Tuesday, 14 June 2011

I wanna speak louder than ritalin

I had a wee adventure yesterday. I made the mistake of not keeping a close enough eye on the level within the liquid oxygen cylinder and it was completely empty so I had to make my monthly trip to see the haematologists at the Beatson without any facial furniture to help me breathe. Curiously I didn't actually feel bad but when they checked my blood oxygen saturation level it was 84%, a good 15 fewer than a normal person and ten lower than I can usually manage when actually using oxygen.

It was strange to feel that my body has got so used to being oxygen deprived that I can't notice when it's really quite badly starved of the stuff. I got the mask on to bring it back up to acceptable levels as soon as I could though, and it turns out that it actually made me feel much better.

All I can really garner from this is that I can go for periods without oxygen but that I have no clue as to when I'm at a dangerously low level. I will therefore never be letting the cylinder run dry ever, ever again.

So two weeks from now I'll be getting poked and prodded to within an inch of my life by a team of doctors and nurses. I don't actually know what I'm walking into to be honest. I don't know what type of tests they've got planned for me and nor do I want to know because that is a surefire path to insomnia and thinking too much about it all. At the moment I'm really content because there's visible progress and that's all I need for now.

Oh aye, other things to tell you. My immunosuppression is being slowly stopped to see how my body copes without it ie will it start attacking itself again, and my weight is all of a sudden 57.2 kg. I've gone up 3 kg in a month. I am absolutely delighted that I'm retaining some weight, although the number of comments from people saying that I look healthy when the word they are really looking for is chubby is amusing me greatly.

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