My poorly dad

I haven’t written for a while on here or in my private diary because I didn’t know how to write the words down and wanted to wait until the difficult time seemed so much brighter which I am truly thankful that it is. Last Friday I was enjoying my last day working at Worthing as I have been asked to transfer to Southlands for 6 months to cover a girl in mental health, I was sad to say goodbye to everyone as I really enjoy working at Worthing as it is incredibly busy. Anyway my dad had an appointment in the medical day unit as he had been referred from his GP because he kept getting gout and apparently the platelet level was high in his blood so he had to go and see a haematologist, I asked him to pop into the pharmacy to tell me how he got on and I wasn’t prepared for what was to come – the consultant said he was pretty sure that my dad had a condition called Essential Thrombocytosis which has something to do with the platelets and a higher count of red blood cells his arteries are very jelly like and his blood isn’t clotting properly at the moment. The treatment is to take an oral chemo drug and be monitored very closely. As soon as chemo and cancer was mentioned to me I feared the worst and I cried more than I have ever cried before, luckily we have a really good team of aseptic pharmacists so I was able to talk to one of them about the condition and find out how serious it was. Sally made me feel a lot better, she told me it is one of those conditions that is a grey area because some people say it is a type of cancer and others don’t but it can lead to leukemia but that is quite rare and in a very small percentage of people. I do feel a lot better now especially as she said that patients can lead a normal life with it and usually go on to live to a good age. As I said earlier it hasn’t been confirmed yet, dad had to have a bone marrow test a few days ago which really hurt him, he was quite shaken up afterwards and said the pain wasn’t like anything he could describe and a couple of hours after he got home he started bleeding a lot and it was pouring out through his bandage and would not stop so mum took him to A&E at about 9pm and they got back at 1am because they had to wait 1 and a half hours to be seen by a doctor who then put a lot of pressure on his side to stop the bleeding then they had to wait for nearly 2 hours before he was allowed to go home. It has been a very busy week in our house! the results will be ready next Wednesday but it will be very unlikely that he doesn’t have this condition. We have talked about it lots and we all feel very positive.

On a high note I passed my exams and got the highest mark as I was the only candidate to pass all 7 stations – no idea how I managed that! I am relieved that I never have to go through that horrible exam again.