Lack of blogs, again, sorry.
I caught a rather nasty pneumonia and ended up in ICU. I can tell you it wasn't fun. It all seemed to happen so quickly, I'd called clinic on the Friday as after having a Bronchoscopy on the Thursday I wasn't feeling 100% and felt like I maybe needed antibiotics. My consultant who had only seen me the previous day when I was feeling ok said he was happy for me to wait until Tuesday's clinic where I could have blood taken to see if I really did need them. And I was in agreement with that (if I hadn't I'd have just pestered my GP for some), it seemed the sensible thing to do. On the Saturday I was feeling ok but in the evening felt 'shivery' and threw up, checked my temperature which was fine, took a couple of paracetamol anyway and went to bed. Early Sunday morning I woke myself up by what can only be described as 'grunting' in my sleep, it was actually mucus rattling around in my lung. With my diaphragm as it is that's not uncommon for me but then I got up to walk to the bathroom. Once back I sat clutching my knees trying to catch my breath on the edge of my bed and decided out of interest I'd check my oxygen levels. Sure enough they'd dropped to just 80% but were slowly coming back up as I was catching my breath. Maybe that should have set the alarm bells ringing but it didn't, it shot to the back of my mind as 'one of those things to tell the Drs at clinic next week'. As the day went on activities were becoming more difficult and the oxygen concentrators in the utility room had to be switched back on. I could hear my heart pounding in my ears and my oxygen levels were in the low 80s, I went for a nap and again started shivering, my temperature had jumped up to 38.4c (102f). At that point I grabbed my transplant handbook and had a look at what acceptable temperatures were, that wasn't one of them. So mum phoned the ward and I grabbed a bag. The rest is a blur of IV and blood gas stabs, CPAP and ICU. The same ICU room I was in post transplant. If I'm honest it didn't worry me all that much, sure it was bad, the infection knocked my lungs for six, I was out of breath but I've had worse, things have been worse and I think that's what helped me keep my calm through it.
I'm home now, slowly recovering, its taking time, I can tell the pneumonia was a big one put it that way. We aren't yet sure if the infection has caused any long term damage but I'll deal with that when we do know.
On a lighter note it was my dad's birthday this week and we got away to Warwick for the night so I'm going to leave you with a picture that was taken of me whilst there as I've noticed there's not all that many of me post transplant yet!
