This blog has been requested by my wonderful wife who is somehow holding a home together as well working. And still she talks about what big batch of great, healthy food she's going to do the kids so they're having something proper even though she's not there. Amazing. I honestly do not know how she does it, I would have crashed and burned weeks ago.
Anyhow apparently the length of time I have not blogged has led everyone to think I am back at home. This has obviously led to the inevitable repeated questions and identical conversations with the people who care about how I'm doing, etc. The kind of thing that was one of the driving forces behind starting this blog was making sure all you lovely people are informed all the time so Jo was not the single conduit of information, so I have failed you and her on that, for which I'm sorry, I'm sorry I'm so so sorry, there's no easy way to say that I'm sorry, I'm sorry.
Having said that I have not been sat here slacking. My last blog was done last Saturday night when I'd really pulled through feeling shitty and felt I had the energy to do a quick one. The next morning I wake up, feel ok, bit of tightness on my chest but nothing much. I take a walk down to the tea machine at the end of the corridor and by the time I get there (it isn't far) I feel really dizzy, out of breath and I am asked if I'm ok as I'm clinging onto the table the tea machine sits on. I say I feel dizzy and I'm popped in a wheelchair and told to get back into bed. So on the Sunday morning when Jo turns up, having left me the night before fine, I'm hooked up to an oxygen line and really struggling to breath. I feel like I've got about 50% lung capacity and I have to pant to just to get air. A physio pops in at some point and gives me some relaxing exercises which turn out to be most useful bit of advice I get all day. Then it all got very medicalised, I got oxygen all day, then transferred to an oxygen machine with a nebuliser attached which essentially passed some steam in with the sir supply so it didn't dry out the air passages. I then got moved to the Intermediate Dependency Unit, one below High Dependency Unit.
I'm not sure in hindsight if I needed to go there, they wanted me on this special oxygen machine which 'may feel like you've stuck your head out of a fast moving car'. I managed 20 minutes of what was supposed to be a 2 hour session and had to admit defeat, I've never felt anything like it. The power of the air meant if you relaxed your face you resembled Scooby doo on a windy day, or someone falling from an aeroplane. To take a breath felt like someone ramming air down your throat. But the main issue was breathing out, with my reduced lung function I just couldn't do it and I felt like I was being suffocated. They said 'don't worry quite a few people can't do it', I'd like to meet one that could.
Now there is a happy end. Obviously I am well enough to write a blog right now, that's good. But the up shot of all the recent tests which were spurred into action by quite an unhealthy spell has found that it is VERY likely all of these symptoms, from the grumbling temperatures to the high temperature more recently even including the chest infection, are due to Toxoplasmosis. Another one of these CMV type things that just sits there and you don't know you've got it until you have no defenses. Then, oh boy, you know you've got it. Can lead to lesions on the brain but it is, as with CMV, easily treatable and this just means the doctors are no longer guessing at what the problem is, they know, so they know precisely what antibiotic to give. This is a massive result. I still need to be in, and it could still need to be a few more weeks but I now know I am on the right stuff for what has caused all these issues. You can all have a drink on that tonight, I'm having hot lemon squash.
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