Archives: Family

It’s Oli here. Hello! This won’t be long as it’s quite hard to type long things on my ‘berry and i’m still not up to much in the way of telephonic communication.

I really wanted to write to thank every single one of you for your wonderful prayers, thoughts, best wishes card, messasges and comments on the blog – all of which get emailed through to me on my phone.

I’m sorry i’m not replying or responding, but things are still pretty up and down and my hands are so shaky that texting is tricky. Kati’s update on the day will tell you much more, but things are improving greatly.

It means so much to get your messsages and read your words of support. I promise I’ll get round to a proper catch-up with everyone soon.

Take good care of yourselves cos i’m coming for hugs when I get out!

*Before you begin to read please make sure you are comfortable, this may turn into a long rambling post, apologies!*

Oli is doing so well.  I was really excited today because I haven’t seen him since Thursday and even then he was asleep.  I have to admit, I was a little nervous about seeing him because I didn’t know what to expect, in my head was a picture of a very poorly Oli attached to everything and not very communicative.  I was sooooo wrong!  Oli was sat in a chair, next to his bed, when his Mum and I walked in at 10.30 this morning. 

I don’t know how much you guys know but ITU has very strict visiting times, necessarily so, it’s a busy place.  In the morning visiting time begins at 10am and finishes at 1pm, there is a break for a couple of hours and the second visiting slot starts at 3pm and finishes for the day at 7.45pm.  I would have thought that the majority of people in ITU are heavily sedated and so the time could potentially pass by without them taking too much notice.  Unfortunately for anyone who is completely aware of goings on (if maybe a little confused and overwhelmed every now and then), the tiny visiting slots are very precious times that need to be filled with constant, loving company.

These tiny visiting slots are often made even smaller due to the current system of intercom admittance to the unit.  I really want to point out before I go any further that this is definitely not a criticism of the staff who work in the unit.  Every member of staff I have seen there has been working so unbelievably hard and doing their job of taking care of very poorly people. 

HOWEVER, the intercom system does not work as efficiently as the staff of the unit.  It works like this… Visitor presses intercom buzzer, buzzer is answered and visitor announces who they are and who they want to see, ITU person goes to check that the patient is ok to accept visitors and then returns to buzzer to let visitor in.  Sounds simple?  It should do, but it can take a long time for the buzzer to be answered, the ITU person can fail to come back to let you know if you can visit or not, the ITU person doesn’t press the admittance button to open the door so you have to go back and press the buzzer, blah, blah, blah. 

So today, Oli’s Mum and I arrived at 10am but didn’t get an answer to the buzzer until 10.30am and when we got to Oli we found him quite distressed as he’d been told that no visitors were waiting to see him.  It may sound small but it’s a BIG thing.  Try to imagine being hooked up to all kinds of things, alone in a bed for 14 hours without any form of entertainment, feeling scared and clock watching, hanging on to the hope that at 10am your Mum will come in and give you a hug.  I really felt for him when we found out that he’d been told that no-one was there for him, he had suddenly turned into a tiny, scared little boy whose Mummy hadn’t turned up to collect him from playgroup.  I’d love to help them find a way of making the intercom system run more smoothly, it makes so much of a difference to patients.

So ramble over and back to Oli.  He is good, he looks good and I couldn’t believe that he was sitting up, out of bed.  After the initial drama he was chatty, until he got tired, and seems to be completely ‘with it’.  His is no longer on kidney dialysis as his body has corrected the imbalance of sodium, potassium, etc.  He is on a little bit of oxygen, via nasal specs, but is largely as we left him on Thursday.  The drain for the important leaky fluid is at a good level and all things being well he will be drain free in a week or so.

Luckily for us the doctors came to see Oli while we were with him so we got to listen in to what they were saying.  The overall message from them is very positive.  They are happy with the way things are going and although they would like Oli to stay in ITU for another 24hrs, they are very happy for him to go back to the ward at the beginning of the week, once the ward has a bed available.

I have to say that at this point I am just so happy that Oli is doing well after the scare on Friday.  Friday hit us pretty hard as we’d maybe forgotten that it was still early days and been swept up in how well he was doing.  However, all credit to Oli and the doctors, they responded quickly and did what they hoped was the right thing and Oli has been so strong, physically and mentally throughout this.  To me he doesn’t appear discouraged that he is back in ITU after being on the ward so quickly after the transplant, if anything, it has made him more determined to do what he needs to do to get back to the ward.

We must remember that we’re still only just setting out on this journey.  We’re going to have lots of wobbles, hopefully not too many lows and more than a few highs.  I think my outlook is to enjoy the highs and take care of the lows when they happen. I want Oli to feel proud of himself for fighting so hard and to add these battles to his armour and use them to attack the next lows but it really helps him and us to know that we’re not alone on this journey and that you’re all with us every step of the way.  Thank you so very much for sticking with us, it means a great deal x

Sorry, have had that song in my head all day and it has had to come out somewhere! 

Oli has been on the exercise bike today!!! 

He managed 4 whole minutes and, much to his surprise, conducted a conversation whilst cycling.  Anyone who knows Oli, knows anyone with CF, has CF, is just plain rubbish at exercise (that’s my category), will understand that is pretty amazing and is definitely ‘up there’ in Oli’s list of All Time Greatest Achievements Ever.

His mood has remained buoyant and although I got there too late to witness it, I have it on good authority that he has been excited about all the things he will be able to do.

A slight bump in the road to recovery means that tomorrow morning Oli will be going back to theatre for a very brief operation to tie up something that is leaking very useful fluid (isn’t my medical knowledge astounding?!).  I have been told several times what the actual reason and procedure is but my brain is also leaking very useful knowledge.

This may sound like a step back and it will put him back on epidural and catheter again but it is in fact a really simple op (fingers crossed there are no complications).  Once Oli is over the sleepiness of the anaesthetic, he should be able to be tube free in a week or so.

I will of course let you all know how tomorrow goes but please be reassured that I’m not concerned about the op and so you guys needn’t be either.  I’ll let you know when to worry and when to cheer (and when to boo and hiss, just as it’s nearly panto season).

Today didn’t get off to a great start but has ended on such a high, even as I write I can’t get a stupidly happy smile off my face.

As far as I can gather this morning was pretty rubbish.  Lots of things happened all at once and although none of them were particularly drastic, they didn’t help improve Oli’s already negative frame of mind.  Big bro was there thoroughout the morning and after a while deemed it necessary to give younger brother Oliver (because you always get called by your full name when you’re about to get told off) a bit of a talking to about taking a fresh perspective on things and seeing that things may not be as bad as all that.  Big bro is a muchly big legend and after leaving Oli to think things through, Oli had the biggest turnaround I think I’ve ever seen.

I have to admit I haven’t seen Oli now for two days as I have a very important Uni’ interview next week that needs a lot of prepping for.  It hasn’t been much fun not seeing him,  especially when I know he has been having a difficult time, however now I know that this afternoon he has been chatting, laughing, exercising, and more  I couldn’t be happier.

I have proof of happiness, too.  At some point this afternoon my phone rang with Oli’s number showing.  My immediate thought was along the lines of “who could be ringing me from Oli’s phone?”, who else but the man himself!!!  Yay!  I couldn’t believe he felt well enough to even look at his phone, let alone call.  What’s more, we had a good few minutes chat, mostly from his end as I couldn’t stop repeating “I can’t believe you”re calling!”.  This evening more happy surprises came through as Oli sent me some text messages, and because he managed to link a few together to make another conversation put me back on cloud nine!

This really represents a massive breakthrough for Oli’s mental state, he’s had such a bad time over the past few days, being stuck under a big black cloud and taking the big black dog for a walk.  It’s so great to hear from him and know that he really feels happier and is able to look positively at his achievements and see what’s ahead in a positive light.

We’re on such a journey together, all of us, and we’re going to come across many ups and downs.  It’s so important to treasure the good as it’s often what can help you get through the bad.  It’s also really important to have a big brother to give you a kick up the pants every now and then! 

Oli’s progressing steadily now.  Physically it seems like everyday another tube/drain/wire is removed (I strangely now have an image of ker-plunk! – forgive me, I am very tired).  Even his catheter has been removed today, which although meant a big ouch, also means that the team are happy with his fluid outout and also means that he will have to physically exert himself a little everytime he needs to pee (sorry, too much information).

Mentally, he is taking things hard.  A lot of it due to the remaining tubes still pumping in various drug cocktails.  Anxiety is a big issue right now but the nurses are fantastic with him and have clearly seen all of this behaviour many times before.  Alongside the anxiety are confusion and disorientation, both of these add to the anxiety.

It is still very important to remember that it is early days, as I am writing this, Oli was just about to head into theatre this time last week.  Oli is progressing very well and hitting all targets that the team look for and is certainly not taking any steps back.  Physically, Oli is nigh on exactly where he ‘should be’ (a term used very loosely as recovery is a very individual thing and can’t really be generalised).  However, he is still very scared that something might go wrong. 

The support you have all given Oli so far has been phenomenal.  Please don’t stop your prayers and good wishes for Oli as he needs them just as much now as he did a week ago. 

Please also remember the donor’s family as I can imagine they are still very much mourning the loss of a loved one in the time when a lot of people are in high spirits for the approaching Christmas. I’m sure they’re not feeling too Christmassy right now and could do with lots of love heading their way.

Lots of love from me x

Not much more news again tonight.  Oli is good, his brain and the lungs have definitely begun talking more as his CO2 levels are brilliant and if he continues to breathe deeply then he may only need two more nights on neve, hooray!

The central line in his neck which takes the antibiotics into his system packed up this eve, just as he was calming down for the day.  After one numpty doctor and three numpty failed attempts to re-site the line in his arm, a clever nurse remembered his portacath (after some gentle prompting from Oli’s Mum) and the line was sited in one attempt.

We left Oli trying to get over the stress by chilling with his Dad.  Now he has no annoying lines in his neck, I hope he sleeps better, we’ll see.

***Now we’ve reached a kind of plateau where progress is good and steady, I might not update each evening unless there is something I think you’d like to know.  So from now on no news is good news and written news is super news x***

We had a lie in today to catch up on some much needed sleep and so went to see Oli this afternoon.

I wasn’t there when they moved Oli to the ward yesterday so was really pleasantly surprised when I walked in to see that he has a tv/dvd player and a fridge that I’m sure is meant for important things like drugs but that we have taken over to store chocolate milk and other vital get-well-soon yummy things.

Oli’s had a very tough day today.  Don’t get me wrong, he’s still doing fantastically well, but I think today might have scared him a little and made him see a mountain that he wants to be at the peak of before he’s really set off.  It appears as though his brain is finding it difficult to trust that his lungs do actually work fine and are capable of working harder than he’s pushing them to.  The amazing team around him have been encouraging him to take deep, slow breaths in order to open up all of the airways and make sure the alveoli at the base of the lungs are being used.

In order to give Oli a bit of help with this, they’ve given him another Neve (our name for NIV – Non Invasive Ventilator), like he’d been using pre-transplant.  The idea behind it being that it takes an awful lot of effort to breathe deeply when you’re not used to it so neve can aid Oli at times thorughout the day and night, especially when he is tired or when his CO2 levels go up.

Oli hasn’t taken to this new Neve much, she’s very much the same as the one he’s used but he now finds the mask a bit claustrophobic (pls forgive spelling mistakes) and has been getting panicky after short periods of use.  The marvellous nurse Jason who was looking after him today managed to finally tweak the settings and adjust the mask and eventually this evening, Oli has been more comfortable on it.  We hope he might use it tonight to help him sleep well, I really hope it works for him.

The other, slightly scarier thing Oli has found difficult today has been the hallucinagenic side effects of the very strong drugs he is on.  Apparently it isn’t unusual (we had actually been forewarned about this by Emily who told us she liked to imagine conversations with her doctors!) but it is never-the-less not pleasant, and this evening after starting with seeing shapes and squiggles led to thinking the bed was trying to swallow him. 

We left him tonight calmer but exhausted and with permission from the docs for his big bro to stay with him in his room tonight.  I really hope he gets some good sleep.  Sleep is so important for the body to heal and he has a hard enough journey ahead already without suffering from lack of sleep.

See you tomorrow x 

Hi everyone, this is K.  I have had permission from Oli to keep you all updated and help provide him with a blog which will cover his progress as he recovers.  In case you hadn’t caught on yet, Oli has had a transplant!

The call came this evening around 7pm, just as Oli had got in the bath, a bath which he had been wanting all day but his lungs were being particularly difficult and he had to wait for them to give him a break.

We all hopped in the car and drove to Harefield, driving in torrential rain that made the journey very interesting as I’m sure the puddles were nearly swimming pool size in places.

Things happened very routinely once we got to Harefield. We know the drill by now, settle into the room, watch Oli have copious amounts of blood taken by the vampire docs, swabs from almost every part of the body, shower and shave with special pink liquid, and then the wait.  And more waiting.  And more waiting.

The news came at 11pm as Oli was in the shower, he really wasn’t having much luck with getting clean today, however this news was the news we have been waiting for for 2 ½ years, the transplant was going ahead and he was due in theatre at 00:15.

The mood in the room was strange, Oli was totally calm, instantly got onto his phone and started letting everyone know.  I was absolutely excited, amazed, nervous, scared, every emotion you could possibly imagine, I had it all at once.  Whereas I couldn’t stop shaking, Oli was so chilled and relaxed – I am still amazed by the strength of character this guy has, he really is one in a million.

The only time he got nervous was when we got to the theatre doors and weren’t allowed any further.  The goodbyes at the doors were very difficult, it’s so hard to reassure someone who is about to have their life changed that everything will be ok.  It isn’t anything we have experienced before and so words weren’t enough.  Watching Oli being wheeled down to theatre was the most amazing feeling in the world, good luck Oli – we’re here every step of the way…

It’s closing in on 4am and I find myself sat in the lounge at my parents’ house if not quite wide awake then certainly not sound asleep.  Since I finally gave in to my night’s chronic lack of slumber just over an hour ago, I’ve been wondering to myself whether this point marks a new low in my struggle as it has been.

It’s extraordinarily tempting to call it that, but putting tiredness and busy-headedness to one side, if I try to clear up the picture a little bit I suppose it’s hard to suggest right now that I’m worse off than I was when I was admitted to Oxford back in June.

Certainly, chest-wise, I’m not doing as badly as I was then.  Yes, I’m still finding every day a struggle and breathlessness is increasingly a problem throughout the day, rather than being something which tended to isolate itself to certain times or periods which could be identified and focused on.  And yes, every night is seemingly harder than more recent times to gather myself and settle down to sleep – the effort of undressing, of washing both myself and my equipment, of simply sitting in bed reading is considerably more noticeable than it was a week or more ago.

On the other hand, I’m not spiking the temperatures I was spiking in June, nor am I confined as I was then to my bed, fighting for breath even at rest and needing the highest flows of oxygen I could muster with my various concentrators to see me to the bathroom and back.  I am, on the whole, physically better off than I was back in June, although it is tempting to be blinded to it by the storm of exhaustion that has settled in to my quiet little dwelling.

I can only surmise, then, that if I am physically better off than I was in June then in order to be feeling quite as badly as I do about things at the moment, then my head is very far from in the right place.  There is a line of which people often speak between living and existing – an invisible, intangible and yet undeniable line over which the simple matter of getting through the day becomes the be-all and end-all of one’s ambitions.  I am not entirely sure I have reached such a line yet, but for the first time in a long while it has become more to me than a mark on a road map which I may be approaching.  Rather, it is now a hazy, not-so-distant shimmer which presents itself as being not as far away as one would like or hope it to be.

At the end of last week, K and I made the executive decision to take ourselves back to Chez Parental in order to afford K more time to study for her college finals in a 2 weeks’ time and prepare for her uni interview without having to look after me and without me having to worry about whether she was spending too much time on me and not enough on herself (something at which I am incredibly bad at – I spend most of my life worrying that she’s worrying too much, which is a vicious circle in itself).

My mood, however, has not taken to the holiday particularly well.  I have no idea if it is purely coincidental, or if coming home carries an air of admitting defeat or some other such nonsense, but since settling back in here I have been distinctly more negatively-focused and have noticed the difficulties over-and-above the advantages.

Interestingly, I don’t think it’s particularly anything about being home, but more a reflection of the general difficulties I’m struggling with physically at the moment.  The biggest problem I’m facing is one of discomfort – I find it almost impossible now to be comfortable in any position at all.

Lying down is fine enough, but only if I am truly horizontal, which makes doing anything at all nigh-on impossible.  From there, there is lying propped up, which stresses my lower back and neck, there is sitting up, as on a sofa, which stresses my neck to the point of causing headaches and my upper back and shoulders causing breathlessness.  Sitting bolt-upright in a well-supported armchair is about right, but if the back of the chair is not vertical – like the study chair at home – my neck once again takes the strain if it is not supported or rested back.

When sleeping is a problem, it can at least be countered with good periods of solid rest during the day.  But when solid rest is completely unachievable – when it is impossible simply to crash out on the sofa and watch mind-numbing TV or brain-absorbing DVDs – lack of sleep becomes just as debilitating as a lack of breath.

When all of these factors are totted up and combined with headaches, odd, unidentifiable but frequently worrying chest pains, cramps and stomach aches on top of it, life becomes a roller-coaster of moment-to-moment misery through which you ache to enjoy that odd glimpse of sunlight glinting through the clouds.

That’s not to say I haven’t enjoyed glimpses of golden rays in the last week, nor that the world is entirely shrouded in blackness, but compared to the fights and struggles I’ve had before, this one certainly feels like it’s ramping things up a notch.

I’m not entirely sure what the point of all the above is/will prove to be, other than a manner of half-an-hour’s distraction in the early hours of the morning and an outlet for all the mixed up frustrations which are mixing themselves up in the pressure-cooking wash-bowl of my head.  The dregs of an active, lively mind are swilling around up there somewhere, drained of colour and vibrancy by the hour of night and relentless, restless energy. 

If nothing else, I suspect this will go to show in the weeks to come the extent of any improvement on my part.  I can only hope that it marks the nadir of my fortunes and that things are all-the-way upwards from here.  If not, this is going to be a pretty hard place to visit.

Well, someone was listening to me last night, because today has, indeed, been a better day so far. That’s not to say things are all fine and dandy, or that the picture is yet all rosy, but side-by-side with yesterday, today has been a Good Day.

I managed to get almost straight to sleep last night, sometime after 11pm, which is rare forr me these days. Not only that, but I managed to sleep quite solidly, too – no constant waking to switch position or readjust myself. It may have been thanks to having fiddled with Neve and pushed the pressures up ever-so-slightly, or a slightly improvement on the chest front, or simply thanks to complete exhaustion and my body not having any other choice but sleeping it off. My guess would be it was a healthy mix of the three.

Bizarrely, and somewhat annoyingly, I woke up bright-as-a-button(ish) around 5am and couldn’t get back to sleep, no matter how hard I tried. I had planned to lay in a bit today and do my morning dose a little later than usual, but given that I was awake anyway, I decided to switch the plans and get up early and get them out of the way, which would have the knock-on effect of allowing me an earlier night tonight.

I got up, got my dose running and sat myself a the computer to surf around and catch up on the over-night writers’ strike news, during which time my chest was doing all kinds of weird things, making me breathless one minute and fine the next, and I developed a bit of a killer headache.

By the time my drugs had finished, I decided it’d be a good idea to try to get some physio out of the way before I got myself back to bed, so I did another very uncomfortable session – very hard work again. Having said which, I definitely felt the benefit afterwards, even through it didn’t feel like I’d cleared a lot. I did my anti-biotic nebs and then took myself to bed around 9am.

Interestingly, for those who keep tabs on this sort of thing, 9am is also the time that the construction workers begin work on resurfacing the road outside the front of where we live. With the sun beating a nice, hot set of rays down on the bedroom window, keeping them shut was out of the question, so keeping the noise out was also not a part of the plan.

As it happened, noisy as they were, I needed sleep more, and I managed to doze on-and-off for another few hours till the early afternoon.

I rolled out of bed feeling much better for the physio and sleep, grabbed a cuppa with K and chatted for a bit, talked to my ‘rents to catch them up on over-night progress and then headed back for more physio. It was a much better session than this mornings, and much easier, too, making things look brighter already.

After physio, I got some calories down me and then headed back to bed to chill out with K and watch the first ep of the first season of 24 – a season I’ve seen but K hasn’t and is next on our TV-DVD marathon. I’m amazed at how much I don’t remember from the first time it aired, and also at how much of what I do remember they’ve crammed into the first ep – there must be a whole heap more that I don’t remember to come, which is promising.

After chilling in bed for a while, K gets up to do some more revision and I sit and read GQ for a while, before K heads off to college and I do my 3rd physio session of the day. I’m determined to crack the back of this while I can.

Physio out of the way, I jump online for a while and do a bit of Chrimbo shopping (have to bow to the inevitable eventually, I suppose) and look into a couple of other random bits and pieces while the Shepherd’s Pie Mum made me yesterday cooks.  I sit and eat it while watching the last episode of Extras from the DVD that I’d never got round to seeing, then wash up and get back to the study, going over a couple of old scripts till K gets home.

We watch some programmes from Sky+ and I do some more physio (a really good late-night session, actually), and before I know it my evening drugs are all done and it’s time to hit the sack.  Things are still very up-and-down, and I suspect they will be for a good few days yet, but today’s been a massive improvement on yesterday, and that’s a big step forward.  Well, at least a little one.