To HELL and Back – Part 2 – and BACK!

By Saturday morning I had improved, that I was no longer infective, and was moved into a shared room in the respiratory ward. Mind you at one point of pumping fluid into me to clean out my kidneys, I did feel like a large over blown water balloon. This caused my back and sides to become painful and I couldn’t sit up. Thankfully the doctor stopped the fluids. When I was in a room on my own I was able to rest. In a shared room, in a ward – forget it! It’s hard to close your eyes and shutdown when people are buzzing for the nurse; getting my temperature and blood pressure taken, and injecting antibiotics into my wrist at all hours. I knew every hour of a 24 hour day.

One nurse had this habit of waking you up in the middle of the night with her face right in front of you. That certainly snapped you out of a dream state. Don’t worry, when you think it couldn’t happened again, she did it again at 6am; just to make sure the brain got that she is real and not a dream gone wrong.

I was still getting the stomach pain. I now was getting wind pain as the antibiotics were causing me to be constipated. All the food just sat in the bowels and fermented releasing gas. I had to get my bowels moving. As a result I had my first suppository. Well I can tick that off my bucket list! Hospital food doesn’t have that much roughage. My wonderful wife brought some organic muesli, from Kamilla Johns Real Food online – and that did the trick. Who ever thought counting the number of proper bowel movements in a day was a joyous exercise. The pain subsided almost immediately. I could sleep properly without the need of strong painkillers. Happy days!

I finally was able to have a shower. Mind you it took me about 20 minutes as I had to remove all the ECG contacts all over my body and sticky tapes and so on. I was starting to feel more alive.

Sunday morning showed further improvement, and you guessed it out, I was moved again. The respiratory ward was very popular, so I was off to the oncology ward. I was still on I.V. antibiotics until Monday morning where I was placed on oral antibiotics. About 9am the senior registrar checked the sound of my lungs and that they sounded clear. You are free to go! At about 11.30am I was transferred to the discharge lounge. I had to wait for my discharge papers and medications and final instructions from the registrar. I left the hospital about 1.30pm.

Home at last! Shave, shower, sleep. Next day shower, sun, checked in on work (yes, slap on the wrist), home, sleep. Next day – slept in finally! Rest of the week off from work.

I want to thank Prince of Wales Hospital staff for saving my life. Thank you to the nurses at Seymour Dental for taking care of everything, while I was out of action. Thank you to Dr’s Jason Watson, Dilara Yashin and Eleni Nanitsos (locum) for their professional care of the patients. I really appreciated my friends and family who visited me in hospital. My dad saw me at my worst pain. I know he couldn’t help, but the pain was less consuming knowing that he was there to talk to. Finally, and most importantly to Eva my wife, who had to run around caring for the children, doing errands for work, and checking in on me, an enormous Thank You!

A follow up appointment, with the Professor and registrar at 5 weeks, revealed how much infection I had. My chest X-rays taken when I was admitted showed a dense white cloud of infection covering the upper half of my right lung. The latest chest x-rays showed a normal clear lung without any sign of the past problems. Back to normal, but a lesson learnt, I’m not Superman.

Next week: Item Numbers – Emergencies– 911-916