Day 13 Plans of Escape

After my day of seeming confinement yesterday, today began well and I had had 6-7 hours of, albeit broken sleep overnight and this makes all the difference. The nurse I had was called Becky, she had run the whole team of night nurses for 9 months for the hospital and is a level 6, I am getting better at understanding the hierarchy of the nurses and she is highly qualified, I really do take my hats off to all my nurses they have been amazing. Obviously my bossiness is going to get up the back of some!

Anyway back to sleep, I awoke refreshed ready for the and I bounced out of bed to be the first to the bathroom and had a wash and one kind nurse washed my hair so that makes an immediate difference to the day. I then walked round the block here at doctors rounds, having been told to exercise I might as well be seen. That is another thing I did not realise that a consultant does every ward round with a trail of junior doctors, it is different in the children’s wards I had been in, apart from some meetings it is usually 2 or 3, here there are 7 or 8.

I have had three medical visits today. The first from The Pain Team, I kid you not, I am finally on a cocktail of drugs which leaves me pain free without having to ask for it in pain. They have taken away straight morphine and added gabberpentine and oxycodone. It is no problem for me to leave the dreams of morphia which for me have been really odd.

Second visit from nutritionists who explained exactly what I have been given and how it works. This technology, she said, was introduced 5 years ago. As I am not eating and therefore not absorbing, it is a worry leaving me without food. Currently the most important thing is to give me the nutrition I need to heal. This goes into my blood stream leaving my digestive system time to rest and get well and close up the fistula. The third visit was the doctors who confirmed this. I will be in hospital for at least two weeks for this to happen and then they will test to see if it is all working. This will be measured from the output of my fistula ideally zero as it heals. And this might take up to 2 months, but could be quicker. There seems to be a 70% success rate and this cheers me. I could be trained to use the machines, the intravenous lines and the food at home. I could even eat, it would not reach the intestines which need nutrition. Here’s to being in the 70%.

I have loved having visitors, it is the high light of the day, not todays highlight, however, Rowena got offered a place at Edinburgh University to read Fine Art. I am so happy and proud of her. So she will be off to Scotland what ever happens next week in Glasgow.

One of my visitors was Anne Davidson and she is the Consultant that we saw with Rowena in the Alex Children’s Hospital. Anne thinks it would be a splendid idea for me to have coffee with her and is going to devise a drip stand escape route to the outside and to have coffee or in my case water – I can’t wait, a challenge I will get into training for by doing laps of the ward.

If you want to visit and please do, I am keeping a list, it would be a shame if you park your car in Brighton as many of us know who had kids in Brighton College this area is shocking and find that I already have two visitors. Although one of, the ladies regularly has 7 men round her! She is a Matriarch!

Just to reiterate I am at the Royal Sussex County Hospital known locally as the County. In the millennium building level 9, A West, bay 7 bed 4.

2018 will be a year that I remember for the wrong reasons it is week 9 and I have spent nearly 3 in bed at home with flu and now two weeks and counting in hospital.