Archives: Day-to-day

Following my post from last Thursday about my admission to hospital, at the end of which, you will remember, I was waiting for a transfer to a neuro unit somewhere in the UK, the epic story of a simple headache continued for the next 6 days before finally reaching an inconclusive conclusion on my 29th birthday this last Wednesday.

I was (eventually) moved to the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford, where their neuro unit is considered to be one of the best in the country. On top of which, it was significantly easier for my family to come across and visit than a stay in central London would have been.

The Saturday after I arrived I was prepped and sent for a CT Angiogram, which is a regular CT scan ((of the kind I’d had to Harefield the day I was first admitted)) plus a big bolus push of iodine-based contrast-dye to highlight all of the blood vessels. The idea was to look for aneurysms or weakenings in the walls of the blood vessels that usually show as small bubbles of blood. The concern with any aneurysm is that it could rupture and cause major bleeding on the brain, which in turn can cause strokes or even death.

The didn’t find anything.

It was at this point that the suspected diagnosis was made clearer to me through the far more knowledgeable nursing and medical staff at the JR; they suspected what’s called a sub-arachnoid haemorrhage. Here’s a couple of quick definitions to save me boring you to death if you couldn’t care less about the rest of the medical jargon and info.

I then spent the rest of the weekend locked up on the ward on 4-hourly obs and not allowed to stray for more than 30 minutes and then only if accompanied by a family member. Strict isn’t the word, but then I suppose the kind of issues they deal with are much more serious than most of the hospital wards I have frequented in the past, where a minor hiccup is unlikely to lead to instant chronic brain failure or death.

On Sunday afternoon, I was told by the weekend doctor that he suspected the LP from Harefield had been a false positive from the two failed attempts before the successful one ((meaning the sample was contaminated by blood from outside the CSF)) and that further tests were unlikely to be ordered.

To my surprise, then, I was consented for a cerebral angiogram first thing on Monday morning, with no real explanation of the reasons beyond the fact that it’s the best test to check or aneurysms. Clearly, the weekend doc wasn’t the one in charge of my case and made a slightly sweeping statement in leading me to believe all was well and I’d be on my way home as soon as the docs on my case could process the discharge paperwork.

Waiting around, nil-by-mouth, all day for a procedure you don’t know a huge amount about is slightly frustrating, but not nearly so much as being told ten minutes after lunch has been round that they won’t be performing it that day.

I would go on to have the full angio the following morning, but that’s a whole story in itself.

The epic adventure continues tomorrow….

If you’re reading this, you probably already know that I’m currently residing in Harefield Hospital following a ruptured cerebral aneurism on Sunday. Here’s the lowdown:

Sunday night, around 8pm, just as I was returning from my dinner break to put the final touches to the project that was due in on Monday, I developed a sudden, severe headache at the top of my neck where the spine meets my skull. Within minutes, it had spread right around my head, which alternated between feeling like someone was drilling into it and my brain trying to explode out of it.

By 8.30 I couldn’t function and was laid on the bed in pain, feeling sick. By 9.30 I’d started vomiting and wouldn’t stop for the next 24 hours.

After failing to keep down one dose of immunosuppression and knowing the morning dose wouldn’t stay down, either, I headed in to Harefield where they rapidly took a CT of my head and found nothing.  To be on the safe side, they then opted for a lumbar puncture (or spinal tap) to see if I had signs of blood in my cerebro-spinal fluid ((NB – blood in the CSF is NOT a good thing)).

Although clear to the naked eye, tests that returned on Tuesday confirmed the presence of blood and, hence, a probably bleed on the brain.

Since Tuesday, I have been improving progressively and now feel right as rain and ready for action. The doctors, however, disagree.

It’s extremely unusual to have any kind of bleed like this at my age ((a tender 28 until next Wednesday)) and the obvious concern is that a small aneurism (pocket of blood) had a small bleed that caused the initial headache, but could fully rupture at any time and cause more life-threatening consequences.

Personally, I’m not worried about that at all. Harefield have been trying for the last 3 days to get me transferred to a specialist neuro unit with little success, which indicates to me that none of the neurosurgeons who have looked at my file are overly concerned.

That said, it’s obviously far too big a gamble to ignore it all together, so my current state of limbo is being sat in Harefield whiling away the hours and days until a bed becomes available for me at either Charing Cross or, more likely, the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford ((also my preferred choice)).

Without going into more medical and boring detail, that’s pretty much the skinny for now. No idea if/when I’ll have access to my laptop again when I’m moved, so there may not be updates as regularly as you may like, but the latest news will be posted on my Twitter feed as it comes in.

Finally, many thanks for all the love and support you’ve all shown over the last couple of days since we first made the news public, it means a lot to me and to K as well, who’s obviously had quite the time of it over the last week and is coping with her typical strength and humour.

In precisely 3 weeks’ time the 3 Peaks team will be aboard out transport and heading north to Scotland where we will begin our odyssey in the early hours of Saturday morning, aiming to reach our conclusion at the foot of Snowdon ((having been up and down it, obviously)) 24 hours later.

At times I’ve really struggled with this challenge. Sometimes physically, sometimes mentally, all based on my perception of the views and abilities of others: is it really that tough if thousands of people do it each year?

Here are a few lessons I’ve learned about myself along the way:

1. I have more will-power than I’ve ever thought – apart from anything else, it’s the first time in my life I’ve managed to push myself to go to the gym even on the mornings I’ve really wanted to stay curled up.
2. I have a far higher pain threshold than I thought – each session in the gym I push harder and harder and when it hurts… I keep going. That’s not a phrase I’d have associated with myself before.
3. It wouldn’t work without inspiration – beasting myself on a bike or treadmill (or worse now, the Stairmaster) is only possible by holding the image in my head of all those people I’ve lost and all those I’m afraid of losing. Keeping their plight in mind helps me go harder than ever.
4. Transplant is a truly remarkable thing.
5. I am truly blessed to be able to enjoy all that I do and can do.
6. I will never let this new life go to waste.

Am I confident we’ll get round the 3 Peaks? Sure. Do I know that I’m fit enough to make it? Not really. I’m fitter than I’ve ever been, but I don’t know how that compares to the level of fitness that’s needed to scale Britain’s 3 highest mountains in 24 hours.

All I really know is that I’m going to push myself harder than I’ve ever pushed, drive myself further than I’ve ever been and, most likely, sink myself to new depths of exercise-related pain that ever before.  But you know what? I’m the luckiest guy in the world to be able to do this now and however hard it is, I’ve been through worse.

I’ve just got back from 3 days in Durham where I was asked to talk at an event for the CF Trust for CF Week this week.

It’s an event I first spoke at 3 years ago when I was just 6 months post transplant and it was great to go back to the lovely ladies lunch and share my story so far as well as my hopes and dreams for the future.

The biggest part of my speech was concerned with helping raise funds for the CF Trust, who work tirelessly year-in, year-out to fund clinical research to improve drug therapies, hospital care and overall outcomes for people with CF across the UK.  My hope – as I expressed to the women at the lunch – was that by helping fund the CF Trust’s research into gene therapy and developing a therapy that prevents the eventually-fatal lung damage from CF we can prevent anyone having to go through what I’ve been through.

Not only have I, obviously, been through the hellish wait on the transplant list not knowing whether my call would come in time or if I would die while I wait, but I’ve also had to watch far too many of my friends die while they waited. And now I’m having to watch Tor (who I wrote about most recently in my previous post) endure over twice the wait I went through and see the life and the hope slip in and out of her eyes each and every day.

By donating to the CF Trust this week (or any week), you can make a huge difference to the lives of children being born with this disease today and prevent them ever having to experience the truly devastating side-effects of a life lived in the shadow of an early death.

This time in 4 weeks I should hopefully be nestled in my bed starting two days of recovery from the 3 Peaks Challenge and right now I’m hopeful, a little fearful and very, very tired.

Training has stepped up a notch, there’s all kinds of logistics to organise, a team-meeting with 5 of apparently the busiest people on the planet and I’ve still got to fit in work, quality time with K and a trip to Durham for a fundraiser for this years’ CF Week in aid of the CF Trust, a cause you’ll all know is close to my heart.

Today, though, that all blurred into fairly frank insignificance following Tor’s latest post on her blog following her seventh false alarm call for transplant.  I’ve written before on here about my false alarms, but also about how Tor inspires me to want to do better, to push myself harder and to achieve everything I can while I’m able.

One quote from her post today stood out for me, when she talks about her fears for the future, post-transplant:

I [am] worried that I … could never live a life that was enough to honour my donor.

This is a fear that lives with me every day. It’s not a fear that overwhelms me, but rather motivates me and gives me my ultimate drive to succeed, whether personally, in business or my personal life.

If my donor is looking down on me now, I want them to be proud of me. I want them to feel that they made the right decision in letting me live after they died. I want them to know just how much I value the gift I’ve been given and how I live each and every day in their honour, under their guidance and with their presence always around me.

That’s why I’ve started chasing the dream of the 3 Peaks and it’s why I want to keep pushing myself to do more.

I must apologise for the lack of updates. If I’m honest, it’s been a rough time lately and with all kinds of work pressures and the added physical trial of training full-bore for the first time in my life, I’ve honestly been questioning whether or not this was going to happen at all.

I’m delighted to announce, however, that a major pharmaceutical company have agreed to fully-fund the 3 Peaks trip and that we’ll definitely be headed north to Scotland on Friday 3rd June to begin 24 hours of mountain-climbing, mountain descents and driving in between.

I was recently featured in another article online to promote not just the trip but the amazing support the guys at Topnotch Health Clubs have given me, including invaluable training advice and nutrition tips.

Really, though, there’s only one thing that stands out today, with 7 weeks to go. Today in the gym I ran, comfortably, for the first time in my life.

After a 15 minute session walking at speed on an incline on the treadmill, I spent the final two minutes jogging on the flat and for the first time ever – absolutely literally – I didn’t have to stop from feeling out of breath, sore in the legs or with chest pains ((not heart-attack chest pains, but I used to get a lot of pain across my scar when I tried to run)).

If nothing else, I’ve proved to myself and my donor that these new lungs are being used for the very best they can. I’ve never been fitter, never felt better and never been able to take so much on my plate as I have at the moment.

I cannot describe how amazing and brilliant this feels. And I cannot express my gratitude to my donor and their family for giving me the chance to feel like this. If you haven’t already, show your support for me, for the trek and for organ donation by signing-up and/or reTweeting/sharing the dedicated sign-up link from NHSBT, http://bit.ly/oli3peaks

The most common question I get when talking about the 3 Peaks is “Why?”.

I have two answers, both of which are exemplified in things I saw on Twitter today.  Number one (courtesy of the marvellous Sheri Candler):

Number two is this series of Tweets from a very close friend:

Just had call number 5 but no good for me. Gutted.

@Tor87

Feeling awful but thank you for keeping my spirits up, so many lovely friends. Please remember the amazing donor and their family today. x

@Tor87

God this has hit me hard. In lots of pain, breathing awful, body wont work. You cannot imagine.

@Tor87

Not only has Tor had to suffer yet another false alarm, but even while she’s hurting, struggling to breathe and exhausted from over 5 hours of travelling, she’s thinking of others.

And when she says, “You cannot imagine,” she absolutely means it. If you haven’t been there, you cannot possibly understand the rollercoaster of emotions that is involved with a false-alarm; being prepared to have your life changed forever before being told it’s not going to happen. And knowing that if it doesn’t happen today, it may never happen at all.

You want to know why I’m subjecting myself to 24 hours of mountain climbing following 3 months of hard training?

Tor is why.

As the old proverb tells us:

Every great journey begins with a single step…

Today, my great journey to summit the 3 highest peaks in the UK within 24 hours began with the single, simple step of inducting myself at the gym.

I’ve been lucky enough to be sponsored by Topnotch Healthclubs with a gym membership and, if you’ll pardon the pun, top-notch training advice and personalised programmes to get me ship-shape and walking-fashioned in time for the challenge in June.

This blog, in what must been its umpteenth iteration ((having followed pre- and post-transplant journey and a short “trial” stint at university)), will become home to OLI’S 3 PEAKS – the online diary of my build-up, training, highs and lows of my bid to raise awareness of organ donation by attempting a frankly very silly challenge for someone with a) a total lack of any kind of physical fitness and b) a very low tolerance for pain or discomfort.

Here, as they say, goes nothing….

My body decides that 6.30am is a good wake up time this morning and, as the room is freezing and the wind is rattling the door, any chance I have of convincing myself to go back to sleep is thrown out of the window, so I get up, close the window over lest the same fate should befall the lovely K ((although that’s hardly likely as she sleeps like the dead once she’s nodded off)) and head downstairs.

I make myself a cup of tea with the penultimate tea-bag in the house ((naturally leaving the other for K the tea monster)) and sit down to catch up on emails, news and blogs from the last two days since I’ve been out of the office for most of them. I promptly let my tea go cold and debate whether to walk to the shops but a) it looks freezing outside and b) I’m digging too far into the news blogs to leave my laptop.

By late-morning I’m all caught up on everything I’ve missed and have worked my way through two scripts that were in my To Read pile. I fire off an email of feedback to the writer/director of one of them, but promise myself a second read of the other, since it’s being pitched to me as a possible new producing project and I think it needs a more careful evaluation. ((the first of the scripts is another project i’ve been producing that’s been slowly working through numerous drafts over the last few months)).

K eventually rouses herself and announces (shock of all shocks) that she actually had a good night’s sleep and feels rested and happy – not a common thing for K of a morning. She also informs me that we’re popping next door at 2 to give Wee C ((the neighbour’s 3-year-old)) his delayed Christmas present that various events colluded to prevent us handing over pre-Christmas (or even pre-New Year).

Back from that we take a stroll down the road and pick up some tea and milk, then K hits the sofa to dig into some statistics homework while I clean up the kitchen, including mopping the floor from Thursday’s jumping cider incident (it’s been a bit sticky since).

That done, I head upstairs and have a chill out in the bath, followed by some relaxation, then make a few phone calls that I needed to catch up on, including chasing up a commission that came my way yesterday.

Phone calls finished, I try (and fail) to wrap my head around K’s statistics stuff to see if I can be of any help, but drawing a blank on that I instead fall back on my dinner-cooking talents and rustle up some griddled pork and accompaniments.

After dinner, K hits the sofa again and I head up to the office to check messages and update the blog. When K’s brain has exhausted itself and her mind is a whirl of statistical mess we play a quick game of Bananagrams before heading to the movie room and throwing in the original BBC STATE OF PLAY series, which K’s never seen. I realise I’ve forgotten just how much I love this show as we get through two hour-long eps back-to-back and could quite easily have stayed up and got through all 6 in one straight marathon, but I’m keen for K to rest up before Uni starts on Monday, so I drag us both to bed for sleep.

The alarm wakes me at 8am, which is the latest I’ve been up all week (I figure I deserve it). I get out of bed, shower and rouse K so we can make our 9.35 train to London.

We get in to Town and K heads off to Angel to Uni, where she’s meeting her study group to polish up their joint project while I head down to Waterloo to meet up with HC, a filmmaker friend of mine. It’s good to finally see her as we live a life of constant “we must meet up” messages and rarely manage to find time that both of us are free to actually do it.

We pick each other’s brains about various work-related thing, as well as chatting about new projects we have on and our hopes and plans for 2011. The hour-and-change we spend in a lovely little South Bank café ((Earl Grey for her, green tea for me, both served in little bowls)) passes way too quickly before I’m back on a tube and headed North to Angel.

I meet K to accompany her to a meeting with her Uni that she’s organised to try to sort out arrangements for her placement this term, which goes very positively and we’re in and out inside half-an-hour.

K smuggles me in to the uni library using one of her study-mates passes and I stick my head into their room to say hello to the group and thank Sc for her card. They carry on working and I sit in the main library study area and battle (unsuccessfully) with the WiFi before giving up and settle into preparing a business plan for the new project I’m working on with CR that doesn’t require ‘net accesses.

While I’m working I get an email from a Twitter contact who was involved in Danny Lacey’s LOVE LIKE HERS offering me a Line/Co-Producer role on her new short. As it’s on my Blackberry, I can’t read the script, but I file it away to come back to later once I’ve got chance to access the ‘net and read it.

I also get an email from THE PRODUCTION OFFICE commissioning me for 12 new eps of THE LOWDOWN for them this year, which is a really nice boost. I’ve had great feedback in the past on the videos I’ve done for the show and it’s always flattering to be asked to come back and do it again. I accept without hesitation.

When K wraps up her study group, I pack up my things and we stroll back up to Angel and grab the tube to St Pancras, where we’ve just missed a train home. There’s one every half-hour, though, so it’s not the end of the world and we hit Foyles bookshop to kill some time, with me wading through the business section as a bit of market research.

We hop the train and ride some, K zoning out with tiredness while I read an eBook on her iPad for the first time. I’m impressed at how nice it is to read on it, as I’ve only used it for games and “useful” apps before. The workflow for reading PDFs is a little fiddly, but once they’re on there, it’s great.

We get home and swing by KFC for K and I whip myself up some chicken mayo sandwiches from the leftovers in the fridge ((K’s not a sandwiches kinda girl)). We watch some SIMPSONS while we eat, then head up to the movie room and the PS3 to stream the first ep of FAMOUS AND FEARLESS that we missed on Monday, which we jump through the key moments of before coming back down to tonight’s Sky+’d final. It’s such an odd show – potential to be very, very good, but the live studio format necessitates quite a lot of padding. That said, if it weren’t live it wouldn’t have the same edge to it, so it’s a bit of a conundrum for the producers. It’s great to see Chris Evans doing good TV again, though – I miss TFI FRIDAY.

It’s late once F&F is over (well done Charley Boorman) and we take ourselves off to bed where I read for all of 10 minutes before conking out.