Jasmine Stalker-Firth

I got out of bed this morning, dreading today, as it is delivery day and I hate all the chasing everyone that I have to do.

I was just changing Jasmine’s nappy when only half of my delivery from Fresenius turned up. They are supposed to drop off 30 giving sets and four Baxa syringes every month, and every month they don’t do this, because it is beyond their capabilities.

I rang them up to tell that they were completely rubbish and I wanted to lodge a formal complaint and blah blah blah, because once I am in complaint mode there is no stopping me. After a couple of minutes I managed to ascertain that basically you complain and then the person on the phone prints out a letter of apology and pops it into the post. Pointless! So I said that I didn’t want a letter, I never wanted to speak to them again. And the lady said that she was sorry and was there anything else that she could do for me. Then I had a brainwave and asked if they would send me 16 syringes and the very nice lady on the phone agreed. So that is great I don’t have speak to them again until October, so I got my wish.

After that I put Jasmine in the buggy and we went for a walk about outside to get some fresh air as the Baxter dialysis is due between the hours of 12 noon and 4pm so if I didn’t get out then, I wouldn’t get any fresh air. I am sitting here now actively waiting, although I know I am supposed to do other stuff.

Once we got back from our walk I spent an hour on the phone with the nurse and the dietician in order to get to the bottom of Jasmine refusing all of her feeds and what to do about the raised urea levels. This one decided that Jasmine needs her protein and the urea levels are fine and we won’t be needing the very little blue scoops after all. We are to press on with our feed as we are even if she doesn’t want it and we shall change the dialysis program.

It has been a bit depressing as I have had to tube feed Jasmine for 3 days now as she won’t take any feed at all. She will however, drink water and eat mashed up vegetables. I ran the idea past the dietician that she is obviously sick of this super-thick milk but the dietician said we just have to force it down.

The dietician said that perhaps that virus Jasmine had last weekend is still present and she may improve and suggested putting Gaviscon in her feed, but I wasn’t too sure about this so she rang the doctor and then rang me back and said that the doctor had said that it wasn’t a great idea and we should increase her domperidone instead. So I can live with that.

After all that I got off the phone I gave Jasmine some squash and sweet potato which she loved and ate and smiled about and then she took 50mls of her feed orally, which was great and made me jump for joy. So perhaps it was the lingering virus.

After that I rang the community nurses to say that my NG tubes haven’t turned up (I requested them on Monday), so one nurse came round and dropped some off, so that is nice. We now have a nice stash and won’t have to phone them anymore.

So now just this delivery and we are all done for a while. I hate waiting in for things, especially over 4 hours. I used to think Baxter were good, but making you stay in all day when you have to stay in every night anyway is just cruel. Actually, I just typed that and thought that it was very cruel so I rang up Baxter to see why they couldn’t just deliver it on a morning like they used to and they said they would deliver it – if you paid them loads more money! And I was moaning on as I am in super-moan mode today, and the man who was trying to deliver my stuff was outside but couldn’t let me know as I was on the phone – our phone is linked to the intercom. So if I had just stopped moaning my deliveries would have arrived sooner. Such is life! I just need more patience. The poor man outside told me he had been up since 5am delivering things. I felt quite bad.

I asked if our deliveries could come monthly and they will starting from next month, so that will be great. Then on the way back up the stairs I bumped into the flats manager and asked about our aerial reception which has been dodgy for the past year and he said that he was looking into it. I asked if he could to get it organised by August and the kick off of the new season as we want to get Setanta and we have to stay in every night as our baby has no kidneys (I thrust Jasmine towards him – she was in my arms, as of course she comes everywhere with me even if I don’t mention it). He said that he is on the case.

Fantastic! I feel like I have achieved a great deal and it is only 3.55pm. Time to stuff more feed down Jasmine.

This entry was posted on Friday, July 18th, 2008 at 1:56 pm and is filed under home. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.