The more astute of you may have noticed an absence of these retirement blogs for the last couple of weeks or so. The simple explanation being I have (and I don’t think I’m being too dramatic here) been very poorly. I’ve just come out of hospital after collapsing at home. Not just one ambulance but two. If this is them on strike, bring it on. They were great although I was in no condition to notice.
So straight to LGI RESUS (No me neither) in the middle of the night, sirens going, you know all the usual stuff. A few hours of life-saving there and then transfer to St James. Danger passed we had to wait 6 hours for ambulance to take us between hospitals.
Back in Surgical Assessment Unit (SAU) where it all started with the catheter a couple of days earlier and not being able to pee. Little did I know, blah, blah. There I suppose you might say my condition deteriorated but it wasn’t my aorta that was the problem nor a kidney infection (as they thought at the LGI) but two pulmonary embolisms (blood clots) on my lungs. The cold dark transfer on a trolley to the Respiratory ward. Ah happy days.
My particular part of this ward was straight from Dante’s Inferno, not that I’ve ever been there. Alarms bells and general beeping all night long accompanied by my two bed fellows with the most amazing ‘coughs’ although that word hardly does what they were doing, justice. Oh and I felt decidedly rough.
Fast forward two or three weeks (I’m not sure exactly how much time exactly as it has been) of what might be called a living hell, even my diary-keeping has been unreliable. What I can say is that I have not felt like writing any form of blog and even now (16th February) it’s a struggle. I checked my Google rating for the first time in a long while not having posted a blog for several weeks, fearing the worst only to find this blog was at number one for ‘retirement blogs’. Clearly I’ve misunderstood this ranking business. The way to get to number one is not to write anything. Who’d have thought it?
Anyway in the last two or three weeks I’ve had more hospital visits than I can count, this in two different systems with a possibility of another one (Newcastle as you ask, along with Leeds and Harrogate) added in. I’ve tried without a catheter, unsuccessfully and with something called a valve, also unsuccessfully.
Two more visits to A&E in the middle of the night. That’s four in total. Add in visits to GP to do with diabetes which has been going haywire. And visits from a reluctant district nurse. Because the hospital had difficulty fitting a catheter (on account of enlarged prostate) they didn’t want to do it ‘in the community’ i.e. at my home. And having been there for the previous attempts I can’t say I blame them.
Colon cancer op, cancelled because I’m now on blood thinners. A rearranged pre-op meeting for this problem, even though I don’t have a date for surgery, was Tuesday this week. They told me being on blood thinners was not a deal breaker as far as the colon operation was concerned. I can only hope the anaesthetist in Harrogate have read the same text books and agree that the prostate operation can go ahead. This meeting is scheduled for next Tuesday. So I’ll leave this update at this point and hope to write again maybe next week.
Assuming things don’t really go badly I’ll try and write random, short blogs in the future. Surely things can only get better?
PS. I am putting this out without the usual niceties – photos etc etc.