On day 13 of my hospital stay, Kat the Physio said I was allowed to go for a little adventure, so I actually got to leave the ward and we went up to Level 16 and looked out at the view. UCLH has a tall tower, and is situated pretty in the middle of London,…
Category: In the ward
Trachy tales
While a lot of the point of this post is really to say ‘Kat the Physio is amazing’, because I definitely haven’t given her enough time yet, I feel I also need to talk a little bit more about the Tracheostomy. The concept is great. Hole in the neck to breathe through, so no matter…
Struggles and some gory details…
At this point I was waking up every morning not able to open my eyes, as well as being cold, wet and covered in blood. It was pretty grim. I couldn’t breathe through my nose or close my mouth. I had blood and yellow discharge streaming out of my nose, and blood and saliva running…
The second trip to the ward in 3 days…
When I was transferred to the ward for the second time in 3 days, I was back in a shared ward. Thankfully this time there was no one wailing all night like there had been the time before (I remember writing to my nurse saying ‘just give her sleeping tablets and give me sleeping tablets…
A few of the amazing nurses on my first trip to ICU
The first thing was to work out a way to communicate with people. How else would I make friends? The first notebook Dad got for me said on the front ‘Be your own kind of beautiful’. Seemed fitting, since I would definitely be challenging the normal ideas of ‘beautiful’ for some time (someone did just…
The roller coaster ride that puts me in the ward… then puts me back in the Cotton Rooms the next day… But now we need home tomorrow please!!!
So… This is going to be a bit of a roller coaster. post. This morning kind of went from bad to worse… My hopes to get out tomorrow (Friday) in time for our Christmas lunch on Saturday were slowly to rapidly slipping away from me. And my hopes to get out of the ward and…
Escape from my incarceration
I’ve been quiet I know. Apologies. Time for an update! Monday I was still in hospital. I had a visit first from two doctors who might have been from ICU… I forget. But one of them lived in Sydney for 3 years, in Manly. Her husband is from Newport, literally just down the hill from…
Things are looking better today.
So I had a visit from the doctor this morning saying they think the infection probably isn’t in my PICC line after all. It’s still a possibility, and I’m still worried about one of the lumens now not working as well. But she apologised for the other doctors barging in all guns blazing yesterday. Yes,…
So… I’ve had a very big day.
Maybe my biggest. I hardly even know how to start. So they’ve been taking blood cultures to see if any bacteria grow, and it turns out in one of the cultures they grew something. They think there’s an infection in my PICC Line, which they told me yesterday they can just give me the antibiotics,…
The excitement of nosebleeds
I wanna talk nosebleeds for a minute. I mean who doesn’t right? Riveting stuff. I’d had 2 in my life before now and in the last week I’ve had an extra 3. I was looking forward to catching up on some sleep on my second night in hospital, so after the nurse faffed about for…
The Cancer Chronicles 