Greg's Journey

After nearly 4 weeks in hospital, it's time to go home! As one nurse quipped to me, "Hospital is where sick people go. Home is where sick people go to get better".  To those who visited, or helped Claire keep everything running at home while she juggled starting a new job and looking after pets and kids; thank you. It's so good to be home amongst familiar surroundings. As an added bonus, Formula 1 testing was on last night so it was great to put my feet up and watch F1 on the big screen :)

Week 9 and 10 still finds me in hospital, surprisingly! I came in for a nasal feeding tube, and if you;ve been keeping track, ended up fighting pneumonia. Joy! My beautiful wife managed to get me extracted from the public system, and across to St. Vincent's Private Hospital. We are both still unsure how I ended up in the public system, but apparently due to me coming in via the emergency department on a Sunday, that was enough to tip me in. Thank you Claire for battling for a week to get me transferred. The transfer involved me and my belongings being placed in a wheelchair and moved through the underground tunnels that are everywhere between all the St Vincent Hospitals, public and private, and the Eye and Ear hospital until I came across this rather innocuous door. What a difference it was! At last I was in my own room, my own doctors, and fantastic care. I think I said it in the last post.... make sure you have private health insurance! Week 9 was being treated heavily for pneum...

Week 8 since treatment started, and the first week with no treatment, is a week in my life I'd really rather forget. It turns out I developed Aspirated Pneumonia and Week 8 I was running a fever over 40 degrees, while dealing with the after effects of chemotherapy AND radiotherapy. In addition, I was on morphine injections and cocaine mouthwash for pain, and was sweating and hallucinating, whilst in a 4-bed room in a public hospital ward. The burns on my neck from radiotherapy were at there peak, so imagine what the burns were like on the inside of my neck! In addition, chemotherapy was smashing me for six. Seriously, I cannot imagine a worse week ever in my life. Claire battled with a SNAFU to get me transferred across to St. Vincent's Private Hospital and by Thursday evening I was transferred across to the private hospital. If you are reading this and don't have private health insurance; get it.  I don't have much of a recollection of this week other than frightening ...

Week 7 started ok, although the chemotherapy scheduled for Monday didn't go ahead, and was changed to 6am Tuesday morning. Radiotherapy continued unabated Monday through Friday with GenesisCare. Immediate family kept me company throughout the week, and the burns on my neck really started to become an issue. The sunning salon had obviously gone into "out of control" mode, but I reflected that it must have been way worse for the cancer cells, so therefore, I could put up with it. At the end of Week 7, my last radiotherapy session on Friday 3rd Feb was my last day of treatment. The positioning CT scan was showing a totally different next to the one I saw two months ago. There was a problem building though. Pneumonia.