Evacuation

Monday morning I had an appointment for chemo at 8:30. Because of my recent infection, they were going to do a bunch of labs, check my vitals, and go over my fevers with me before making a decision on the chemo. My grams was going to come over to watch the girls and my sister was going to take me to my appointment.

When I woke up, I turned on the news and saw that Patrick Cudahy was on fire and had been since the night before. They were asking all residents within a mile radius to close all their windows and turn off their air conditioners. I followed direction - I don't need anything else to be wrong.

Skye was still sleeping and the twins were eating their cereal when the news announced an evacuation from Layton Avenue down. I'm just a few blocks from Layton I thought so I called my husband to see what I should do. My first instinct was to have my sister watch the girls at my mom's house, but he suggested I take the girls to my grandma's instead. I called up my grandma and told her we'd come over there.

Shortly after I got a call from the school district saying that there was an evacuation for anyone within a one mile radius. I knew this was us, so I quick rushed to get everyone ready and over to my grandma's house. I didn't even think about my cats because it was early, I was feeling like shit, and I was so rushed. I figured they'd get the fire out in no time.

At grams we couldn't see the smoke, and I waited for my sister to pick me up. By the time she came, you could see the smoke and even smell a hint of it. I told my grandma that if she was going to get evacuated to call my cell phone and I would send my sister to pick them all up. I didn't realize her house also fell into the one mile radius...just barely.

At the hospital/clinic, I gave the nurse my fever log and she immediately was against my having chemo. She drew a ton of blood for all the labs the on-call doctor had ordered when I was discharged from the hospital and sent them down to lab. She checked my vital signs and my fever was gone but my heart rate was 114 - still a bit high. I told her about my feeling winded with any little bit of activity and about the pain in my chest that just started that morning. Once the labs came back, she called the doctor to tell him everything.

During the down time, my sister and I watched in awe of the fire. It would get better, then worse, then better again. They were working so hard to put it out and there didn't seem to be any end in sight. The evacuation turned into a Mandatory Evacuation because they were afraid of an ammonia explosion. Now I started worrying about my cats.

They asked if I had any pain or swelling in my legs and I told them no, but that I had pain in my right arm the day before. The doctor canceled chemo and had me make an appointment to see my doctor once she returned from vacation on Wednesday (today). He also ordered a CT scan of my chest with PE (Pulmonary Embolism) Protocol. They wanted to check to make sure I didn't have a blood clot in my lung. This freaked me out a lot.

In the meantime, one of my Pastors called the clinic and told me that my grandma and my kids were all at his house. I was a little irritated that my grandma didn't call me like I instructed her to. I sent my sister to go get them all and move them to my mom's house. Once she got there, my grandma refused to go and refused to let her take the girls claiming they were fine and having fun. My sister was pretty upset by this, but as she was leaving my Uncle was coming. My sister told him what was going on and he said he'd "work on them" and to call him later.

My sister got back to the hospital as I was on my way down to Radiology, which was nice timing. I had the CT and we walked back to the clinic. As we waited around, I got more and more mad about my grandma - they're my kids and if I sent my sister there to get them, than those are my wishes and she needs to respect that. I was getting hotter and hotter about it but there was nothing I could do sitting there waiting. Finally my sister called my Uncle and he had everyone at his house. I was relieved, but still felt bad since he's not accustomed to watching kids and had both my grandma and her sister with him too.

We waited forever and finally I asked the nurse what was going on. My nurse had gone to lunch and left a nurse I'd never seen before in charge. She told me they have the report back and she wants to fax it to the doctor but he wasn't calling her back. This worried me because they were only supposed to page him with abnormal results. Another nurse finally told her to page him again and so she did.

She told him she wanted to fax the report to him and he must've asked why because she said "Well, there's no PE but it says some other things on there". She faxed the report and he called her back. I didn't hear this conversation, but she came back and told me that my lymphoma has shown significant improvement (duh) and that he wants a Pulmonary Function Test. I asked her if the report said anything else and she told me she couldn't read it because it was hand-written and not the full typed report. I was pretty pissed off about all of this because I know that something's on that report and the on-call should've asked to talk to me on the phone, but they're just going to wait until today? It could be absolutely nothing - like the lesions on my lungs that I already know about, but they wouldn't know about. Having an on-call and a new nurse were definitely not in my favor.

We left the clinic, went to Walgreens, picked up the kids, grabbed something to eat, and went back to my mom's house. My sister stayed with me until my mom got home and then I took her to get her car. My husband picked up the cats after work and came over to my mom's. We were there until around 7pm when they gave the all clear for residents to come home.

It was a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.