Adventures of Ashli & Haz-Mat

Some may think that spending all day, every day, in the hospital would be a boring way to pass the time. Those people obviously have never been admitted to the University of Chicago oncology floor.

Ashli's trip started off seemingly well. She and her friend Holly made it to Chicago in rapid-fast time. They even found a parking spot (a good one!) which is pretty much impossible @ U of C. Ashli started chemo on Sunday night and the only small hiccup was that her port wasn't working properly. For those of you who don't know, Ashli had a port put in her chest which has tubing so that they can just stick a needle in to give her whatever she may need, be it chemo, liquid nutrients, or pain meds. Unfortunately, the port hiccup was only a foreshadow of the drama to come.

Monday rolled around, and Ashli's first radiation treatment was scheduled for 11:30 am. Blast from the past: in typical "California" fashion, Ashli wasn't called down to 'in patient waiting' until 12:45 pm. Once there, they had more waiting to do. Thankfully, it seemed they would have the waiting room 'mostly' to themselves. Little did they know that their one, lone waiting-mate was a bit of a loony. The gentleman was on a stretcher and apparently, after a short time he started yelling "Help! Somebody help me! They're trying to kill me!" Truthfully, I'm not sure how long they had to share the same space with this disgruntled patient, but Ashli was not called back for her treatment until 3:20 pm. That's right, nearly 4 hours after her scheduled time. (Now it really is sounding like California isn't it?)

Immediately following her radiation, Ashli was taken to imaging. They wanted to figure out why the port wasn't working properly. Low and behold, the images showed that the plastic tubing inside Ashli's body was all coiled up, so they decided to schedule another operation to remove that port and install a new one on the opposite side of Ashli's body. After all this, Ashli didn't get back to her room until around 6 pm. Oh, and mind you this whole time she's been unhooked from her pain meds & hasn't been able to eat anything!

You would think that is the end of this saga, but alas, it's not. Later that evening Ashli got up to use the restroom. She was coming back and her friend Holly noticed blood on the floor. They both kind of wondered where it was coming from, so they started looking and realized Ashli's IV had come unhooked and blood was gushing out! Now remember, Ashli's had chemo drugs pumped into her body for the last two days. Her blood contains toxic chemicals. So who ya' gonna' call? No, not ghostbusters. . . .HAZ-MAT!!! The hazmat team was called to clean Ashli's room and "detox" it while poor Holly had to wait in the waiting room for three more hours!

Tune in next time for the second edition of Adventures of Ashli & Haz-Mat!

--Alysia