I've had a very busy few weeks. I've had lots of visitors, pretty much exclusively old school friends funnily enough, some of whom I see fairly regularly and others where it's been years, so it's been absolutely marvellous catching up with wherever their lives have taken them. It's a delicate balancing act because the ones you see most often you can just have a casual chat about what the latest goings on are in my pursuit for a new life before lapsing into talking about whatever comes up, like you would in any normal conversation. With the ones you haven't seen for a lot longer though you have to go through the whole story stretching back almost three years and it can be quite a tedious process going over it all again but I've got the story down so I could tell it in less than ten minutes now and still have time for questions.
There's always a worry in my mind that people will be really taken aback by the nasal canula I have on permanently to feed me oxygen but nobody seems at all arsed by it. I sometimes fret that my nieces and nephews take it all so much in their stride because I don't want this to be the norm for them. I want their thoughts of their Uncle Paul to be of the funny one who comes back home at holiday times and who tells them wildly inappropriate stories about their parents and who showers them with gifts. I don't want them to be the ones who pretend that they need to go to the toilet every half hour just so they can check and see that Uncle Paul is ok upstairs in his room as I recently found out my 7 year old nephew Daniel does. I only found out because I asked his mum if he was ok because he was going to the toilet all the time and she let me in on what he was up to. Now does that not just make you want to burst? It absolutely breaks my heart that I cant go out and play with my two nephews as both Daniel and Ewan are at such an interesting age that I could have a whole load of fun with them, predominantly by acting like a child. I don't want their memories of me of being in bed for years with tubes to help me breathe.
Getting back to the point, visitors are great but even on the reducing dose of immunosuppressant drugs I'm on I don't have the strongest immune defences so I've spent the last couple of weeks coughing up some nasty looking green stuff, but thankfully it seems to be clearing now. It could have been any one of the visitors I had that were just carrying something that a normal immune system can deal with easily so they would be none the wiser. Anyway, it's better feeling a bit rough for a couple of weeks and getting visitors than just living a solitary existence and being totally infection free. I think if I was to be too strict with people then I would never get any visitors at all and I'm not keen on that as an idea. A single visitor can perk me up for days afterwards so I'll take as many as I can get.
On the medical side of things, after my last trip to Newcastle and the long wait for the positive results, I was to be sent for a contrast CT angiogram so they could see if my heart was in good enough shape for the surgery required for a transplant. This was just a precautionary check because my family's cardiac history isn't very good, but as I'm only 34 nothing was expected to show up, it was just a final hurdle to jump through.
Well I had it on monday and they had real trouble slowing my heart rate down to a level where a scan would give them useful information (my feeble lungs make my heart work overtime). I took dose after dose of beta blockers and eventually they got it low enough for the scan to take place. The first part they could report back to me immediately and that was to say that there is no plaque in my blood vessels or the heart to worry about but I won't get the full report back until it's looked at by the consultant radiographer. So, I may hear something when I go to the Beatson this coming monday but it's more likely that I'll hear from Newcastle as it was them who referred me for the scan so the results will be reported back to them.
Whenever they get in touch again with the results I've to go down and between the whole transplant team we'll decide what course of action for me is. They're satisfied I could cope with the surgery, the drug regime and the psychological aspects of it all, mostly because I've been through something similar before, so the only question now is do I really want to go down a path from which there is no turning back? At the moment I have some sort of life so is it worth risking that for the chance to get a shot at a new life that, for any number of reasons (like rejection), could fail and would almost certainly in that instance lead to my death?
Just as with the Bone Marrow Transplant all those years ago it seems a very easy choice for me to make.
I do have a life right now but I could have a more complete life if I get this chance so it's a very obvious yes from me.
After all, I've been promising all these visitors that I've had that I'll visit them when I'm well and I can't renege on that now can I?
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