Day 21 - Wednesday 18th May

Day 21 !! 3 weeks !

Longest 3 weeks of our lives. But for kp, just a little snooze ;-)

I went in a bit earlier than normal today after a very restless sleep to be greeted by a much more upright kp drinking water out of a cup (held by the nurse) through a straw. She said "hello" and was as perky as a perky thing that is at its perkiest of perkiness. She was perky. I haven't been drinking.

We sat and discussed nights and how bad our haemorroids were.

dp : Are you in any pain love ?
kp: My piles are killing me !
dp: Well if thats your worst pain, that isn't bad is it ?
kp: I suppose not.

God, I am so gonna get knacked for writing this stuff. Can't wait ! :-)

A food lady came to the door and asked the nurse if Karen could eat anything. Fran asked Karen if she fancied some hot soup or some ice cream ?

Ice Cream it was. She didn't have much but she enjoyed what she had. She drank a lot of water today and asked me to phone Jane to order some pineapple, strawberries, grapes and kiwi fruit.

kp: Make sure they are washed !!

LOL !

Jane brought up the food supplies and karen drank a whole carton of pineapple juice over the course of the day. Not eaten any of the fruit yet.

We are waiting for kp to be moved back to Gateshead, and the prerequisites for that are that :-

• Karen needs to be stable (she is)
• The consultant needs to confirm the X-rays (taken today) show all is ok.

You can probably guess that neither of the consultants came round.

One may pop round tomorrow morning before surgery tomorrow but the nurse was doubtful. So, with a following wind, she may be at Gateshead tomorrow night. We will all be greatly pleased to be back at Gateshead.

Karen has been very eager to get outside for some fresh air. The hospital is hot ! When she was wheeled to X-Ray in her bed, they passed an open window. Karen had the nurse stop the bed and waft cold air from the window over her.

Poor Fran !!

Negatives

Karen had a cracking morning, but it completely zonked her out, and most of the afternoon was spent sleeping. She is very weak and 1 hour of kp in top form requires so much energy that she hasn't got and she just falls asleep. Marie + Michelle were not amused. Jane and I had had the best of kp, and then we let Marie and Michelle come in and they had kp blowing "Zzzzzz's" at them.

Sorry !

I felt exhausted today and I think everyone else was pretty much in the same boat. Its as if the big event (the op) is over, and we can relax a bit. This relaxing allows emotions to surface and a couple of us had a bit of a cry today. One big hurdle over, but many more to go.

Towards the end of the afternoon/early evening, Karen was exhausted and her temperature was on the rise (38.7). Cooling Blanket on and paracetamol given - they normally do the trick.

My only concern is Karen looked very weak when I left her (with Marie) tonight and her heartrate was 130 beats per minute which sets the alarm on the machine off. If she does get a chest infection or pneumonia, it isn't hard to imagine how tricky this would be to fight with energy so low. But I think we know that if anyone can, kp can.

We have been told to expect peaks and troughs in her recover (good days and bad days). It is the nature of critically ill patients and their recovery apparently. So we are not overly worried about this.

Positives

A cracking positive today. Karen's left side has very little feeling in it. This is the side they put the needles in and kp never feels a thing. But today, I started massaging her left foot. After about 30 seconds to a minute she commented how nice that felt.

WAHEY !

Very promising.

Overall, a great day. We are all keen to know what the next hurdles are and when we get to Gateshead, we know Frank (the main man (consultant)) will give us a full rundown of the challenges ahead.