8 Kilogrammes

The iconic Ben Bulben seen from the ward windows

We're still here and feeling very grateful for the huge out-pourings of support and get well messages especially all over Twitter and Facebook.Also the ones called in to Elizabeth from friends, rels and people around our superb village. (She brings me a check list each day and calls them out to me. It's great!) They're all much appreciated and make me feel very cared for and looked after. Thank You.

That big screen in my "private" room (OK,
single bed bay) which became the place to watch
the World Cup England game

This end, I am behaving myself, taking all the meds and willingly submitting to all the treatments and investigations, so I am recovering fast enough for the doctor but slowly by my own normal standards for just a 'cold' or a 'man flu'. They all tell me that a pneumonia is another whole species of 'sick' and I now believe them. My thing was the accumulation of fluids on the lungs and in the tissues generally (mainly the ankles due to gravity). I am here 8 days and have lost 8 kg now, which is a whole new lease of life on the breathing.

Telemetry

As I go through the recovery phase, I also move around the place and gain and lose technological gear. At my most wired, when first in here, I counted 15 lines and wires including the 10 leads connected to my chest and extremities from the heart monitor, the oxygen or nebuliser line, oxygen saturation to a handy finger tip, blood pressure, fancy spiral "push" for my diuretics, etc. I get some of these tests still but that is at the periodic nurse's rounds.

The 'Airvo' oxygen pump.

I am now in the 6-bed, lower intensity bay and have just one machine 'permanently' connected to me, that being the "Airvo", supplier of heated and wetted oxygen to my nose. This is a fine piece of kit now that I have the heat turned down. When the nurses first gave it to me it was a hot afternoon and I just wanted to go lie down on some cold concrete or something. The air-con was on, so my bod was comfortable, but then I got this 'desert' wind coming into my nose, heating my head up and making me sweat into the pillow.

Hospital jewelry. My drip line

Ah well, we put up with it, and it was only the next day when I happened to comment, that one of the nurses said "Oh, you don't have to have it THAT hot, let me turn it down a few degrees!" Bliss. The only other brush with new tech lately was when I was done CT scan. This is a fancy-pants X-ray machine shaped like a thin flat do-nut which they slide you through. The X-ray 'gun' or receiver whizzes round your chest as you slide, 'salami slicing' an image which is then much more useful diagnostically than a straight chest X-ray.

I will hear nothing bad about the food, which has been
excellent throughout.

So, pretty much it is all going well and I can't imagine I will be  in here too long. There is only one question I would LOVE the answer to and I don't think I will ever get that one due to the total lack of engagement with the docs for 6 years. How did this huge "aggressive" pneumonia creep up on me so sneakily. In the morning I felt as right as rain and was actually doing 3 hours of heavy work (beef muck) without a bother on me. 3 hours later, early evening, I suddenly couldn't walk 30 yard without leaning on a fence gasping for breath. It is as if something hit a trigger point and just let go, like a modern car deciding to pre-emptively slow you down to 56 mph because it has detected a brake-bulb blown. Whoa! You need to get some help.

Sorry about the pics in this one - taken on the Android so not of the usual quality.