Alfie says …pills give me pills

I still feel rotten. On Thursday I gave everyone quite a cause for concern as my hemoglobin had dropped and they gave me my blood transfusion – which to be honest worked a treat as I went from a very pale colour to a bit more pinky although it did take me about 12 hours to change so again a bit more worry for everyone. And talking of worry – on my bad day – lets call it black Thursday I spent the day doing A’s and B’s. As I am so medically minded these days I use all the acronyms – its amazing how quickly you start using them – I think 6 years at med school is just so they can learn them all. Anyway – yes A is for Apnea. I’m connected to a separate monitor which measures my breathing. If I stop breathing for 15 seconds it goes off. It can also go off if I just do a bit a shallow breathing which as I am quite lazy I do rather a lot of. This combined with B’s though is not a good combo. B is for Brady – or bradicardia – which is a dip in the heart rate of below 60bpm ( I should be about 160) and when that happens people rush around and rub me and pick me up a bit and rub me a bit more until I decide to return to normal. The oxygen levels on my cpap are also raised to bring my sat levels up but then after I get back up to 90% sat I just keep on going and then hit 100 which is bad so they then put it down a bit and try to find the balance. But I am not balanced very well at the moment so I’m al bit all over the place. So why you ask – yes you do ask – have I gone all abit unstable at the moment. Well they have finally identified a bug I’ve got. Not a bug I’ve collected a put in a jar for show and tell – but a real nasty piece of work which they think has been growing around my long line. Its streptococcus – which may be spelt wrong so I wouldn’t bother cutting and pasting it into google - which can mean a whole variety of things but basically makes me feel awful which then in turn affects my breathing and my colour and my capacity to take on food and well the list goes on….

And that’s not the worst of it – I am so in the wars its untrue….Also this bug can also potentially give me meningitis which is a real pain in the butt – and speaking of pain in the butts the only real way to tell if it has spread to the CSF – central spinal fluid - is to do a lumbar puncture – which is where they roll me onto my side and then stick a big needle in my back below the spine but into a tiny bit that holds this fluid. Which sounds horrible. And yes it is. Doc says I’m not well enough to cope with one at the moment so I’m hoping while hes not here I get really well and the stats are brilliant so he then thinks I don’t need one.  But he seems to be slightly obsessed at the moment with giving it to me – he also wants me off my food as he thinks my stomach may have an infection as well. It don’t rain mamma it pours. He’s a real optimist this one! But ha – I have evaded his nil by mouth nonsense so far as I am all contradictory. Yes when he prods me in my stomach I get pretty irritable which is normally a sign that I have an infection but I’m still taking my milk fine and my aspirates (the stuff they pull out my stomach every few hours to check for goop – remember the green goop) are all clear. So he’s all confused bless him. So although he’s quite keen on putting my long line back in – sadist – this is what started all the problems in the first place – he can’t cos I’m not barfing up green goop – and may that continue is what I say.

So essentially I’m not well at all. But I’m not getting any worse. Touch wood, salute the magpie etc etc. But I’m not really getting any better. And in this world that’s actually quite good. But still, it’s not great is it.