I think this task is going to be even harder than I had thought. Day +1 onwards is so very hazy for me that I have to rely on everybody else's version of events as well as trying to put it together with the little bits that I can remember from flitting out of consciousness.
With this in mind I have started putting together a timeline of everything that has happened from Facebook status updates and the likes and I will spend the next wee while reading back over it to get the chronology right in my head before trying to make any vaguely insightful comments about it. Don't worry, in doing so I'm not going to avoid the less insightful ones - if anything has to be worthwhile about this as an undertaking it has to be about the truth of it all and not just some intellectual posing exercise. As such I'll warn you all now that, just as happened at the time, all dignity will be going right out the window. You're going to learn more about me than you maybe thought you wanted to but I just don't see there being a purpose in doing this unless you get the bare (arsed) truth.
Now even looking back on my post about transplant day itself tells us something important. My recall of events is not perfect; far from it. I have been absolutely sure that it was getting towards midnight when I got taken down for the main operation but it turns out it was only about 8 o'clock. I have no idea why I was so far out with that but it was certainly through the night that the main part of the surgery was done. One thing I do remember is being woke up temporarily in the recovery room post-op and having severe stomach cramps. Three full bed pans later the docs all commented that they had never seen anything like it in their whole careers, but it seemed the antibiotics that they used during the operation had obviously been a bit much for me and my body decided to just evacuate everything. Three full pans is, by some distance, a new record apparently. This has always been a side effect of antibiotics for me, just not on this scale. I don't remember much for the next few days after that to be brutally honest so lets rely on other people for that, which I will add to later.
One thing I'll say at this point though is that truth is elusive. What Janine put in her updates is what she felt she could share with everyone on any given day, and sometimes that was more positive than was actually true. Not often, but sometimes it was just too hard to write some of that stuff down. I've done it myself when I took over writing the updates. I'll sometimes put the best foot forward and fairly often will, through particular omissions, make out that I am getting on better than is actually the case at a given point. I get a lot of comments from people that they admire my honesty but they really don't know the half of it just yet. I'm hopeful that looking through the retrospectoscope I'll be able to really say what happened as best as I can.
I do specifically remember 3 of the nurses who looked after me in that immediate time post-op. One big tall fella who just joked his way through the shift, another who was all business with me but was particularly careful with my mum (curiously always calling her mum I seem to recall) and another who took the time to just talk to me while cleaning me. I remember vividly that while I was being cleaned on one side she would stand at my head and talk to me about her preparations for doing the Great North Run. While she did this she would slowly circle her fingers on my arm so she wasn't just holding me stable but comforting me at the same time too.
There were other nurses looking after me as well but these were obviously in charge at times where I was completely sedated or I simply have no recollection of dealing with them but I could recognise that the family had well established relationships with them, which I found incredibly comforting. These folks aren't just there for the patient at hand after all.
For the first few days I remained mostly sedated and intubated. They did start taking chest drains out at this point though. I think I had four in and they took two out, which wasn't too bad at all. In fairness I was so wired to the moon on pain meds at this point that pain wasn't much of a problem in any regard but the removal of these drains was more about timing your breaths in and out than anything else.
Right, now I've started on this I will start doing it much more often as I have definitely found it rewarding but it has been exhausting today.
Speak soon my lovelies
Paul
