Recovery

 

Recovery is difficult. One minute you feel as though you've turned a corner and then suddenly your body will remind you that you have been through something huge. It reminds you at the most inconvenient of times - when you're out on a walk, eating your favourite food or when your finally having your first cheeky alcoholic drink thinking that life is getting back to normal. 

The truth is, life doesn't get back to normal for a really long time. 

Last year I was really keen to get my life back - nurses were telling me that I wouldn't even feel normal until the spring of 2020 and I didn't want to hear it - I wanted to go back to work, I was pissed off that the SCT had taken so much away from me and the truth is I was ignorant to how much I was putting my body through. 

In November 2019, we had just bought Blaze back home as a tiny kitten. We said it was a new start and the new addition to our family would mark that. The boys absolutely adored him and he settled into our home as if he had always been there - however a few days after his arrival I was finding it really hard to breathe. 

I had always had Fridays off work since I had the boys and on those days the boys and I would have a day together full of activities, or trips to the park, playdates and crafts. All of a sudden I found those days really difficult, my energy had plummeted due to the commuting to and from the office and I felt incredibly unwell. I was also having weekly wound checks with my GP nurse and spent most of the appointments crying in frustration over how long it was taking me to recover. 

I had always had seasonal asthma, most of the time it was under control and had been since I was sixteen. I put the recent breathing issues down to our new kitten, perhaps the breed had set of some sort of allergy. Great, I thought. I've bought this new kitten, the boys are attached and now I'm going to have to rehome him and traumatise my children for the rest of their lives. This will be something they bring up at family dinners in years to come about how I got rid of their first ever pet. KittenGate it will be called. 

Bloody typical. 

However, it was about to get a whole lot worse. 

I got on the train to London one morning and I just couldn't breathe - I used my inhaler - nothing. I took deep breaths - nothing. I just focused on the moving landscape out of the window; watching the scenery turn from Essex countryside to the urban housing and tall buildings of the city. 

A lady got on the train with her laptop and sat opposite me - I glanced at her, didn't think anything of it and kept taking it in turns to look out of the window and browse on my phone. All of a sudden, said lady started coughing, full blown open mouthed dry coughing and didn't cover her mouth once - I looked up at her in disbelief - this smartly dressed full grown adult was coughing and spluttering all over me  - then would look up as if it was completely normal. I mean people were disgusted in the seats next to me - but imagine that now? during all this COVID business ? she would be bundled, picked up and thrown out of the window. Maybe even fined with the way people feel about the germs spreading. My goodness, she probably would have ended up on the internet. 

Still - I couldn't believe it - I covered my mouth and nose with my scarf in a makeshift mask ( sign of things to come) and ran off the train as soon as I could. 

The walk to the office was hard, due to my breathing I had to stop every few minutes to catch my breath. This was the same for the couple of days to follow and by the end of the week I was phoning my husband, during the walk from the office to the tube station just incase I passed out so he would be aware of it. 

I booked a doctors appointment close to the office one morning - my appetite had vanished, my breathing was so bad that my lungs were burning and my energy was dripping away. 

The doctor was a lovely Irish lady who took one look at me and said that I was on the verge of chronic fatigue - she recommended a ton of vitamins, referred me to a lung consultant in London Bridge and told me to leave work immediately to go home and rest. I was gutted - to have another set of appointments at another hospital and to leave work again. I finally thought things were getting back to normal and I felt incredibly guilty to go back to my employers and tell them that once again, I had hit health issues and would need to take time off. Again, they were and continue to be incredibly supportive which I am eternally grateful for. 

I packed up and left - practically crawling to the station from exhaustion. I reached Fenchurch Street station and saw the escalators were not in action so would need to use to stairs - a long set of stairs. Once I'd reached the top my lungs were on fire - I was gasping for breath and by the time I reached the platform (the train wasn't yet there) I had to sit on the floor to catch my breath. So there I was, slumped on a dirty, damp  train platform in central London gasping for oxygen and swallowing gulps of the sooty polluted air around me - I was feeling dizzy and weak and I was genuinely terrified. I thought I was going to die; yet all I could think was, how embarrassing would that be - to die on a filthy platform. That was it - not me, not today; I have been through too much to hit this low and as soon as the train arrived, I used all of my remaining energy to get on to it. 

My husband was shocked to see that state I was in when he picked me up and once we were home I collapsed into bed, beaten and defeated - finally taking my recovery seriously. 

My appointment with the lung consultant was in the Art Deco hospital in London Bridge - It felt weird to be back there only a few months later, not feeling any better. As if to taunt me, the pain in my lower back had returned and so I had booked an appointment with my surgeon around the same time to also get my very recent healed wound checked. 

The lung consultant informed me that I had a very low amount of  oxygen in my lungs as they were so inflamed - he also performed a lung X-Ray as he was so concerned. Nothing was found on the screen but my lungs were dangerously in trouble; he wanted to keep me in overnight but I refused - still in denial and wanting my own bed and so I was sent home with a load of steroids and told to rest.  

A couple of days later we had an appointment with my surgeon to check on my progress of my recovery - the pain in my lower back was back with a vengeance. After an internal examination (lucky me!) I was referred for an urgent MRI scan there and then. 

On the scan it turned out there was a pocket of fluid in the cavity left behind from the surgery, I had developed a huge infection from this and my organs had started to be affected - starting with my lungs. The wound had healed with fluid still inside and needed to be cut out and drained. This would mean another trip to the hospital I had stayed at only a couple of months before and a big operation. 

Due to the damage caused to my bowel after the first operation, this increased my chances of having a colostomy bag. The surgeon was also concerned about the state my lungs were in, as this could be very dangerous with the anesthetic that I would be put under. 

The surgery was booked within the next week or so which would be four days before Christmas;  I had no time to feel disheartened about having another procedure - I couldn't even get out of bed I felt so unwell and my appetite had completely vanished; I lost two stone in weight and was incredibly weak. 

My mental health had also suffered due to the stress and my surgeon had encouraged that I seek therapy sessions to overcome what had happened. 

 I'm better at recovery now - I know that my body can only do so much and that fatigue and tiredness are two very different things. A good friend of mine has introduced me to the 'Boom and Bust' cycle and it's helped me to manage my energy.  It's taken me a long time but I now know you can only do as much as your body can handle. 

P.s I'm not accusing the lady on the train of having Coronavirus; but I bet she wouldn't be so flippant to cough so openly on a train carriage like that now  - just saying ;)