Bouncing

I got home on Sunday!  Hurrah!  The discharge process is never swift, with meds taking ages to come up from pharmacy and doctor's letters needing to be done, but I did eventually get  home in the late afternoon/early evening.  My step-mum, B, and my dad picked me up and brought me home, saw me settled in at home and then let me get on with exorcising the hospital clatter from my head and cuddling the cat.

It's always a mixed thing to come home from hospital.  On the one hand, it's fantastic to be free and to be able to immerse oneself back into ordinary life.  On the other hand, there's a difference between being well enough to leave hospital and being truly well, so coming home can sometimes be hard work when you live on your own and you've gone having to do nothing to having to do everything.  Given the choice, though, I'd always opt for coming home if I'm well enough.

I thought I was well enough to come home on Sunday.  I was well enough ... except that I had started sneezing again on Sunday morning while I was still on the ward.  No other symptoms, just sneezing, but of course that's potentially the sign of a cold, which is not a simple thing when there's severe brittle asthma to consider.  So yes, I came home and all was well ... until Sunday night, which was very disturbed by coughing and wheezing, and snuffles and sneezes.  I woke up very congested on Monday morning.  Thankfully the congestion cleared soon enough and there's no longer any sign of a cold, but I've otherwise been rather unwell.  I've got a very harsh cough; I'm persistently wheezy, even if not desperately short of breath most of the time; my nebs are giving me only five or ten minutes of really clear breathing before I feel it all tightening up again; my temperature has been up again (38.3C this morning) and I've had some rigors; I've had an intermittent thumping headache; and through last night, this morning, and early this afternoon I was retching but not actually vomiting as there was nothing inside to come up.  All in all, I feel poorly.

I went to see my GP yesterday and was given antibiotics so I'm hoping they'll kick in very quickly.  I've been back to the surgery today with a sputum sample that the doc asked me to put in, but it'll be a few days until the result from that are back.  In the meantime, I've emailed J on Ward 29 to tell him that I may be bouncing back to them :o(  I really don't want to.  I'm sick of hospitals.  I'm sick of being ill and I was hoping for a period of respite after my latest admission.  I usually get at least a few weeks of relative health after I've been in hospital, but this time it was a matter of hours before I was starting to feel ill again.  I'd throw my toys out of the pram if I had the energy  ;oP

On a positive note, I am humbled by my church who holding a full day of prayer tomorrow just for me!  Given my current state of health/ill-health it is very timely, but I am, as I say, deeply humbled.  My vicar asked me to produce an information leaflet about myself with points for prayer included in it, and a photo, so I did that last week while I was still on the ward as I suddenly realised that M (the vicar) would need this a while before the planned prayer day.  He came round yesterday to see chat through the day and see if I had any questions and he said that all the info sheets he'd printed off had been taken by folk on Sunday after the service so he was going to print off some more, and he'd also made bookmarks for people to take.  These have my photo on and details of the times and venues of collective prayer tomorrow, although they also encourage folk to pray any time they can.  It feels a little strange having this day for me, after all, I'm nobody special, I'm just me, but I appreciate the prayer day greatly.  There will be various venues for people to get together to pray for me at various times throughout the day, and some people may well come round here to pray with me and for me at home.  I was hoping to get to at least one of the other venues, but I'm not sure I'm going to manage that with being so poorly again :o(  Yes, this day of prayer is very timely, and terribly, terribly humbling.