Thoughts from the frontline - 28

And so I was now getting into the swing of things being at home post operation. Monday soon became Tuesday where my morning was interrupted with numerous deliveries of vegetables, beads and ironing. Getting up to answer the door and climbing the stairs to empty my stoma bag was certainly giving me a large segment of my required exercise! But I was still curtailed in what I could do. One walk to the shops was enough for the day and after which I needed a good hours rest. Three cheers for a comfortable chair and the TV remote! Now there is one thing I had to learn fairly quickly is that, if there is a chance of you falling asleep, then it is essential that you attached a "night bag". Without it you soon find yourself being woken up by the slightly cold feeling of a trickle of wee running down your stomach from the overextended normal bag. I am so amazed by how much wee ones body produces throughout the day. Pre operation, when I had a bladder, you just take it all for granted. Now my system works 24/7 with just this continuous dribble out of your stoma. During the day this results in numerous trips to the bathroom to empty it. A bit of a pain but it does make sure that you get up even for just a short walk about every hour or so. But at night, my god, thank goodness for the night bag attachments! Where does it all come from? After a good eight hours asleep you wake up to find the you have collected over 1.5 litres of wee in a plastic bag hanging in a stand next to your bed. Amazing. Those kidneys sure work hard for their money! Now the only problem that I seem to get from my bag is the dreaded "air lock". I'm sure that a few of you reading this know exactly what I mean :-). The urine flows normally into the normal stoma bad but gets no further. For some reason an air lock has been formed and nothing will flow into the night bag. So a complicated ritual of disconnection and reconnection takes place to get rid of the problem and Hey! It's working again... only for it to lock up again. Bum. Fingers crossed you only need to adjust one or two more times before you drift off to sleep with your fingers crossed that the problem doesn't come back during the night. And so we arrive at Thursday and I have an early morning appointment with my local doctor. In fact not my normal doctor but the one T normally sees. Now we haven't been in our house for that long and I've not yet got to that stage of having a settle doctor at the practice but as T was getting on really well with Dr N I decided that I would now claim him as mine as well. Well, we were a bit late leaving so it was quite a rushed walk to get to the surgery on time but we managed it and within a couple of minutes we were walking in to see the doctor. As I sat down I could see him looking at my notes on the screen in front of him. "Well", he says "Seems like a lots been happening to you recently" No kidding I thought! A good chat about how I was coping, both physically and mentally and then a short discussion about my "renal problem" after which we decided to wait until after my follow up appointment at the clinic in about two weeks time before we started me on any drugs. Good decision. So we booked an appointment with the phlebotomist for bloods to be taken next Friday before we left and we walked home again. Well T walked and I waddled. And so Thursday afternoon arrived and I needed to go out for another walk to pick up a couple of things from the Village Centre. The "things" were actually application forms to enter things into the local "Produce Show" over the bank holiday weekend. Now I'm not a gardener but they did have a photographic section that T and I had decided to enter. So I stared the short walk and decided to take the slightly longer route via the shops at the top of the road. And it was at that point that madness took over me. Stupid me. Now, from before the operation right up to today I had been a good boy and only eaten good things. No processed goods and nothing that would spike my sugar levels. All that is very bad as part of my plan to beat this cancer thing. No special crazy diet just good healthy foods to help the body do it's natural things to keep the fight up against any return of the cancer. Well my body was used to the healthy eating so my choice of a pack of four eccles cakes was a tad stupid. They tasted fab. But two hours later my body said "hell, what's this crap stuff you just put in me?" And I started to feel awful. Now I'm sure that doing two walks in one day for the first time helped to make me knackered and aware that my body needed careful care but the multitude of fats, sugars and e numbers in the eccles cakes were not to be tolerated by my body. So it was that I felt like crap when T came home from work. Now I didn't mention the eccles cakes, just the two walks and I got the required loving support as I took myself off to bed for a nap for an hour. Sadly for me, however, T found the eccles cakes wrapper whilst she was tidying up. :-( The telling off wouldn't happen until later on Friday. And I would take it with suitable humility. You certainly learn by your mistakes! Andrew xx