Big Day pt1

Today marks the first anniversary of a Big Day in my recovery. It's one year today since I was taken from Licoln hospital to City Hospital, Nottingham. Almost to the minute, actually.

I was picked up from Lincoln and driven by hospital taxi to Nottingham, and the driver and I had a good chat en route. It wasn't quite as fast as the trip from Grantham to Lincoln by rickety old ambulance, facing backwards, and sitting up on the trolley a week earlier, but normal paced. The guy used to service aircraft in thr RAF, and had stories about his times when they had to rip the insides out of a Vulcan because some bigshot wanted to go fishing in Canada, and had a bed in the nose cone, and the like.

When I got to Nottingham, I was put in a bay with a guy called Brian. He was of retirement age, and was recovering from another form of cancer to me.

The ward was set up as a series of bays, with a few private rooms for those with the more dangerous forms of treatment, or as I found out later, problems like C-Diff, and housing us in own own rooms could contain infection. My bay was Bay 3, Toghill ward. The building was a relatively new building. It wasn't your traditional '20 beds in a ward, all open plan, no privacy at all' setup. There were 6 Bays, if I recall, mostly up one end of the building, with a central spine housing bathrooms and shower rooms, both male and female, then a central reception area, and then extra bathrooms, with staff room, and 'consulting' room, and kitchen. The consulting room was a small room with tv and video/dvd, with a case of books and old videos.

I was welcomed into the ward by my roomie, Brian, who showed me the ropes. In Bay 2, the bay behind me, was Barry and Basil. Barry had had various treatments for a few years, and was itching to get out. He was hoping to go to Germany to visit the Christmas Markets there, and had a family do organised in ye olde Skegness coming up too. He would often wander around, and pop in for a chat. Basil was another long term patient. Many a time over the next few weeks, you could hear him doing circuits of the ward, keeping his leg muscles working, so they didn't go to pot.

I seem to recall, Brian had been in on this stint for 6 weeks, and when the docs told him he could leave on the Friday, 2 days after I arrived, you could see the relief, and joy in his face. It really was a lovely thing to see.

Back to yesterday, and I had my 2-monthly checkup. Going really well, haemoglobin, neutrophils, a type of white blood cell, and everything getting back to normal levels, so the after effects of the chemo on the blood at least, are going.

Next visit in 10 weeks. Just before my birthday.