Fully prepared

Just spent two days in hospital getting prepared for the transplant. 

I had a day of tests on Monday: nuclear medicine for kidney and heart and a lung function test. The nuclear medicine tests involved lots of waiting around, I was injected with a radioactive isotope at 10:30 then bloods were taken every hour to check how well the kidneys are removing things from the blood stream. The heart test had me injected with more radioactive stuff and then laid on a table being scanned for about 15 minutes. I promptly nodded off, which I have also done during MRI scans too. It must be something about diagnostic screening I find somewhat relaxing.

In between blood tests I got talking to a lady who had been in for 4 weeks already. She described problems such as fractured verterbrae plus her legs were swollen due to some issue with lymph nodes making it hard for her to walk, and the medication she was on wasn't working. So the doctors were trying to find out what was going on. She was reasonably up beat about all this, but was furious that she had been wheeled to nuclear medicine and no one had told her she would be there for most of the day and because of this she'd left her cigarettes in her room. All she wanted was to smoke and she'd been told to wait to see a nurse; she whispered conspiratorily to me 'they don't know me: I'd crawl out of here if I had to to get my fags'. She went on to tell me that her mum, who suffered with some other horrible sounding disease, has to have oxygen tanks and tubes up her nose. But 'I get her to turn the oxygen off when I'm round there so I can have a fag...she has one too!'. This conversation left me with mixed feelings, partly I thought I should be happy with my lot, I'm ill but not that ill. But then I thought this lady must have been 50, so her mum must have been around 70. Two people with a blatant disregard for their health who have had longer on this planet than I'll probably get. Where's the justice?

I was cheered up by the lung function test which had me doing various things with my lips and teeth round a plastic tube. This in itself wasn't funny but the consultant behaved like an over zealous drill sergeant and when I had to blow out as hard as possible she was there shouting 'come on, more, more, you've still got a bit more, harder, harder!' until it hurt. And the same when I had to breath in. This went on for about  45 minutes of tests. On the plus side I found out my lungs are either within or above the normal range. I won't find out the results of the nuclear medicine tests for a few days.

Yesterday I had the central line fitted...



The procedure took around 45 minutes and was done under a local anaesthetic. I was asked before whether I wanted to be sedated to which I said no, sedation meant they would keep me in for longer. When in the theatre before the operation, one of the nurses (who I could only see upside down peering over me) told me to make sure I kept breathing as some of it would be a bit uncomfortable. Another nurse from somewhere else in the room said 'no sedation?', 'no, no sedation', 'oh you are brave'. At which point I started to panic: 'I'm not brave I just clearly don't fully understand what you're about to do...should I be sedated?'. 'No you'll be fine'. And she was right. At one point I had this quite uncomfortable feeling in my chest and I winced a little. The nurse asked if I was ok and I said yes but it did feel a bit weird. The surgeon then told me 'you currently have a line going into your heart so that would explain that'. Then it was done, and I went home within 30 minutes of coming out of theatre.

So I'm ready and raring to go. I'm not going to cut my hair off before going in I've decided to wait for it to start properly falling out and just enjoy my last couple of weeks needing to style it. It will give me something to do in hospital anyway.