of us. Jane was delirious with the amount of morphine but still in pain. I was stressed to the max at her predicament and still remembering medication that she should have had and had been forgotten. My God, that has got to be the worst 24 hours of my life without a doubt... (so far).
Morning came. The staff had fitted a morphine pump that I was operating for her quite illegally apparently but it was the only way to maintain the levels of morphine that kept her from screaming in pain and gave her the chance to sleep.
At 0845 the consultant came and saw her and announced that he was going to order a special part for her leg to replace the tumoured bone. He could operate a week Monday....(what ??? a week Monday !!!!) Jane's face said it all. The consultant apologised but said he couldn't do it any earlier. She was to go for an X ray that afternoon to measure the femur then she could wait for the operation at the Hospice... good news at last followed closely by more bad news when she was told that the X ray machine was broken and couldn't be fixed till Monday.
So there we have it, she is in hospital awaiting an X ray on Monday (hopefully) and then onto sanctuary at the hospice to await an operation to replace a bit of bone in her leg...

I got home at 3pm, phoned everyone I knew to tell them whats happened and went to bed at 7.45 pm where I slept until 8am this morning. I have just come from the hospital now, although still in a lot of pain she is fairly comfortable...