Welcome back!
After a few very hairy moments and 4 rocky weeks, I am pleased and relieved to announce that for the time being (well, right now), I am feeling a bit better. This is also my first Friday night dinner at home in 4 weeks as the last month has either been spent in A&E or the Acute Kidney Ward. So, YAY for the weekend, and yay for freedom and YAAAAAAAAAAY for no more hospital meals. Joking aside for one momento, because this is the part where I thank the Royal Free Hospital and all their amazing staff for helping me back on the long, winding road to a sort-of recovery.
For a few days during this hospital stay, I was actually terrified for my own life. I mean, I've been through shit; I've been through some real awful experiences, but this time takes the biscuit (a sugar free biscuit. Promise). I genuinely thought I wasn't going to be leaving the hospital alive. I was scared. Really scared. Scared so much that I was crying like a baby, shouting at the doctors to do something all the while trying to concentrate on Jeremy Kyle, just to see if the distraction of watching some 'love-rat' helped my symptoms. It did not.
As I write this, I can all hear you ask So what happened this time? Why was this time so much worse from all the other times? Worse than when you had Salmonella, worse than the liver op? Even worse than Pneumonia and the lung op? Yes, yes, yes- worse than all of them bung together.
It all began on a Sunday with a pretty average stomach bug. Well, 'average' for anyone else as 'average' never applies to me. I should have taken the Monday off work as I was feeling lousy with a capital 'L', but as I had promised to lead Summer Camp, how could I let forty 2.5 year olds down? (I also let camp down 2 days before it started last summer as I managed to get Salmonella). My health was going going to let me down and my ego was way too big to cancel for an average tummy bug. Anyway, I discovered that although I felt awful in the mornings, the fact I was so busy, meant that I didn't have to think about headaches and tummy aches while toileting one three year old; feeding another two 2 year olds carrying a handful of 3 year olds while pumping up the bouncy castle. To cut a long story short, camp was meant to be 2 weeks and I managed 4 days. Just. By Friday morning I had been so sick, I knew there was only one place for me- The A&E department at the RFH. Because I had become so dehydrated, all my sodium, biochemistry and Blood levels were majorly out of whack. I got rushed into Resus with acidic blood and was put into some special unit where 'really sick people go'. I don't remember the first 3 days of being in hospital at all. It took the wonderfully handsome Dr Mark to pay me a ward visit before I started to feel a little better...
Basically, because my kidneys can't recover from even the simplest upset, whether thats a cold or stomach bug, I get overly dehydrated way too easily for my liking. My kidneys can no longer filter out the good stuff from the bad, so I end up with lots of toxins flowing around my body, making me nauseas and sick a lot of the time. Not only that, due to either the protein in my blood or the pressure from being so sick, my whole face swelled up- so not only did I look like a puffy Gnome, I also couldn't see out of my right eye. The worrying bit was that each doctor had their own reason for my swelling/ symptoms and no-one seemed convinced about what was going on. Antibiotics were started and stopped, blood tests were being taken every hour, monitors were bleeping every minute and to be honest, the fact that even the smell of food was making me vomit, meant something was very wrong. I NEVER don't want food!
This continued for a few days. I then started to make a lot of progress before once again, I was back to how I'd been when I first arrived at hospital. I went backwards. This never happens to me. This is when I really started to freak out. This was also the moment when the lead consultant decided to mention the dreaded D word. Dialysis. If I didn't feel bad enough before, this certainly didn't help. There he is, this doctor I'd never met telling me to 'man up' when he couldn't handle me crying. This doctor, couldn't handle an emotional, unwell patient because I was crying. I was beyond scared. He sort of did me a favour as I got moved to his female colleague; a human that was actually comforting, reassuring and COULD handle my tears. The Renal team also decided to officially Activate me on to the live transplant list as of now. Before this hospital stay, the doctors wanted to wait until I had 3 sufficiently low enough result to activate me- well, I surpassed their expectations faster than thought/ planned...
As it turns out, out of my 4 main doctors, 2 of them are pro starting Dialysis sooner rather than later and 2 have suggested that I wait a little bit. I'm all for waiting as long as humanly possible. If you've ever seen a Dialysis machine, they look pretty daunting. Something I could quite do without to be honest.
I still don't have all the knowledge about the D******S, although I know there are 2 types. One you can do at home and the other requires you to attend the hospital several times a week for 3-5 hour sessions each time. Not only does it interrupt your week, you sit there freezing fucking cold apparently, because as the machine filters your blood, it returns it all clean and filtered, but a degree cooler than before it was taken. Not sounding too great, is it? However, there are some pros to Dialysis. 1. I may feel better/ stronger as I won't get so ill over such minor issues- like a cold. My kidneys would hopefully be more able to rectify themselves, hopefully avoiding these hospital emergencies. 2. I have to be as fit and healthy as I can to receive the transplant-as my kind doctor told me if you turn up to hospital looking like you're looking for the kidney, they'll send you home. You look crap! (Genuinely the words from the Professor) You need the dialysis to get you to your end goal. Good advice really. I have to learn to re-frame; to remember that the Dialysis is just a stop gap to get me to where I want to be. Luckily for me, its not my only/ final solution. Dialysis is also an unknown; and anything unknown is always a scary prospect.
So thats the grim, medical jargon out the way. In other news, I have about 10 new Instagram followers; Facebook keeps reporting to me that friends are responding to my posts (thanks Facebook for the info) and I had my first newspaper article printed for the Barnet Times on organ donation. So, now I'm on my way to stardom (I got lead story on page 2 of the paper), why stop there? I'm dreaming of bigger, better and brighter things...like the Jeremy Kyle show; the couch with Phil and Holly, and maybe one day after the transplant when I can get travel insurance again, I could go on I'm a Transplant Survivor, Get me Outta Here!
