Catch up with the rest of the story in Part I, Part II and Part III first.
Easter weekend, then, was a bit rubbish if we’re all honest about it. Getting home on a stonking great 70mg dose of oral pred meant two things: MASSIVE appetite and MASSIVE lack of sleep.
In the first 72 hours of getting home (that’s all of Easter weekend, essentially) I slept around a total of 8 hours. In the first 5 days at home I had two nights where I actually didn’t sleep at all. Not a wink.
The great thing about insomnia is that it often makes me hugely creative. Some of my best writing has been done in the middle of the night when my brain is whirring over-time and I’ve got up and hammered out some great stuff.
The problem with steroid-induced insomnia is that the longer you can’t sleep for, the more useless you get. By Easter Monday I’d been without decent sleep for nearly 4 days and my brain had turned to utter mush. I couldn’t do anything other than sit in a heap on the sofa and – after spending the last month in hard-core training in the gym – that really didn’t float my boat.
Worse than that, though – and please turn away if you’re of a nervous disposition – was that I wasn’t allowed ANY chocolate over Easter AT ALL. Utter, utter rubbish. The prednisolone had spiked my blood sugars higher than the flagpole at the summit of Everest and I was reduced to a low-GI diet of wholly unsatisfactory wholemeal products to keep my sugars as in-balance as I can.
Because I’m not a “real” diabetic, the dietary control was vital as I didn’t have any insulin to use if things go too bad, necessitating late-night A&E trips if I lost control.
To be honest, though, after the stresses and strains of the past week, it didn’t seem like a hugely big deal to miss out on a few chocolate eggs and the last of the Cadbury’s Cream Egg McFlurries.
Thursday was D-Day of last week, heading back in to see the docs and find out what the score was. As far as we can tell, we finished up at Oli 1-0 Rejection. Which is, conclusively, A Good Thing.
There’s still a bit more of a waiting game to play as there may be other problems that the rejection was masking, including whether or not it’s hammered my pancreas so much I may become a fully committed member of the diabetes squad, but these issues are – frankly – little niggles compared to the threat of the last week.
The docs are happy, I’m happy and I can finally re-focus myself on the next few months which, all being well, contain some very, very exciting times indeed.
Watch this space: the show’s not over ’til the bloke with the fat, steroid-rounded face sings. And I haven’t even warmed up my vocal chords yet…