University College Hospital

Well, for once I am writing this before doing my forums, so I can cut and paste from here!

Yesterday I took Mum and Dad up to London again to UCH. I left home at just after 7am, didn't get back until nearly 8pm!!! What a long stressful day! It is such a long busy drive, especially at that time of the day. The A23 had an accident, so we took the A24, and boy was it busy! (Not driven on it at that time of day before!) M25 ok, A40 not too bad until we got nearly there. We had to get a special permit so I had to circle the hospital while M&D went in to get said permit. This enabled me to park on single yellow lines around the hospital (or so I thought!) Dad had a bone marrow biopsy first (not expected), then a cannula inserted for bloods, velcade and fluids. Then a long wait for the velcade to be made up by Pharmacy. Mum and I walked down Tottenham Court Road to M&S for a sandwich and coffee, and a little browse at the shops. Mum bought me a little Snoopy keyring for my scrapping tote! Then I popped out to get Dad some snadwiches and when I got back, they were expecting the velcade to arrive quite soon, so I nipped out to the British Museum (10mins walk) for a looksee. It is going to be my sanctuary while we are up there, it is free admission, so I can go there just for 1 hour and do 1 gallery at a time, and the coffee shop and shop area are just gorgeous!

The velcade didn't arrive soon, we had to wait another 1 hour, so Mum and I went to the cafe in the main hospital for a cup of tea, very nice cafe, good cheap tea! Dad was soon ready, but thne there was the question of a blood transfusion. He needs one badly (Hb 7.7) so some discussion went on, and they decided to try and get it done at Worthing before they have to go to UCH again on Friday. Otherwise it will be a hugely long day on Friday with their friends who are taking them. We left about 5pm in the end, got M&D home about 7.30pm. Not a bad journey, just a long long way! On the way home I noticed something flapping on my windscreen! Of course, it turned out to be a parking ticket! GRRRR! (Think I'll get a speeding fine next week!) We can't think why, cos I was parked in a very safe place away from busy road, on a single yellow line, in a street that was labelled on the permit. We will have to appeal, but the hassle! And of course, it is worrying for M&D, especially after I got fined for the congestion charge last time I took them!

On a positive note UCH is a wonderful wonderful place, the staff are soooo nice and soooo efficient! And he has had his first lot of Velcade! Let's hope for some quick positive results! But, whatever happens we are doing our best to get him top quality treatment and care.