Nope, not dead yet. In spite of the best efforts of the medical community and the NHS, I am still very much alive!! Clearly, I am just very hard to kill...
I know I haven't been online for two and a bit weeks-and they have been two very difficult weeks, too. After my last post, I had to start physiotherapy at the London branch of the RNOH-at Bolsover Street, so it is much closer to the house. And that went well, although it was difficult and painful. My physio, Ollie, showed me how to use the crutches properly. He said that the people at Stanmore gave me bad information-well, no surprises there, as we now know!!
But-my balance and my eyesight have really deteriorated, and I threw a wobbler last week and nearly ended up under a bus. That was close; someone I knew grabbed me just before I fell. Imagine going through these awful five months, only to be splattered all over the road and have to be scraped up by a spatula. And it wasn't even an upmarket bus, either!!
Ollie said to do my exercises-and I have been doing those, since I don't want to be limping for the rest of my life! He also said I should rest as much as possible, since I need to recover from two operations, not just one. Good point.
And-you will like this (but not a lot): I have to gain weight. Yes, I am just over 100 pounds now-I think I haven't weighed this little since I was 12-but I have been given orders by-well, just about everyone.
On Monday I saw both Margaret (GP) and Coletta, the dietician. They both said that my BMI is far too low, and that is why I am too exhausted to do anything. I asked if I am in danger of going down the plughole along with the bathwater-bad joke, I know, and they thought so, too. So I have to eat more, eat more often, and all that stuff. My friend NJ said I shouldn't expect any sympathy, because most people want to lose weight, not gain it!
Margaret also said that the lighter I am, the greater the chance of developing osteoporosis. That made me very nervous. Imagine - I have a choice. I can stay very thin but have a huge risk of sneezing and breaking a hip-or I can gain a few pounds...hmmm, I need to think about this a bit!
While I am thinking, I am going to risk life and limbs and get out the old crutches and go up the road to Starbucks for a nice big cappuccino. Lots of calories-and I get to people watch, so if I find anything funny (and I usually do), I will report back.
I said I was back last time, and that was a bit premature. But I am really and truly back-even if I do look like a bag of bones!! I might as well enjoy it for as long as it lasts....
Friday, 27 September 2013
Thursday, 12 September 2013
The Good, the Bad, and the bingo wing
Three weeks ago - on Tuesday - I had the surgery. My, doesn't time fly!! And it has been a pretty rough time. In fact, I kept asking myself why I was so nuts as to have such a painful operation so soon after the mastectomy. I just wanted the whole thing to be over, so I don't have to look forward to any surgery in the near future. I am done with surgery!!
The good thing is that the pain level has decreased. I still have pain, but it isn't so excruciating that I sit and cry about it. It's bearable now-and when I do too much walking, or moving around, and the knee swells up, I just rest it and know that it will be fine-eventually.
With the good inevitably seems to come the bad: on Tuesday I saw my neurologist, Dr. Turner (aka Dr. Dimples). He was very late-but all NHS doctors seem to always be late!! We spoke about the knee thing (I am on crutches. We couldn't exactly avoid talking about it!), and the cancer, and he said that it has been a very bad-and stressful- year. No, really? He also said that I probably have made as much progress as I am going to make, given that it has been three years since the initial gentamicin poisoning. I asked him about the setbacks of the past few months-and he advised me to go back to the very first exercises, since my nystagmus has returned and my eyes are moving around of their own accord. He said to just keep doing as much as I can to try to return to where I was before disaster struck earlier in the year. And he will see me in twelve months, at which time he will have to discharge me from the clinic, since-he said-he can't keep me on the books indefinitely. He wants to see if I have made any progress in the next year.
I was so discouraged, I went home and went to bed early. I really didn't feel like talking to anyone, or going online-I know it's been over a week, but severe pain and sleep deprivation kept me from doing much-but this setback was really very painful.
So I thought about everything very seriously yesterday. I thought about the surgeries, the illnesses, the setbacks to my balance and vision-and I decided that it is possible that Dr. Dimples is mistaken. I return to everything I have read about neuroplasticity, new neural pathways, the fact that we just don't have enough information about the brain (yet) to make that kind of hard and fast judgment. So I refuse to quit. I have a year to prove Dimples wrong: I have a year to get back to that all important 80%-more, in fact, if I can do it. It just means that I need to stay healthy. No falling down concrete steps and landing knee first!! I have a replaced kneecap now, and I don't want to have to have a brand new knee to go with it. And-there is no reason I can't stay out of hospitals, providing I do everything I can to keep myself healthy. I need to get back to that optimistic mindset-the one where I refuse to give up, because I know I can do it. I just need to do the work-and I have become pretty lazy, I can tell you!!
And then there are those bingo wings. I have to mention those, because they are the scourge of women everywhere-right up there with fat thighs, hips and backside, muffin tops, bra fat, and, of course, the awful turkey neck!! Is this relevant? Of course it is.
When I first got the crutches I said to a couple of nurses (that was when they were still speaking to me) that at least I would be able to get rid of my bingo wings. They laughed and said that the muscles were the wrong ones. Er...well, yes and no. Can I explain? Well, I thought you would never ask.
Bingo wings are the fatty areas between the armpit and the elbow, and just about every woman I know has them. Some are so large that if someone raised both arms together, she would look like a huge bat. And imagine suddenly raising your arm, having a wing fly out and give some poor innocent bystander a black eye. Try explaining that to the paramedics (or police). Errant bingo wing causes facial damage...whatever. So we all cover up, wearing long sleeves to ensure this never happens-and because it looks terrible. I used to see women at the gym, doing tricep dips until their arms nearly dropped off-and when they were done, they still had those bingo wings. And probably something they ruptured, too.
Why, you ask, is this relevant? Duh?? Because I have found a cure,that's why. It isn't surgery (are there things like bingo wing lifts? Probably). Or hours of daily tricep exercises. Or special creams (rip off!!), or pounding or pummeling. The cure is... crutches. That is what I said: crutches. You read it first here, and you got it for free. How good is that??
I have been on crutches for three weeks, and my arms are developing biceps that are finally bigger than a sparrow's kneecaps...make that a sparrow's elbows, kneecaps are a sore point with me (literally!). But all the shlepping around with crutches, and trying to get it the way the physiotherapists told me (crutches down, then bad leg, then good leg, then crutches, etc), and I have noticed that my bingo wings are shrinking. They were never bat-sized, but they are shrinking. And that is due to the crutches, because I'm not doing anything else.
So there you are. Get some crutches-not the old type that sit in your armpit, but the ones with the plastic thingy (a technical term if there ever was one) that goes around the elbow, keeping the crutches from dropping. And walk. A lot. And lift yourself on the crutches. A lot. And say goodbye to bingo wings and long sleeves.
Let me know how it goes. When those wings are gone, you can take me to lunch. Huh. I should write a book, I would make millions.
And by the way: I'm back....
The good thing is that the pain level has decreased. I still have pain, but it isn't so excruciating that I sit and cry about it. It's bearable now-and when I do too much walking, or moving around, and the knee swells up, I just rest it and know that it will be fine-eventually.
With the good inevitably seems to come the bad: on Tuesday I saw my neurologist, Dr. Turner (aka Dr. Dimples). He was very late-but all NHS doctors seem to always be late!! We spoke about the knee thing (I am on crutches. We couldn't exactly avoid talking about it!), and the cancer, and he said that it has been a very bad-and stressful- year. No, really? He also said that I probably have made as much progress as I am going to make, given that it has been three years since the initial gentamicin poisoning. I asked him about the setbacks of the past few months-and he advised me to go back to the very first exercises, since my nystagmus has returned and my eyes are moving around of their own accord. He said to just keep doing as much as I can to try to return to where I was before disaster struck earlier in the year. And he will see me in twelve months, at which time he will have to discharge me from the clinic, since-he said-he can't keep me on the books indefinitely. He wants to see if I have made any progress in the next year.
I was so discouraged, I went home and went to bed early. I really didn't feel like talking to anyone, or going online-I know it's been over a week, but severe pain and sleep deprivation kept me from doing much-but this setback was really very painful.
So I thought about everything very seriously yesterday. I thought about the surgeries, the illnesses, the setbacks to my balance and vision-and I decided that it is possible that Dr. Dimples is mistaken. I return to everything I have read about neuroplasticity, new neural pathways, the fact that we just don't have enough information about the brain (yet) to make that kind of hard and fast judgment. So I refuse to quit. I have a year to prove Dimples wrong: I have a year to get back to that all important 80%-more, in fact, if I can do it. It just means that I need to stay healthy. No falling down concrete steps and landing knee first!! I have a replaced kneecap now, and I don't want to have to have a brand new knee to go with it. And-there is no reason I can't stay out of hospitals, providing I do everything I can to keep myself healthy. I need to get back to that optimistic mindset-the one where I refuse to give up, because I know I can do it. I just need to do the work-and I have become pretty lazy, I can tell you!!
And then there are those bingo wings. I have to mention those, because they are the scourge of women everywhere-right up there with fat thighs, hips and backside, muffin tops, bra fat, and, of course, the awful turkey neck!! Is this relevant? Of course it is.
When I first got the crutches I said to a couple of nurses (that was when they were still speaking to me) that at least I would be able to get rid of my bingo wings. They laughed and said that the muscles were the wrong ones. Er...well, yes and no. Can I explain? Well, I thought you would never ask.
Bingo wings are the fatty areas between the armpit and the elbow, and just about every woman I know has them. Some are so large that if someone raised both arms together, she would look like a huge bat. And imagine suddenly raising your arm, having a wing fly out and give some poor innocent bystander a black eye. Try explaining that to the paramedics (or police). Errant bingo wing causes facial damage...whatever. So we all cover up, wearing long sleeves to ensure this never happens-and because it looks terrible. I used to see women at the gym, doing tricep dips until their arms nearly dropped off-and when they were done, they still had those bingo wings. And probably something they ruptured, too.
Why, you ask, is this relevant? Duh?? Because I have found a cure,that's why. It isn't surgery (are there things like bingo wing lifts? Probably). Or hours of daily tricep exercises. Or special creams (rip off!!), or pounding or pummeling. The cure is... crutches. That is what I said: crutches. You read it first here, and you got it for free. How good is that??
I have been on crutches for three weeks, and my arms are developing biceps that are finally bigger than a sparrow's kneecaps...make that a sparrow's elbows, kneecaps are a sore point with me (literally!). But all the shlepping around with crutches, and trying to get it the way the physiotherapists told me (crutches down, then bad leg, then good leg, then crutches, etc), and I have noticed that my bingo wings are shrinking. They were never bat-sized, but they are shrinking. And that is due to the crutches, because I'm not doing anything else.
So there you are. Get some crutches-not the old type that sit in your armpit, but the ones with the plastic thingy (a technical term if there ever was one) that goes around the elbow, keeping the crutches from dropping. And walk. A lot. And lift yourself on the crutches. A lot. And say goodbye to bingo wings and long sleeves.
Let me know how it goes. When those wings are gone, you can take me to lunch. Huh. I should write a book, I would make millions.
And by the way: I'm back....
Tuesday, 3 September 2013
oxycodone: drug choice of champions (and me)
Very sorry if you thought I was dead-of course, I'm very glad I'm not dead, but the last two weeks since surgery I thought the pain was going to kill me off.
I went off to surgery two weeks ago (today)-and I just had a sneaky feeling that I wasn't going back to the Newman (private patients) ward. I just had that feeling that I was lied to, just to get me to surgery. And-I was right.
I ended up in Intensive Care for the night-nothing exciting, all surgical patients end up there, so their vital signs can be monitored. I was given oxycodone for the pain-intravenously-and that worked really well. I still felt pain, but I was too sleepy and too out of it to care!!
The next day I was told I was returning to the Angus MacKinnon ward-exactly where I didn't want to go, given the complaints I'd made about the ward, the nurses, the care..so I said no thank you. And the bed manager, Craig, was called in to smooth things over. After about four hours, he came back with an offer: if I would return to MacKinnon, the bathroom would be cleaned, signs put up-and the nurses would see every patient plus visitors to tell them not to use the room because it was reserved for someone who was highly contagious (I love that bit. Would you use a bathroom if that is what you were told? I wouldn't. But read on..).
The nurses didn't pay a blind bit of notice. And this time, they were overtly hostile. After all, I had complained-and named names. So I was told they wouldn't be adhering to this, and that if I wanted a private room I should have gone to a private hospital. I responded by saying that if I got any kind of infection, they would all be held accountable. And I relayed all this to Craig. Happy days.
One nurse offered me a commode (fancy name for bedpan) that I could have in the room; she said they would give me a bowl and I could have a wash that way. I asked if they were going to do this for seven days-I asked what century they were in-and I asked if they were planning on giving me a tent to go with the commode and the bowl-perhaps a camping stove, so I could just move out into the car park? They didn't find that funny, and I let them know I thought they were morons. Not a good way to spend seven days!!
When I got out-finally-on Wednesday night, the nursing sister accompanied the transport ambulance driver -and me- to the exit. I think she wanted to make certain I was really leaving. Nursing sister: that's like a head nurse, but without the pay, the ability, or the brains. Anyway, off I went.
So here I am, and did I put in a formal complaint with everyone of any significance? Come on, is the Pope Catholic? You bet I complained. I think I gave poor Craig an ulcer!
I've continued on the oxycodone since Wednesday-but it doesn't have much of an effect now. So I've been in bed since Wednesday, and I've been too sick and in too much pain to write-or eat-or write nasty emails to anyone!!
But hey, here I am, I'm back....and I'm staying back!! And I still have a lot of the mixed nuts Andy brought me. I can honestly say that I don't want to see another almond, or hazelnut, or brazil nut, or any kind of nut-until Christmas. 2016!
I went off to surgery two weeks ago (today)-and I just had a sneaky feeling that I wasn't going back to the Newman (private patients) ward. I just had that feeling that I was lied to, just to get me to surgery. And-I was right.
I ended up in Intensive Care for the night-nothing exciting, all surgical patients end up there, so their vital signs can be monitored. I was given oxycodone for the pain-intravenously-and that worked really well. I still felt pain, but I was too sleepy and too out of it to care!!
The next day I was told I was returning to the Angus MacKinnon ward-exactly where I didn't want to go, given the complaints I'd made about the ward, the nurses, the care..so I said no thank you. And the bed manager, Craig, was called in to smooth things over. After about four hours, he came back with an offer: if I would return to MacKinnon, the bathroom would be cleaned, signs put up-and the nurses would see every patient plus visitors to tell them not to use the room because it was reserved for someone who was highly contagious (I love that bit. Would you use a bathroom if that is what you were told? I wouldn't. But read on..).
The nurses didn't pay a blind bit of notice. And this time, they were overtly hostile. After all, I had complained-and named names. So I was told they wouldn't be adhering to this, and that if I wanted a private room I should have gone to a private hospital. I responded by saying that if I got any kind of infection, they would all be held accountable. And I relayed all this to Craig. Happy days.
One nurse offered me a commode (fancy name for bedpan) that I could have in the room; she said they would give me a bowl and I could have a wash that way. I asked if they were going to do this for seven days-I asked what century they were in-and I asked if they were planning on giving me a tent to go with the commode and the bowl-perhaps a camping stove, so I could just move out into the car park? They didn't find that funny, and I let them know I thought they were morons. Not a good way to spend seven days!!
When I got out-finally-on Wednesday night, the nursing sister accompanied the transport ambulance driver -and me- to the exit. I think she wanted to make certain I was really leaving. Nursing sister: that's like a head nurse, but without the pay, the ability, or the brains. Anyway, off I went.
So here I am, and did I put in a formal complaint with everyone of any significance? Come on, is the Pope Catholic? You bet I complained. I think I gave poor Craig an ulcer!
I've continued on the oxycodone since Wednesday-but it doesn't have much of an effect now. So I've been in bed since Wednesday, and I've been too sick and in too much pain to write-or eat-or write nasty emails to anyone!!
But hey, here I am, I'm back....and I'm staying back!! And I still have a lot of the mixed nuts Andy brought me. I can honestly say that I don't want to see another almond, or hazelnut, or brazil nut, or any kind of nut-until Christmas. 2016!
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