Thursday 16 February 2012

Trouble at Pharm




...or ‘What a bloody fiasco’

Arrived at Maidstone hospital in good time for my 1pm appointment. I was called to the chemo ward at 1.20 – brilliant we thought. I was fitted with the cannula and had my pre-meds (hydrocortizone and Piriton) to prevent an allergic reaction. So far so good. The nurse went to put on the trial drug and oops its expiry time was 14.20 –it is now 14.00 so cannot use it as the expiry time must be the after the end of the infusion. The drug is only active for 4 hours. So nurse takes the drug back to pharmacy – who were so busy that they made up the trial drug early this morning ‘to save time’. They will make some more.
Fast forward one hour – still nothing doing so nurse puts on a bag of saline to prevent cannula clogging up.
Fast forward another hour – pharmacy are waiting for a phone call from Italy where the drug company is based to get a magic number which will tell them which phial to get from the freezer. Fast forward another hour (hope you are keeping up) – yeah they have the information BUT the Dr said no infusion today as it would not finish in normal working hours and as there would not be enough staff to monitor me closely could we do it TOMORROW!
I was stressed before I got to the hospital after the last reaction so you can imagine the state I was in by 5pm! As one of the lovely nurses said – ‘Why do these things happen to you?’ answers on a postcard please!
So an early night and then on the road again in the morning – thank goodness Alan has just put 3 days worth of music on the ipod which we play in the car and got rid of that awful Poulenc piano stuff!
I am grateful to be offered the option of a drug trial but those managing the trial really do need to up their game in terms of risk analysis – it is in an emergency that adequate backup procedures must work.
Tess x

7 comments:

  1. Oh no Tess, what a palava. It sounds like someone needs a kick up the backside at that hospital. I hope they are more organised tomorrow, I'll be thinking of you
    love and hugs
    Claire xx

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  2. Oh Tess, can only sympathise, its about time that bloody piano plonking was put out to grass forever, sorry Alan, love Chris xx

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  4. No answers Tess, just dumbfounded. I hope thing go better today, you will be in my thoughts as usual
    Trish xx

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  5. Oh Tess, I was thinking about you yesterday and am still thinking about you today. I hope it's plain sailing for you today and they get it right first time!
    Ann x

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  6. Oh my goodness, p*** up in a b*** , springs to mind! The right arm doesn't seem to know what the left is doing. Better luck today. Huge hugs.
    Wanda xx

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  7. Tess

    I thought when they referred to drug trial they were just referring to the drug itself - not the whole experience. It really does feel as though you are blazing a trial here, does the hospital not usually run trials or something.
    Then again we once turned up for the usual three week appointment to find none of our drug had been ordered for that day- luckily we managed to get it sorted. I hate the way they just say come back tomorrow, they really don't understand just how much stress is involved.
    Good news about the scan results.
    Amanda

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