Stubble in paradise

Where to begin? Firstly I must apologise to those who have been worrying about me, needlessly as it turns out because my surgery, due to take place last Wednesday was actually cancelled. I have delayed reporting as much because I have been having a crisis of conscience due to the fact that my Dad has discovered this blog.

Hello Dad.

I made the mistake of logging onto my blog while using Dad's PC when I was Mum-sitting earlier this year. I didn't know how to delete the address so I simply crossed my fingers and hoped that he wouldn't find the link, but alas he has found my hidey hole. I don't have anything to hide of course and naturally I realise this is in the public domain but this blog has been my therapy over the last couple of years and I have written about things that I would never talk about to my family mainly for fear of worrying them, occasionally for fear of shocking them. Likewise I haven't been able really to pass on to him that I'm uncomfortable with him reading my blog. With any luck he'll read this and problem solved, ahem.

Enough of that squit as he would say.

So anyway I went into the hospital last Tuesday evening - the plan was to dialyse Wednesday morning so I'm in tip-top shape for the operation Wednesday afternoon. I had a terrible night's sleep, couldn't get warm, tossing and turning, hungry, thirsty, worried about the post operation trauma, etc. When 06:00 am Wednesday morning rolled around I started throwing up despite not having anything much to bring up and convinced that it was because I was too hungry I headed off to the dialysis unit so I could have some tea and toast before going nil by mouth from 7:30 am.

When I got there it became apparent that I had quite a high temperature which set alarm bells ringing. The dialysis session itself was terrible, they couldn't get any decent pressures on my line and I ended up clotting the machine and coming off 2 hours early. I also learned that the surgical team weren't prepared to go ahead with the surgery with my temperature being so high, they were worried that I had an infection somewhere. Drat.

I was sent back to the hospital ward to await an examination by a doctor to see if they could find the source of the infection. Someone turned up eventually and gave me a less than thorough going over during which I had noticed a slight redness on one of my legs. I pointed this out to him but he dismissed it as nothing and proceeded to inform me that I should have a chest X-ray and then I would be put on broad spectrum, heavy duty, IV anitbiotics - the kind that unfortunately have a negative effect on kidney tissue but as I already have kidney failure anyway, killing off the little function I have is apparently immaterial. I should add that it is material to me because even having the tiny amount of function left that I have means that I still pee a little bit which means I can still drink up to a litre a day. Losing everything will knock me down to about 500mls a day. It matters, trust me.

Anyhoo, a chest X-ray and a dose of 2 different IV urotoxic antibiotics later and I was allowed to come home but we were none the wiser as to what the hell caused the fever.

The next day, I was at dialysis again and my leg started to itch, I rolled up my trouser leg to discover the leg was inflamed and hot and one of the nurses decreed that I definitely had cellulitis which is simply an infection in the skin. The penny dropped, on the Saturday before going into hospital I had had my legs waxed. One can't have surgery with hairy legs can one? Probably what had happened was that an infection had got into the skin while it still a little raw after waxing. I er, also had another rash that I developed after shaving the other bit that was closer to the impending action, but no-one got to see that one.

I've got to go through it all again soon because I go in for the surgery again a week on Monday. This time without the waxing although I do have to break out the razor again. Ouch.

As a footnote I should add that my chest line has been playing up ever since that Wednesday morning and on Saturday I spent virtually all day at another hospital while doctors fought over whether or not they would put in a new line. Thankfully they decided against it although it took them them until 10:00 pm to figure that out.