Wednesday, September 19, 2012

Early Days

So, my first night and day at home were terrible.  So much pain, discomfort, unwellnes and sickness.  But that all changed last night when I had 7 hours sleep and today when (so far, touch wood) I feel much better.  The fact that this transformation occurred at the the same moment as my parents arrived in Manchester is, I'm sure, a coincidence.  Also the consumption of a bowl of my own home made tomato soup is, I think, a similarly unrelated factor.

The District Nurse, Rosie (yes, really), called to see me and touch base yesterday.  She'll be back on Friday to take a stitch out of my side where the big drain on my lung was secured.

I still have a pleural catheter in my side (into the pleura, obviously) but this is just a tube with no bag attached.  Its my job, from time to time to hook up a vacuum bottle to they tube and drain any excess fluid from the pleura.  They've shown me how to do this once in the hospital but its a fairly complicated affair so I hope I remember everything I need to do tomorrow when I'm doing it on my own.  And you have to be so careful about making sure everything is absolutely sterile.  Fingers crossed I don't do something disastrous and drain my entire body of blood or anything.

Aged Ps have now gone out to lunch so have a bit of me-time now (and hence updating the blog).  Loads of you have been in touch and it makes me really happy that there are so many of you out there who care about me so a big thank you.  Its a bit difficult with my Team in work though because I do still want to be helping them as much as I can but now that I will no longer be their manager I also need to keep my nose out and let whoever is taking over get on with the job without me interfering all the time.  Trust me, its very difficult to do.

And that's about all the news so far.  May or may not get a visit from the GP but they seemed very keen to keep in touch and monitor my progress which is a comfort too.

Hope you're all keeping well and I'll update again soon.  J x


2 comments:

fig said...

You can't drain a body of blood if there is none in there ... we all know you are 100% ABV... stick a pin in you and vodka comes out.

sarah h. said...

If you're not sure about how to do it, have a look on You tube. As far as I can tell there's a "how to" video on there for everything you can think of, and more. I'm sure Rosie will advise too,

x