The inside four walls of Harefield hospital are starting to become depressingly familiar.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s a great place, with experienced medical teams who are – in my humble opinion – second to none. But every now and then – just occasionally, mind – I do find myself wishing I could spend more than 4 days in a row at home without getting myself admitted back onto E ward. Or F. Or any alphabetical character’d ward in the place.
Give me my due, though, at least I’m giving the docs a variety of ailments to deal with – Heaven forbid I should make their job dull and repetitive. First off we had high Tac levels, swiftly followed by good, strong infection, chased down with Norovirus with a sprinkling of chestiness and now we have my first official episode of rejection.
Now, I’m assured by people who know a lot more about these things than me that this is perfectly normal within the first year and particularly the first few months and is nothing to be worried about.
My lung function hasn’t picked up since the touch of infection last week, indeed it’s dropped back ever so slightly, and combined with a stubbornly low level of Tac in my blood, the doc’s are left to presume that, what with my infective markers all dropping and me feeling grand in myself, rejection is top of the list of possibilities.
What this means is a wee holiday on the ward so they can perform a bronchoscopy tomorrow (Tuesday) morning to take a biopsy of the lung tissue to have a good look-see.
For those of you who prefer non-medical, they’re gonna chuck a camera down me gob and snip out some bits of me blowers to see what’s causing the hissy fits.
To say I’m scared would be to over-state it – I have a team I trust 100% here and if they say it’s cool I believe it’s cool – but I still can’t escape the niggling reminders that they last time I was knocked out for a “routine procedure” I woke up a day later in ITU on a ventilator and dialysis. Not fun.
Doubtless this is all going to go a lot smoother, but I will certainly be glad to see the ward staff at lunchtime tomorrow and know it for sure.
For the time being, I’m now enjoying my stay in my 4th room on E ward, my 5th room between E and F in the last 2 months and that’s not counting the two spells on ITU.
One day I swear I’ll get to spend a whole week at home with my new lungs. Now that’s gonna be a novelty.
Update…Oli is fine, just a bit of a sleepy head because of the general anaesthetic. Unfortunately we haven’t seen the doctors so don’t know how it went but we are working on the assumption that if there was anything serious they’d have been in to see him before now. Will post news tomorrow once we’ve got biopsy results. K x