A foot note, above it all.

I try not to bog the blog down with too much negativity, but sometimes things just have to be said. Because of Mike being so ill over the weekend I thought I'd try and find out why. Yes we'd been told that Aredia (pamidronate disodium) can cause slight flu-like symptoms, but may be neither of us has ever had flu or at least not the type of flu Aredia mimics! A simple search found the manufacturer's site. OK some of the words it uses are a bit medical, why say temperature when you can say pyrexia (not the oven-proof stuff it turns out), but even so the first few lines contains the instructions in bold:
"Due to the risk of clinically significant deterioration in renal function, which may progress to renal failure, single doses of AREDIA (pamidronate disodium) should not exceed 90 mg and the duration of infusion should be no less than 2 hours."
And that is for breast cancer patients it turns out! For myeloma patients, whose kidneys have a hard time of it any way, the time in the prescribing leaflet is four hours!
Mike's infusions have been taking one and a half hours. No wonder Dr SH (weekend consultant) thought his kidneys were failing!

Mike has an appointment to see Dr SB (his own consultant) today and he intends to raise the subject of Aredia with him. That and the fact that Dr SH thought it wise to prescribe Augmentin and Clexane on Mike's discharge when the leaflet for Augmentin clearly says not to be taken with drugs to prevent blood clots! Now would it surprise you to learn that Dr SH's first qualification was as a pathologist, his second as a paediatric haematologist and that his job before arriving at our hospital was Head of a haematology lab? To quote Mike "That was why he was trying to kill me!"