See everything I said in my last post; that and more. That is to say that using the nebuliser (with saline solution) and the flutter device to help clear my lungs of the nasty things that normal people just breathe in and out is continuing apace. When sitting at rest I can get my blood oxygen saturation level (sats) up to 95% now where before it was a pathetic 85%. To place this in some sort of context a normal person will be near 100% oxygen saturated in their blood. Once when living in Belfast I went to the respiratory clinic and they found that my sats were 95% and kept me in overnight because they didn't believe that someone could be walking about casually with sats that low. That's the sort of level you'd get with a patient with a chest infection of one sort or another so they wanted to check I was clear even though I felt totally fine. The fact is my lungs were slowly decreasing in function but doing it at such a slow rate that my body was acclimatising as it was happening.
So what does this increase actually mean? Well the first thing it does is make me look healthier. The more oxygenated your blood is in your veins the more red the blood is and if there are veins close to the surface you have more colour about your face. That, allied to remaining at a perfectly healthy 60kg means people keep commenting on how healthy I look, in spite of the facial furniture of the the oxygen tubes. I performed a little experiment to satisfy my curiosity and didn't use my PEG tube for overnight feeds for four weeks and actually gained a pound so I'm obviously doing well with meals. I'll keep the PEG tube though for those times when I'm completely off food, which happens as soon as I feel even slightly unwell.
Let's place this in context though. These sats are while I'm sitting about doing nothing. As soon as I try to do anything even mildly exerting the fact that only 16% of my lungs are fully functioning kicks in and my sats plummet as I quickly go into oxygen debt. So while my newly improved oxygen level has allowed me to go out more often I do still feel quite weak at times.
On that note it being Christmas time my old school friends and I went out last week for our annual Christmas meal for the 17th year running. We've done it every year since we left school and normally we wait until the 23rd (my birthday) as that allows more people who live away from home to get back for it but it just wasn't suitable this time so on Saturday the 1st we went out for a bit of a meal and drinks. I also had friends up visiting from my time doing my PGCE in Liverpool up so they came along for dinner as well. I sat with them trying to catch up on everything that's going on. One of them was also a friend from my time in Belfast, and indeed put the idea of going to Liverpool to do the PGCE in my head so I've known her for a good few years now. She got married earlier in the year to one of the other guys from the course who was also up and it was gutting that I couldn't go back over the water for their wedding but they got to tell me all about it. The third visitor was one of my best pals from the course so it was really great to catch up with them all.
I'm going out with the school guys again just after Christmas for drinks which should be great if I'm up to it. I've been so well, relatively speaking, for so long now that I'm becoming quite comfortable in the wait for lungs. No longer am I fretting about how soon it'll be because I seem to be relatively stable so the people in charge can wait for the best possible match they can find.
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