More than just a bag lady

After everything that’s happened over the last 5 weeks not many days have been good days but today was. I will write a blog post about everything that happened but that’s for another day!  Today I went to pick up my new motability car and got to breathe in that new car smell. I am now the proud lease holder of this lovely Volvo XC40.  To be honest, part of me wasn’t sure whether to write a blog post about getting the new car with everything that’s been going on with the disability benefit reforms. There’s been so much written about motability cars on social media but a lot of it is misinformation and hate and that made me nervous to write this post. But I figured that most people reading it are friends and family and understand my need for the car. But for those that don’t let me explain a bit about how the motability scheme works.  I am lucky enough (or unlucky enough depending on how you look at it) to claim PIP- personal independence payment. This benefit is designed t...

This morning I saw my consultant on the ward round. I was excited to find out the plan to get me home later this week but it looks like the plan is a little bit different to what I thought… The gastro consultant had spoken to the microbiology consultant who said I need two weeks of antibiotics from the first date I had them. Depending on which antibiotic we are counting from (as I’m currently on three different types) that takes me up to either the 18th or 19th December. So far this was what I was expecting and so in my head I was thinking that I would probably be home for the weekend, just in time for the annual tradition of Christmas bowling with Bestie and her kids on Saturday 21st December.  But then he told me that we need to leave it 24-48 hours with no antibiotics and then do another blood culture from my Hickman line. After taking the blood culture we then need to wait 2 days (minimum) to make sure no bugs grow on the culture and only when they are satisfied that the line i...

Most people celebrate their birthdays with a nice meal out, a trip to the cinema or even with a few cheeky vimtos in the pub. What did I do to celebrate? I had a little trip up to the hospital.  The night before my birthday as I was connecting my feed I noticed that there was what could best be described as green gunk coming out around my Hickman line. Safe to say there should not be snot like stuff dripping down my line so I knew that I would need to get it checked out.  With pain all around my line and a full diary over the coming weeks I wanted to get it looked at asap as I simply did not have time to be ill or God forbid, have a stay in hospital, so I rang the specialist nurses first thing Monday morning and had an appointment to be seen later that day.  I went up to the hospital, had swabs taken of the gunk around my line and to be on the safe side the nurse even did blood tests to check for any infections in my line. While I was there I didn’t say anything about it ...

Over the last few years when I was stuck in hospital for long periods of time Hubby and I would talk about what we would do if I ever got ‘better’. During some of those times when I was so, so poorly the idea of just being at home for more than a few weeks at a time seemed like a far fetched dream. But I’m currently living that dream! And obviously I know I will never ‘get better’ but for these purposes ‘getting better’ meant being well enough to be at home, not in pain 24/7 and not in bed all day, every day. Not too much to ask now is it??  So in our talks, once I was at home and was well enough to do the real basic things like watch Big Fella play football, Big Girl play netball, go to Tesco, play with the dog, go to the cinema etc one thing kept cropping up. We would love to have a motor home and tour round the country. We talked about the places we would like to visit, how much Buddy the dog would love it and how it would give us a chance to reconnect with each other.  But...

  Today marks two important milestones: firstly my Hickman line is 1 year old and I have managed to stay out of hospital for a year too! I think this is the first Hickman line I’ve had that has made it to its first birthday, so this is quite a big deal. Most people have their lines in for years and years with no problems but in the past mine have blocked, split or become infected causing me to rack up a grand total of 17 lines in 10 years. But maybe my luck is changing… And the fact I’ve been at home without any inpatient hospital stays for a whole year is a milestone I didn’t think I would see.  2019-2023 was a particularly difficult four years where on average I spent more time in hospital than I did at home. And even when I was at home I was so ill I couldn’t get out of bed. There were some times during that period when I didn’t think I would live to see another Christmas because I was so, so unwell and I couldn’t see how I would ever recover. It was a long, hard slog and t...

It’s been a while since I wrote a post. Not because I’ve been poorly and in hospital but because I’ve been well and living life! Don’t get me wrong, I haven’t magically been cured and it’s not all sunshine and roses but things are probably the best they’ve been in years. I’ve managed to stay out of hospital (other than for appointments) for over 9 months now which at one point seemed like an impossible dream. I’m even daring to wonder if I will make it to the magical one year mark but it feels like I will jinx myself if I think about it let alone talk about it!  So what have I been doing? I’ve done what most people would consider the boring, everyday stuff that I so desperately wanted to do when I was an inpatient. I’ve been to the shops, sorted out some life admin at home, planted some flowers in the garden and planned a summer holiday. I’ve watched Big Fella play football, went to a gig with Big Girl and to the cinema with Hubby. I’ve sat down to family meals, had breakfast in We...