I had the neck/thorax CTscan today; it doesn't take long and I'm getting to be an old hand at them now. This time I paid more attention to the feeling of the dye injection going through my body, blood moves seriously fast! It's painless, just a feeling of internal warmth
Having taken a taxi to the hospital, I got brave and WALKED back the mile to my house. It did take half as long again as it usually does but I feel very virtuous and doubtless did myself some good. Yesterday I walked over to the surgery and back for a GP appointment and discovered later that the bruising on my leg had not only moved even further down but that the back of my knee looked black! It has calmed down a lot now and just looks like a particularly angry sunset so the longer walk today has helped if anything. I spoke to my Macmillan nurse about it and she reassured me that this is perfectly normal as gravity moves the bruised blood away from the operation site and it will clear up as my body deals with it like any other bruise.
The ENT clinic at John Radcliffe in Oxford phoned me with an appointment for 3pm this Thursday; I will need to spend two hours on a bus to get there (the timing is all wrong for my son to be able to take me there and get back to collect the children from school) It's very unlikely they will have the results of today's scan by then but the previous ones aren't that old.
Driving would be much easier but I'm epileptic since the brain op and not allowed to drive for another year at least. Something else to worry about - I knew from the net and the surgeon confirmed that AEDs (anti-epileptic drugs) have an immuno-suppressant element. I mentioned this to the nurse because the melanoma worsened very quickly over the time I was taking an additional AED and she says I may need to be followed up by specialists in that area instead of the plastic surgeon. She goes to the MDT meetings where they talk about my case amongst others and says she will mention it there and that I should mention it again when I next see the surgeon. His advice was that I absolutely should not stop taking the AEDs since a seizure could potentially be fatal, I'm good with that, just don't want to end up falling between two stools where different sets of medics think some other set is keeping an eye on me. My neurosurgeon said to go ahead with this melanoma treatment regardless of the planned repeat craniotomy in April. I'm grateful for the healthy life I've had but really wish I didn't have to deal with these different things at the same time now - or at all.
I'm not as miserable as this might read, just feeling the pressure
