Tag Archives: mishaps

Famous Last Words

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Photo by Magda Ehlers on Pexels.com

“I’m sure five days with an infuser pump will be OK. I’m going to hang it on the bed head and see how it goes”

I may have spoken a little too soon. The hanging the pump on the bedhead worked, in general, quite well.  However, as a plan it does require a certain amount of concentration. There were quite a few typos in my last post, so you may be able to deduce that I wasn’t concentrating well, and that an anecdote is about to be launched on the world.

Imagine it’s 4am, you need the bathroom (again), it’s half light . . .

(This is the reality of life as an older man, my dreams of yachts, sports cars and trophy wives have all been replaced with a genuine desire to simply sleep through the night.)

Then, as your left arm suddenly jerks , and your entire body judders to a halt, you realise the pump is still hanging on the bedhead. This can be even worse when they change the arm for the cannula, as all your coping strategies change sides.

Generally I am OK in the night, but in the day (when I hang the pump from my reading lamp) I am often thinking of other things as I walk away. The reading lamp has fallen over several times but is till working.

Bangor Pier – that woman seems to be following me (Photos are just random . . .)

I am currently grey. Apart from my hair. I shaved that off a few mornings ago.  While I was doing that I noticed my skin is grey and my eyes were grey – the whites that is, the iris is normally grey.  To be honest, I was expecting them to be bloodshot. Grey was a bit of a shock.

The trips to hospital have generally been uneventful. A bit of waiting, some measurements, a lot more waiting.  It tends to take about 45 minutes on average. I could get it down to ten minutes. The expiry date on the drugs is years off so you could get a load racked up the fridge. When the patient comes in, take them through, do the temperature, blood pressure, heart rate and that oxygen thing with the finger tip. Nod wisely, fill in the paperwork. Check the cannula, connect the pump, rewrap and done. ten minutes easy. If the cannula has closed up you need to insert a new one, but even that needn’t take too long.

They have changed my cannula several times over the last four days – once because it had started leaking (though it was still working) once because it blocked  blocked and once because they rewrapped a perfectly good cannula badly and I had to go back, in pain, two hours after the insertion. The swelling meant they had to remove it and try the other arm.

I don’t really enjoy cannulas.

I also think that anyone who inserts one should be made to wear one for a week so they get the feel of it. I made that suggestion on the comments form this morning. I also said that the section that recorded my age, sexuality and religion was irrelevant to my care and they would be better concentrating on providing better parking. Julia says I’m getting better.

January Afternoon – Country Park

A Miscellany of Mishaps

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On Sunday we had a call from one of the neighbours in Nottingham – our overflow was pouring water out at the back of the house. This was mixed news. Obviously something was wrong, but equally obviously, it wasn’t a burst pipe, as that wouldn’t come out of the overflow. So we abandoned everything, including our carefully dovetailed plans for the rest of the week and shot up to Nottingham to sort out the overflow. The water is currently switched off and we are hoping that after a few days thawing the system will return to normal. (General opinion is that it’s a frozen ballcock. Time will tell.)

We returned to Peterborough that night then went back to Nottingham in the morning, collected a delivery, filled the car with stuff, ran the heating to warm everything up a bit, attended a meeting of the Numismatic Society and came home. The original plan to stay over seemed less attractive when faced with a cold, waterless house. Yes, it’s still cold despite the fired being on.

On Tuesday we stayed in Peterborough. Originally we were going to stay over in Nottingham and go for a meal with a friend, but see above remarks on cold house, no water etc.

Today, we went up, arrived at 10.30 and packed some stuff. I then went for a blood test, we visited the shop and then came home. Imagine my cheerful reaction when I had a call to tell me that the sample had been untestable and I would have to return tomorrow as a matter of urgency to have a retest. I’d been looking forward to some nice relaxing time with Julia, including a daytrip out. I hadn’t intended that trip to be to Nottingham. Again.

Photo by Anna Shvets on Pexels.com

 

Random Reflections

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It’s now ten days since the medical profession applied heavyweight medical equipment to some of my more delicate bits. I’m pleased to report that the bleeding has stopped, the swelling has gone and I’m now resigned to the indignity of the catheter. Only five weeks before the replay.

I’ve been doing some thinking about my leg too and with a combination of exercise and stretching it seems to be improving. If I can keep that going I should be back to proper walking by the end of the week.

The only remaining problem was the changing of the leg bag. I haven’t changed one before so I was slightly apprehensive about what might happen. As it turned out there was no problem – everything went without a hitch and I am now connected again.

There was a potential for trouble but I managed to avoid it. Depending on which brand of product you use there are between two and four lengths of tube between catheter and leg bag. The brand issued by the hospital  has 4 lengths. They fitted me with a 30cm tube after the operation.

So they obviously gave me 30cm tubes with the kits they sent me home with. Well, you’d think so. Even with a 30cm tube I have to take care how I set things up. The consequences of getting it wrong is that you squeak like a hamster and have to wipe the tears from your eyes.

Fortunately I checked before opening the packets, as the tubes supplied by the hospital and District Nurse are all 10cm. Fortunately I’d ordered the larger of the two sizes available on prescription (a different brand from the hospital supply) so the ones I collected yesterday allow me to walk without trouble.

It’s tempting to launch into a collection of catheter anecdotes (I have a few…) but I will maintain some pretence of good taste. Well, I will after a couple more paragraphs.

My latest scheme is to experiment with food colourings. I’m looking forwards to showing the doctors a bag of lurid-coloured liquid and seeing what they do. Julia is refusing to help with this, but has suggested beetroot. It is, after all, well known for turning urine red. I’m currently taking a proton pump inhibitor as part of my doctor’s crusade to test every sort of pill known to man, and this may prevent the desired result. I also really hate beetroot, which is another drawback.

On the other hand I’m not sure what constitutes a lethal dose of food colouring. It’s the sort of thing you need to know, because although brightly-coloured urine is a joke, food poisoning is no fun.