I was back in Oxford today for the second half of my annual review and surprisingly, given the distinctly non-positive vibe that I’ve been getting from recent hospital visits, I actually came away feeling good today.
The diabetes tests looked clear – or at least not significantly abnormal, my blood sugars remaining pretty much within the normal range consistently for the last couple of weeks while I’ve been measuring them, which was a good start.
Even better, though, was my conversation with my consultant, the ever-wonderful Dr Bennett, who is encouraged by my progress since June.
I’ve been more and more breathless recently and it’s started to impact more and more on what I can and can’t do (as you’re no doubt aware if you’ve been following along). Raising it with the team today I was fully expecting downcast looks and a feeling of, “that’s pretty much where you are now,” and facing a determination to put up with it and keep fighting.
To my immense pleasure and surprise, DocB felt that it’s something we can tackle, given the right effort and application and can aim to improve my breathlessness and stamina and bring my quality of life back up.
Looking at my health in general since my downturn in June, she suggested that although I’d had a really bad month and the infection had hit me very hard, it was encouraging to see that my lung function had pretty much returned to what it was pre-exacerbation – about 0.8./1.3 (actually dropping slightly to 0.7/1.2 today, but I was expecting that, and to go on IV’s, anyway). What this indicates is that the infection, whilst making me seriously ill, doesn’t appear to have any lasting impact on the conditioning in my lungs.
What has been affected, clearly, is my exercise tolerance and muscle mass, both significantly weakened by spending the whole month in bed and by not being worked on in the four weeks or so since. It is DocB’s belief that if we can work out an exercise plan, with extra oxygen support as necessary, and work to improve my cardio-vascular fitness, there’s no reason we can’t combat the breathlessness.
This was all news too me – good news, to be sure, but news all the same. I had resigned myself, I think, to the downward slope of things ahead and didn’t really think there was much of a way around it. So it feels pretty great to be told not only that there’s potential improvement around, but that the docs actually feel like it’s achievable.
Clearly, it’s not going to mean a massive turn around, but if I can raise my tolerance levels enough to manage a trip out of the house a little more often, maybe a stroll around Borders once in a while, it’ll make a big difference to keeping my spirits up.
It’s doubtless going to be a really hard slog and I don’t quite know how I’m going to deal with it at the moment. I’ve never really pushed myself really hard through exercise and I’ve no doubt that whatever program I’m given, whilst laughably pitiful for regular mortals, is going to be a hell of a job for me.
But when you’re facing the months ahead that I’m facing, I suppose motivation should be too much of a factor – after all, my entire life right now is focused on stretching things out as long as I can until that call comes. If doing 5 minutes of step ups a couple of times a day is going to help achieve that, I can learn to tolerate the gasping and rasping that comes with it.