Weekend up, surgery time.

I had an amazing weekend.
Though, it was a very exhausting weekend.

My Dad had a long weekend off from work and so I talked him into taking Mum away for it. they deserved the break away from the stress of hospitals and clinics and tests. Due to my issues with phones and such, (Cant hear them, they cant hear me) I dont know how well the weekend went, but from what I gather through text messages, they seem to have had fun.

This meant that I had the house to myself over the weekend, so I had my niece down to help out and for company. We always have a good time when we are together and despite having lots to get done, the weekend was no exception. Thursday involved chest clinic, which there was little he could do as I had only just been discharged, but he is checking to see what bugs I am growing. Then Friday was Liver Transplant clinic in Leeds. There was a fair bit of traffic on the motorway, and clinic was crazy busy. But everything went well and my blood results were all clear. So that was good news.

Monday morning was back off to London and Tuesday was back to theatre.

Waking up from theatre was horrible. I am used to it now, espcially from laser, but this was differnt. My throat and mouth tasted as if I had been smoking. I was in agony and shaking like a leaf. They put the warming blankets on me to help with the shaking and put some pain killers through. But the pain was still there and I felt much more rough than I have done in the past. They also managed to catch my lip with the laser, so I have a mark there now, but that will fade in time.

Getting the results this morning, there was a lot of granulation tissue blocking my airway above the tube. More tissue than they were expecting, but the actual trachea was still holding itself up. This is both good news and bad news. It means my trachea is holding well despite me having coughed the cartilage out. However, I am having the same problem I have had everytime, in that the scar tissue buildsup and blocks my airway. And so the doctors think there is still a chance of things working, but that they want to stay on top of the scar tissue. Which means that I am back in for the same thing in 2 weeks. And in the mean time, I have to keep the trach in. As of today, less than 24 hours after surgery, it really dosnt feel all that differnt.

As for still being very breathless even with the trach in, they think that is because of how positional the tube is as my trachea is now a very odd shape. So overall, I cant breathe with the trach and I cant breathe without it. We just got to keep stumbling on with the tube as it is, taking things easy. And hope that in the mean time, the granulation (scar tissue) slows down or stops building up all together.

There was some other news though, of a potential option, but it is not one that I am willing to even think about never mind get my hopes up about at the moment. Apprently, tracheal replacement surgery has been given the go ahead in the UK. I have only been hoping for that for the last 4+ years. But there was a guy in the theatre yesterday who is looking for potential candidates. So he has taken away my details to review, though I highly doubt I would be offered it.

That aside, I did say to my surgeon, let me guess it is about 2 years off? And he said yeah, but more like 18months. I just laughed and told him that was what I had been told for the last 4 years and he agreed but was adamant that things had moved on. After all the last lot of complications, I doubt I would be picked for it anyway, and given the whole 2 years off thing, I refuse to even give it more than a few minutes thought really.

And now its nap time as the anesthtic seems to take longer and longer to get out of my system everytime I have it.