Earlier in the week I had my ketamine infusion at UCLH in London. Hubby and I had originally planned to travel in by train/tube but a friend reminded me that it was 7/7. To get to the hospital I would need to get the Piccadilly to Russell Square which is where one of the bombs went off. To be honest I wasn't too keen on using the tube that day when I realised it was the 10 year anniversary anyway because you never know if there's going to be another nutter with a bomb in a rucksack to mark the event.
So we drove in and I was dropped off outside the hospital entrance while Hubby went and parked the car. Luckily there are a few big hotels nearby that let you park in their car parks for a nominal fee. (We remortgaged the house to pay for it and we had just enough change left over for a coffee!)
The ketamine is infused via a drip so once all the preliminarily checks were done we began the usual multiple attempts to get a Cannula in my arm because my veins are soooooo bad. Eventually one was inserted but in such a tricky place that it was really positional. This means that if I moved the drip would stop so I had to try and lie in one position and not move for the duration of the infusion.
About 5 minutes in and I started to feel super sick. The feeling was overwhelming and I shouted out for a sick bowl. The nurse stopped the infusion and went in search of some anti sickness medication. However, I'm allergic to the standard anti sickness medication (of course I would be!) so she had to go to one of the wards to get something that wouldn't cause me to fit for the rest of the day! By the time she returned, injected me and the nausea subsided over 30 minutes has passed. Given the fact that the infusion should only take 30 minutes, it looked like I would be there for quite a bit longer than that!
The infusion was started again but it was set to drip in more slowly to try and prevent a repeat episode of the sickness. While you have the infusion you're hooked up to a monitor which records blood pressure, pulse and heart rate. This is to make sure that I'm ok and my body can tolerate the ketamine. Let's not forget it's a very strong anaesthetic that's slowly going drip, drip, drip into me and especially as it's my first one nobody knows how I will react to it.
Unfortunately for Hubby, it didn't make me feel high or hallucinate; I think he was looking forward to a 30 minute comedy show! Other than the initial sickness I didn't really feel anything else and walked out of the clinic feeling slightly drowsy but otherwise ok. It's going to be a waiting game to see if it makes any difference to the amount of pain I'm contending with on a daily basis. I really hope it does. Because if it doesn't I don't know what's next. The lidocaine had absolutely no effect and the pain consultant is adamant that the dose of my medications must not be increased, so I feel like I'm stuck. This pain is never going to go away, I've been told that by the doctors, so it's going to be learning to live with it. Hopefully though the ketamine will make a difference and if it does then it can be repeated as regularly as every 6 weeks. The pain nurse said she will call me in a few weeks to discuss whether it's made a difference and to discuss what the plan is going forward. Fingers crossed the ketamine works because even just a tiny bit of relief could end up making a big difference to my life.
NB x
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