I've accepted the
inevitable and am now plugged in to 4 IV drips! Apart from the
on-going antibiotics and antifungals I also have a small Morphine syringe pump
and what looks like a half gallon milkshake bag - but is actually a balanced
food supplement/replacement.
For the first couple
of nights I was getting by. Wake up for the bathroom routine, rinse my mouth and
accept the pain spike, get back to bed, wait for it to subside and try to drift
off again for another hour or two. But on Friday night the pain spikes
just stopped fading - moving the pain-o-meter up another 2 or 3 notches and I
was not able to sleep through much of the night. So during Saturday I
accepted the morphine syringe drip. It's set on it's lowest setting of
0.5ml / hour - though they've already told me that's low for my body weight and
I can ask for up to 2.0ml / hour. Get thee behind me!
At the same time -
my tounge is swollen enough to make swallowing a painful chore and I have no
appetite to encourage me to try. The small bits of soup, egg white,
oatmeal and the like I was forcing down were not enough to make a real
difference. So they've given me a days supply of IV food. I will continue
to sip iced supplement drinks and the like, and take the IV support as
necessary.
I have been told to
expect things to hold pretty much as they are for up to the next 10 days. the
various infections may get worse - but they can up the meds to handle
that.
By the way - I'm
glad the Friendly Orange Strangers with Purple Hats amused some of you. The
image was meant to be funny. The actual visualisation I'm working with now is a
little more subtle - but more on that another time.
