This Is Not A
BLOG!
Date: 24/12/24
Dye, Yer Bastard! Dye!
The Day had come.
The Day which would sort my most major problem out one way or the other. The Day that the Transcutaneous Pulmonic Valve Implantation (TPVI) would finally take place.
Actually, the day before The Day had arrived. Because Liverpool Heart & Chest Hosptial (LHCH) like to do 'procedures' like mine first thing in the morning, I was having to travel to Broad Green on the Monday afternoon so that the 'procedure' could take place on the Tuesday morning.
My niece being unavailable to take me due to her own unavoidable commitments elsewhere, I was going to have to make my own way. So I duly packed everything I thought I was going to need for a hospital stay of up to four days, wished the house goodbye and set off on the 14 bus shortly before 1050. Apart from a short delay at Wrexham, the trains were running well, the essential escalator at Lime Street had been re-instated (see my previous post on the effects of it being out of commission), and I disembarked at Broad Green station shortly before 1400. The long, slow drag along the various Thomases followed, and I hove to at the reception of Birch Ward in good time. I was shown to my bed - no.8 in the next room to the one I had been in last time - and settled in.
(A note at this point: whether it was because I had gone through all this before or whether it was due to my general state of mind, my recall of much of what happened (or was to happen) is less sharp and less detailed than I might have expected it to be even in its most salient points. I can only give you the most significant events in this telling.)
That some of the nurses remembered me from last time was quite clear (although such a fact may be open to more than one interpretation), and this helped smooth the remainder of the day. I was, of course, 'nil-by-mouth' after midnight, but I had finally managed to eat the lunch that I had taken with me (having not had a chance to eat it previously due to the lack of a suitable break in my journey) around early evening.
So I went to bed looking forward eagerly to the morrow. Let it be known that I was not in the least bit anxious about what was to come. If everything was a success, then 'mission accomplished'. If anything went wrong, then I was to be in the hands of people best fitted to work around it. And if things went seriously pyrus-like, then I would never know about it anyway, so why worry?
Tuesday dawned and I was ready. Having once again donned the gown and knickers, I lay calmly on my bed and allowed myself to be trundled through the chilly corridors towards the Catheterisation Suite. First stop, however, was the Recovery Room, which was scarcely any less cold (possibly as a staging post, temperature-wise, for where one would be heading if one didn't recover).
After about twenty minutes, it was off into the Suite itself, at which point my recollections all but cease. I can be sure that a canula was involved - how else could they administer the anaesthetic? - but beyond that is now a complete blank to me. I don't even remember what the place looked like. I just - as the song says - closed my eyes and drifted away.
I don't remember coming back either, except having the impression - once back on the ward, the journey to which is a total blank as well - that I had been in there for a lot longer than expected.
Once back on the ward and forced to lie flat for the obligatory three hours, I'm sure that I would have texted my niece and sister-in-law, yet I have no record on my phone of having done that either. I may have been visited by one of the surgeons - possibly Dr Ashrafi, who did me last time, possibly Dr Jivanji who carried out the latest 'procedure' - but I'm not clear even on that score.
These lacunae in my recall trouble me.
That I had obviously come through satisfactorily was apparent, however, so that was something, and I whiled away my enforced horizontal state by listening to the extra-long show which DJ Todd had put together for us aficionados of Real Synthentic Audio.
So far, so good therefore.
Except that it became apparent within a day or so that all was not well. By Wednesday afternoon, it was made known to me that there were concerns about my kidney function. Now, said organs were not in the best condition to start with, but it seems that the contrast dye they used to guide them during the 'procedure' had had a serious effect on them. This is a known aspect of using the dye, but it isn't possible to predict how severe the extent of said aspect is going to be beforehand. This all led to my being put on a fluid drip and a catheter. This latter was a particularly unpleasant experience (apparently, some guys get off on that sort of thing, but the world is forever full of weirdos and it would be a dull world if we were all the same), and the addition of a heart monitor along with all of its stickers and its tentacular cables did not add to the jollity of my mood.
What also knocked me flat again (I had been allowed to sit up again by this point) was a complete failure of appetite accompanied by retching. This was the cue for my being put on an anti-biotic IV and one of those horrible clip-on oxygen dispensers. The surgeon seemed to think that I had 'turned the corner' by this point, although it felt to me like the corner was hiding something hideously all-devouring around it. The upshot was that I would not be going home for some considerable time, which was a depressing prospect.
Attempts to amuse or console myself by reading totally failed, and the two books I had taken with me remained unscanned because I simply didn't have the concentration necessary to read them. I was confined to taking the fullest possible advantage of the hospital's free wi-fi to try to keep up with what was going on in the world. This ward - unlike the one I had been on back in August - had that modern-day curse of a television set. One, moreover, which seemed permanently tuned to Sky News. So while I was suffering internally, I had in the background the persistent low burble of the over-remunerated presenters bringing us the same stories hour after hour.
My state of consciousness was so warped by this time that I started hearing the words of the reporters forming strange phrases in my head. Strange to the point of the surreal, in fact. I don't remember many of them now, except on one occasion I swear that one of the voices said, "Keir Starmer will know that he has his penis nailed to the floor". Well, it would have been the first time I would have found him remotely interesting.
I didn't make much contact or conversation with my ward-mates. Some of them had been there for some time awaiting their own appointment with scalpel or catheter and were clearly familiar with one another. I was in no mood - and in no condition - to join in, and so I felt quite isolated.
And so it went on, with seemingly endless blood-taking, piss-taking and general prodding. By the Saturday, my appetite had improved somewhat, but the fact of being bound to my bed meant that getting out of it was a real struggle, despite the reassurances from the flotillas of consultants and surgeons who called on me every day. In addition to which, I was having to live with heavy bruising around the puncture points, a brown-purple mass which extended right across my crotch onto my right hip. This didn't cause any pain, or even discomfort, but the area did cause a sharp stab whenever I tried to move.
By the middle of my second week, my appetite had returned to sufficient a degree that I could actually enjoy my meals and finish most of them. As before, the food there was very good, and I came particularly to look forward to my lunchtime bowls of soup.
Then finally, on the Wednesday I was unplugged from everything - one canula (one other being left in, for reasons I'll come to in a moment), the oxygen mask and - hurrah! - the catheter (although I still had to piss into one of those bottles made out of recycled egg cartons so that they could measure 'input' and 'output'; 'fluid balance' they called it). The second canula - one of a special kind in that it goes deeper into the vein - was left in to enable further blood samples to be taken, as I had run out of veins anywhere near the surface of my arms, so many times had they gone to those particular wells, and a right mess was being made of both those limbs in trying to do so.
Finally liberated from my bondage, I was better able to interact with my fellow sufferers and - with some difficulty and trepidation, having been bed-bound for so long - start to walk (or rather, shuffle) about the ward. Room-mates had come and gone during all this time, but I was able to strike up conversation with most of those left; old Harry, Ricky, Steve and the bloke who had been brought onto the ward in the middle of the night whose name I never found out. The chat certainly helped us all to pass the hours, and there was always time to engage in amusing banter with the nurses.
Finally, on the second Sunday morning of my stay, I was visited by no fewer than three doctors (I think they had decided that there was safety in numbers; by that time, I couldn't blame them because I was starting to get crabby) who told me that - barring anything untoward - I could be discharged on the Monday.
I spent Sunday night in something of a dither. I felt that something, but something was sure to crop up which would prevent my exit. I struggled to get to sleep at all, and when I woke up at god-knows-what in the morning, I was in the most ridiculous posture which caused some pain when attempting to move out of it. Hospital beds are never all that comfortable at the best of times; it seems to me that the more options you have for adjusting a bed, the higher the likelihood you have of getting it wrong and providing a job creation scheme for indigent osteopaths.
Nonetheless, the morning seemed to progress satisfactorily, and my departure was finally confirmed. All that I was waiting for was for the hospital pharmacy to sort my meds out.
I said 'all', didn't I? I really should have known better, because the one thing all hospitals have in common is that, although hospital pharmacists may be very knowledgeable and proficient, the one thing they are not is quick. Early afternoon arrived without any resolution (although this did allow me one more indulgence in soup), and Natalie The Nurse had to chase them up.
I was just having the one remaining canula removed when a porter turned up with a wheelchair. In response to my quizzical expression, he said, "Heart scan". "Who says?", I asked. "The doctors", replied the porter, baldly. The phalange of consultants who had visited me that morning had obviously decided ex post facto that such an examination should take place, but hadn't bothered to tell me or the ward nurses about it. Since I was still waiting on the pharmacists, there was nothing for it but for me to be wheeled through a long maze of more chilly corridors over to the main part of the hospital for an echocardiogram - complete with that vile jelly - and back again. When I returned, the pharmacy still hadn't delivered, despite Natalie's efforts. Once we had word that they were on their way, I was able to summon my niece to come and get me. Nevertheless, it was some time after five before I bade farewll to Birch Ward one more time, and it was around 1830 when I got back to a very cold house. So cold, in fact, that I threw fiscal responsibility to the wind and left the heating on all night (and, indeed, for nearly the whole of the next three or four days; the contrast with the sometimes stifling warmth of the ward was more than noticeable).
So, where am I now, one week on? Well, despite what my discharge notes call 'contrast-induced nephropathy' inevitably slowing my recuperation somewhat, I'm feeling stronger and more lively with every day, and my use of nain's old walking stick - which was only really for reassurance anyway - has ceased. I'm still only going slowly up stairs and steps, but that is probably down to my enforced bed-rest. I went back to LHCH this Monday gone for a further review, and things in general seem to be trending in the right direction. The oedema on my legs is disappearing, but less so in my feet (which is why I still have to lace my left shoe up one row further back), and this is probably due to the amount of fluid they had to pump into me to flush out the last lingering presence of the dye. I'm sure that'll come right soon enough.
All seems to be going well. And yet: I hear the clock ticking...
I'll end with a reprise of what I said after my experiences in 2016: the people who toil in our Health Service form the bedrock of a civilised and progressive system, one which we must not allow charlatans, crooks and those who straddle both categories (yes, I'm looking at you, Streeting, you odious little chancer) to take from us with honeyed words about 'modernisation' and 'reform'. It is all we have left, and must be defended with everything we have.
(This piece is warmly dedicated to the nurses, catering and cleaning staff and doctors at Liverpool Heart & Chest Hospital, and to Harry, Ricky, Ray, Jim, Mike, Tecwyn and Mr Uddin)
