Tuesday 17th February 2009

Much better day today.

First bit of good news is that the faceless strangers elsewhere in the unit who so rudely interrupted my exclusive attention yesterday by getting seriously ill, are both ok and pulled through their individual emergencies. I hope they don't have the audacity to try that trick again, but I guess I'm relieved they are ok! :)

No overnight accidents, and I had my cathetar removed at 6am this morning. A welcome relief!

Since then I've had a pretty quiet busy day (i.e. nothing really happening, but lots of doctors and nurses popping in to take this sample or give me that drug etc). Physio gave me the go-ahead to do my walks around the unit on my own, now I don't have so much to carry, so that's positive progress!

I've been on 60ml/hour of liquids today, which has included half cups of coffee which was a nice change. it's been going down fine - swallowing feels the same as it always did, in fact, nothing feels different yet! It may be a little different once the pain relief wears off, but I don't think it's going to be an issue at all.

Within the last hour the docs have been around to take out my chest drain which was painful but could have been worse. I have to have a chest X-ray, probably later tonight to check that my left lung is fully inflated again. Another welcome relief to have that out (especially as it shortens the time from bed to bathroom!)

Apart from that, most of the activity today has involved trying to get a canular (tube through which drugs are administered) in me somewhere which works for longer than 5 minutes - I've had 4 over the last couple of days, and the latest one isn't working too well either! One of the problems is that this room is quite hot and when I sweat even lightly, all the dressings are falling off me which is irritating. I should have the canular out tomorrow anyway as they are starting to switch me over to oral drugs instead of intravenous. the first effect of this I noticed today is that if you dissolve two soluble paracetamol in only 30ml of water, the resulting concentrated liquid tastes of tuna fish (bad, but not as bad as Pernod!) Maybe they've done something with my tastebuds during the surgery, but I've had two doses today and it's definitely tuna!

Thanks for all the cards by the way - the nurses are finding it hard to use their prep table because it is so full of them - too many to mention individually, but I have to single out a couple:

A great personalised card from Elspeth via Moonpig.com with the caption "Great Men of Our Time" and a picture of Barack Obama next to a picture of me - card personalisation the modern way.

The other is card personalisation the somewhat cheaper way - a great card, but the name on the original caption tippexed out and "Col" written on top in biro - Thanks Nick, ha ha, it's the thought that counts! No seriously, it really is the thought that counts, but I couldn't help belly laughing when the two cards arrived at the same time!! :)

I've had a few other calls, texts blog comments and emails over the last few days and as usual I really do appreciate them - thanks everybody!

I'm looking forward to my weekly dose of Shameless tonight - I really do love that show. and for anyone who thinks it's far fetched, I can assure you that it is totally realistic and could be set in many parts of Salford or Manchester (where the ice cream vans give the kids free ice cream whilst selling heroin to the adults). When I lived in Salford, there were so many similarities - the corner shop selling "a fag an' a match" for 20p, or individual nappies - sad but true!

"Unlimited Fluids" tomorrow - Can't wait!

Bye til then,

C