It is Monday morning. Kamalashila is in hospital again. After a lovely day on Saturday with a walk to the park, pizza and ice cream, we noticed his temperature had gone up.* In this stage of his treatment you need to phone the helpline when the temperature is over 37.4 and if you have diarrhoea. It was. And he had had. So we phoned. The oncological nurse told us to go to A&E. A raised temperature could indicate an emergency. We took a taxi there and KS was seen fairly quickly. Shortly after twelve o’clock, after tests, KS was told they wanted to keep him in to do more tests. Luckily the emergency was ruled out by then. But the infection markers were high. He was going to be transferred to Guys (A&E is at St Thomas).
I went home, which involved walking back and forth a few times from the bus stop to the hospital’s parking garage. Taking the bus would mean a 15 minutes wait, so I ordered an Uber. This is half past twelve and not my favourite time to stand alone in a deserted concrete jungle. I will cut out the bit of me trying to find a toilet, trying to cancel the Uber, walking back to the bus stop and the Uber driver calling me to ask me where I was. The walking past someone trying to set fire to something, etc. I came home and felt wired. So I did not go to sleep until late. And then inevitably woke up early.
Kamalashila had been taken to Guys in the middle of the night. I received another porridge request and went to visit him with a rucksack full of stuff he would need for his stay at the hospital. A doctor came to speak to him at some point whilst I was there. He had by that time received multiple doses of antibiotics. She decided to stop all of that and wait. A bit later on she told us the source of the infection had been found. At that point it looked as if he might be able to come home today. Right now that is not that sure. He is in an isolated room because of the infection being highly contagious. I feel stressed out, but the writing calms me down. There is a lot of learning to be done with this increased risk of infection. I need some humour, but right now it is slightly difficult to grasp.
* Just to say it was not the pizza or the ice cream, but must have been something he encountered or ingested on Tuesday or Wednesday. We don’t know how this has happened.
