So if you go back a month or two you may recall that I have been getting some help from respiratory physiotherapists. They gave me a nebuliser and saline solution to take twice daily as well as a little device called a flutter, which you blow into and bounce a metal ball bearing, causes your airways to open up a bit. I don't know whether it's one or both of these two additions to my daily regime that has led to an improvement in my breathing but there has definitely been one.
I had the respiratory nurses out for their half yearly check that I'm coping ok at home a few days ago and when they placed the probe on my finger to measure my oxygen saturation level they got a figure of 92%. Compare this to just a month or so ago when my normal figure was 85%. It's little wonder I've been feeling so much better and able to do so much more just from having so much more oxygen coursing through my veins. I've even managed a few trips out to take advantage of it. A few weeks back I went out to meet my mate Marty who was over from Belfast for a drink. If you had told me months ago that I would be drinking Jaeger-bombs at any point in my future I would have laughed in your face but there I was happily throwing it back with the rest of them. Now, with the added weight and the extra colour about me from the increased oxygen sats it quickly became apparent that even in a wheelchair and with tubes going into my nose I was probably the healthiest looking person in the pub outwith the staff. Marty and I always favoured the perhaps less salubrious of drinking establishments in my two years in Belfast and the same held true over here. It was a REAL pub. I thoroughly enjoyed myself doing something a little bit wrong for once and, prompted by others, even got involved in a bit of a sing-song. A slightly tipsy, wheezy sing-song admittedly but a sing-song nonetheless. It may have been the drink talking but three separate men that night referred to me as a 'handsome wee bastard'. I will genuinely take compliments like that anywhere I can get them.
And so it comes up to the Christmas festivities. It's good to know that I'll probably be able to manage to go out to all the things we usually organise around my birthday and Christmas. There's usually a big meal with all the guys I went to school with and a decent pub session in between Christmas itself and New Year that gets a decent turnout from everyone who lives away from home. I'm even getting a visit from some of my friends from my time doing teacher training in Liverpool. I love this time of year.
