Here’s what’s been going on with the hospital.
12 hours ago
This is a long block of text, but there’s not a great deal else for me to do right now. Typed into an iPad Mini.
A bit of history…
I went to the GP because I was really going downhill. You know when you’re ill. I thought I might have a bladder infection…just a guess. It is extremely rare for me to go to the Dr because my surgery is notoriously hopeless. They’d struggle to diagnose what was wrong with a patient with a missing head. I’m sure the whole place is a front for something, I don’t know what, but it definitely doesn’t require any medical training.
As predicted they couldn’t figure out what was wrong with me other than ‘there was no obvious infection’. They suggested I might want to go to hospital as they ‘might’ be able to do more tests. No one wants to go to hospital in England - at best you’ll be waiting six hours to see anyone, at worse it could literally be days sitting in a chair. Hospitals also really don’t need random people wandering into Accident & Emergency who just feel a bit ropey so I went home.
Meanwhile, in the afternoon the results of an earlier blood test came in. The GP rang me at home and said after seeing them that I definitely needed to go to the hospital, so reluctantly I gathered a few essentials and the Mrs took me to A&E.
Last Wednesday (day two in the Hospital) they took blood to put in a culture to see if it grew anything when put in a Petri dish. By the way imagine having a type of dish named after you, although I suppose Dave Pyrex was another.
Anyway in the meantime they gave me two blood transfusions and more than a few broad spectrum intravenous antibiotic drips while they figured what was going on. Apparently I was running a bit of a temperature, not that I’d noticed. By the way ‘running’ is a weird verb, you can run a temperature, the bath and the gauntlet.
Then there was an endoscope down the throat because an earlier X-ray had revealed potential swelling in the throat. It wasn’t there. All clear.
By this point I’d been in three days and was feeling a heck of lot better. The weakness had gone, as had the hot and cold temperature swings. Clearly the treatment was working.
So by Friday it seemed things were all set for me going home by the end of the day with a bag full of strong antibiotic pills.
But then the culture results came back and showed there had been something in the blood. As a result they wanted me to keep taking a more targeted antibiotic drip every eight hours. So no going home for me.
Long story short it seems my symptoms were the results of a blood infection, which I’m sure had itself been caused by my mega infection from February/March. After all, for me one thing just lead into another without ever fully recovering from the first.
So now I’m just waiting until Monday when a Consultant can make a decision on my future, thumbs up or down Roman Emperor style as to being set free. It seems a bit silly for me to be taking up a bed based on the state my blood was in back when I arrived. I’m sure it’s much better now.
They also plan to send a dietician to see me due to the rapid weight loss. Even though I look fuller in my face, apparently I’ve lost a few more kg. I’m now 82kg instead of the 95-100kg before this started. However I looked up the ideal BMI range for my age and I’m now in the zone. So every dark cloud…
Oh and the liver stuff is not really relevant to this. That’s going to be investigated separately, an MRI is the first step. There’s a looming colonoscopy too, which is a pain in the a*se.
So that’s my current status. I’m anxious to get back home, eat something with a bit of bite resistance, have a long shower, sleep in my own bed, watch my own TV, but more than anything else…use my own loo in peace. After that I want to make some progress on the next video, this will be as much for my own sanity as anything else.
The main thing I want to do now is to thank everyone for all the positive words, messages and encouragement. When I arrived in bed 15, the previous person who’d been in this location had left a ‘get well soon’ card behind, signed by their colleagues/family. I joked to the Mrs that I should keep it displayed to pretend those well wishes were for me.
As it was though I ended up getting hundreds of messages via Patreon which really meant a tremendous amount. It actually made me a bit emotional and I’m speaking as someone who usually is only capable of displaying Vulcan/Norther British Male levels of emotion.
If I do ever get out of here I’ll let you know. With any luck I should have returned to my pre February levels of energy, but with a way more unkempt beard.
Take care.
Photo was taken outside the front of the hospital yesterday evening. The ‘do not sit here’ sign carries on to read …’to smoke’