It was supposed to be a straightforward infusion session that day. In at 8am, out by 12ish, eat bangus for lunch at home. Hang out with Zig, order early dinner and send him off to the airport.
The day went semi-smoothly. Mum’s usual nurse wasn’t available to insert her IV so they got someone else. Mum was already known there as a “one of a kind” patient, to put it mildly, with all her requests and her curt responses to the nurses. I jokingly told her “Ma, you’re not making any friends here”. Her response, “well, try being a patient”. end of discussion.
Mama’s oncologist saw us quickly check on her then said she had to leave for the airport in 15 minutes because she had a speaking engagement in Thailand. We said no worries, let’s have a consult some time next week.
I learned how to calculate the ideal WBC level from the CBC results. It weirdly thrilled me to be across this, like a secret code not a lot of people know about. But people at work know, no one should come to me when I have not been caffeinated. The first few tries attempted to explain this was a disaster so they kindly wrote it down for me instead. Cheers.
A few minutes after the 2nd IV bag of chemo meds was administered to Mama and after ripping open a small bag of prunes, she started sneezing. We were in the middle of praying the rosary so it went, “holy mary ACHOO mother of God, ACHOO pray for us sinners ACHOO…”. Then her eyes started to water. 2nd Sorrowful mystery. “Holy ACHOO mary, mother of ACHOO”. Her palms started to feel itchy. The soles of her feet started to feel itchy. As someone super religious, stopping the rosary mid-way to get the nurses meant she felt something serious. The checked her blood pressure, listened for her breathing, put a pulse oximeter on her finger.
What happened next was a blur. What I think happened was that after the two infusion nurses checked on her, the senior nurse checked her vitals. Then a junior physician. Then they wheeled a machine, i guess for her O2. And then what literally looked like an army of doctors arrived. I counted about 15-20, one wheeling something massive, don’t know what. Mama saying “do something please. faster, something isn’t right!”, or something to that effect. Meanwhile i was already standing outside the cubicle, in the corner, asking quietly, can someone tell me what’s happening?
They suspect it’s an allergic reaction. To the prunes??, i thought? Mama has been eating prunes all her life, this is really weird and did not make sense. I was so overwhelmed but I managed to text Zig what has going on. Reading it now, i can sense that i was stressing out because I could barely construct a decent sentence.
They gave her an oxygen mask and wheeled her out of the infusion room and straight into the ER for monitoring. I thought about going with her, kebs na with her stuff in the infusion room or take a few minutes fixing her stuff and making sure I didn’t leave anything. My inner child screamed get her stuff or you’ll just piss her off more so I stayed back to do just that.
When I got to the ER, people were sticking things on to monitor her vitals. They stabbed her with epinephrine to counter the allergic reaction. Cutting to the chase, within an hour, she was medically stable. That was just at 1pm. What a fucking morning. They still had to do some tests to rule things out. Mama still had to be nebulised. And she was still drowsy from the anti allergy meds. The recommendation is to stay overnight for further monitoring. She was not happy with that and negotiated to just stay longer in the ER but she relented, thank God.
When things settled down, i thought about timing. Seriously this had to happen while her doctor was leaving the country? Seriously this had to happen the day Zig was leaving? Seriously? Seriously? I didn’t know if I should laugh or cry.
But thinking about it now, I am grateful because Kim was here. Zig had to fly out but we still had another pair of safe hands to stay with Mama overnight while I watched Adam at home. I am grateful because it happened here in Manila and not in Sydney because I am sure the cost of admission would have been astronomical. I am grateful because it was over pretty quickly and Mama is up and about now. We still don’t know definitively what caused this reaction but her doctor suspects it was the chemo. What happens next remains to be seen but we all, especially Mama, will live to fight another day.