I can't quite believe it: my arm is flat. At least it will be once the swelling goes down and it no longer resembles a balloon animal. After an abortive attempt in the week before Christmas, my fistula was finally plaicated last Wednesday, a graft (or small piece of plastic tubing, for those of you inexplicably not conversant in renal terminology) was inserted and the giant unsightly lump was lopped off. My potassium, which had thwarted my previous sortie, was running high yet again, but my surgeon, JT, had an itchy scalpel finger and the doctors dosed me up with some curative nebulisers and decided to go ahead regardless. The surgery went well and I was wheeled back up to the ward where Papa Edwards was reading The Times, still a little woozy and sore, and found JT had also considerately jammed a drain into my forearm to remove any blood stemming from some genial internal bleeding.
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| Just in case JT was in any doubt |
I abhor staying the night in hospital, but I am nothing if not a team player, and also I couldn't really, you know, get out of bed unaided. I managed about four hours sleep in total which was actually pretty good going when you consider that Mrs Branning two beds up wet herself twice, someone was snoring like a congested gorilla and a nurse arrived to take my observations every four hours. At 1 am, I was treated to a visit from a junior doctor who was keen to take some blood and establish whether "they" needed to attach me to a dialysis machine then and there (that pesky potassium, you see) and whether this would necessitate the threading of an emergency dialysis line into my groin should my new fistula not be quite up to the job. He said some things, but I like to think I made my feelings clear; he left pretty swiftly without taking any blood. I tried to fall back to sleep but with the spectre of a football-in-the-groin (sorry - an in joke for my brothers there) hanging over me, I wasn't very successful.
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| I particularly enjoyed wearing these |
Aside from the usual abject humiliation of needing a nurse to help one wriggle into one's pyjama top whilst emitting Eau de Warthog from one's underarms, the following morning ran smoothly: "they" were so keen for me to dialyse that the machine and my favourite Irish nurse were brought to my bedside and no-one even queried the function of my fistula - Babs just slid the needles in and off I went, making me question whether the episode of the Doctor in the Night had really happened or whether I had just imagined it in a sleep-deprived, Tramadol induced fug. Before Papa E arrived to drive me home (put me to bed and make the obligatory trip to M&S) I had to have the drain removed: when the nurse came to take it out, she pulled the curtain round my bed and my heart sank. This was going to be unpleasant. Fortunately I had no idea just how unpleasant, otherwise I would have put my coat on, left and I would still be trying to style it out. The pain was phenomenal and compounded by the awful sucking sound as the air pressures inside and outside of my arm re-set. I cried. It was all very undignified.
But now I am home; I am back at work, back at uni and will be back at yoga class before you can exhale through your mouth. My arm is still puffy, the bruising is turning it purple and it still kind of sore, but the fistula seems to be in fine form....and did I mention, its flat?
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