I like to tiptoe round the shit goin' down

Well when things do start happening they do seem to gather pace quite quickly. When last we spoke I was telling you that even though my kidneys had come through their stress test with flying colours my family's colourful cardiac history meant I had to go for an angiogram to make sure my heart would be strong enough to cope with the rigours of a lung transplant operation. This isn't expected to be an issue as I am, besides the obvious stuff, a relatively strong, young man.

So it was quite a surprise when I went for my monthly trip to the Beatson for immunoglobulins yesterday that I was told that I have an appointment in a fortnight (Mon 16th) at the Jubilee Hospital for the angiogram. I have to take some medication on the previous day and the morning of the scan itself to slow my heart rate right down so they can analyse it more accurately. My heart rate is particularly fast because my pathetic lungs need to work so hard to get oxygenated blood into the body, so the heart beats quickly to manage this. The two weeks will pass in no time and hopefully they'll be able to tell me on the day whether anything has shown up and that's it; the final hoop jumped through. Then I need to go back down to Newcastle for one more stay where we decide on how to proceed. 

There was all sorts of bureaucratic nonsense in the hospital yesterday with my immunoglobulins not arriving despite being ordered and someone having to go over to the sister hospital Gartnavel to get some from them and then them not letting the nurse get them till they actually had all the paperwork in hand as well as the electronic order. So I was sitting twiddling my thumbs for a bit but they got there eventually. We've found that I don't take any bad reaction to them over time so rather than slowly ramping up the rate of infusion we just put them on full speed from the start, which was just fine. That was good because it went so much faster and we were already running a bit late for my Uncle Stephen to pick up Stephen Jr's fiancé to take her to the dentist. We got back just in time thankfully, or I'd have felt terrible.

One thing the nurses told me yesterday was just how much each dose of immunoglobulins costs and it turns out I'm costing the NHS a fair old bit. It got me thinking about how much I've cost over the years simply keeping me alive. It's a good thing I plan to be a public servant the rest of my days so I can try and make it worth their while going to all this effort.