Dirty Lungs Done Dirt Cheap

Yo ho ho and a barrel of rum bitch,

For one long week now I have been staring at the barren grey wardrobe at the end of my bed and slowly losing the will to live. I am in a strange and mysterious hospital halfway between Luton and Dunstable (surprisingly enough called the Luton and Dunstable Hospital) waiting and longing and dreaming of being transferred up to Sheffield. I have oxygen up my nose and special socks on my feet. I just found 200 songs in my recycle bin which I saved and am now listing to at full blast (thank fuck I'm in a side room) and I have a canula in the most annoying place possible on my right arm. But what do I not have? ANY BLOODY IDEA OF WHAT THE COW TESTICLE IS GOING ON. Imagine a large testicle rolling across a hospital floor like a tumbleweed rolling across Arizona. That is my life now. I am confused rolling testicle.

Let me explain further. Come children, get in my time machine. Everyone loves the cancery time machine.

*the gentle sounds of seven tiresome days floating past*

For the past couple of weeks I have been feeling a bit dodge. Just that general sort of dodge, the falling asleep three times a day instead of one dodge, the why do these three stairs feel like the Olympic hurdles dodge, the why does my stomach not one to eat this fucking grilled cheese dodge. My stomach/abdomen was also getting progressively more and more gigantic. Like, proper gigantic. I look like a bowling ball attached to a bum with a couple of legs poking out. So huge in fact that my stomach wall has fallen to pieces a bit, I now have a huge 'diastatis recti' because of all the pressure (which sounds like it's to do with your arsehole but it's not, honest). Basically it's a ridge from your sternum to your belly button where your muscles have separated and your innards are poking out a bit to say hello. HI INTERNAL ORGANS AND STUFF. They're really common in pregnant women. Which gives you an idea about how gigantic I was/am.

Then things started taking a bit of a turn for the worse. At the weekend my legs swelled up to never seen before proportions and my breathing became not very excellent at all. Basically everything was gigantic. Everything was pressing on everything. If you'd put a pin to me I'd have flown around the room. Actually no, I'm full of fluid so I'd have probably turned into Blastoise and done a full on hardcore squirt. ANYWAY I took the Monday off work and slept and slept and slept and then Tuesday happened and I couldn't breathe at all and was like WELL BREATHING IS IMPORTANT I SHOULD PROBABLY DO SOMETHING ABOUT THIS so I half dressed myself and got in a taxi to Luton A&E. I was also vomiting a lot at this point and the taxi driver was looking at me with genuine terror in his eyes like he knew my sicky secret. I left his taxi intact though because I am a GOOD PATIENT.

When I arrived at A&E reception I was so unable to breathe that when she asked what was wrong I just wheezed and stared and she was like “LET ME GUESS LOL YOU HAVE BREATHLESSNESS LOL” and I did a pained thumbs up. I turned around and to my surprise there was a man with a wheelchair behind me who said he didn't trust me to not pass out and I was like HA FUCK YOU Constanze never passes out she's too stubborn she goes to the end so I continued to stand (I'd rather die on my feet than live on my knees or something like that) and very slowly tell them my details while a massive queue built up behind me. I continued trying to escape the wheelchair but he pretty much cornered me and scooped me up and drove me past a lot of old people giving me the dead eye as I got taken straight to my own booth. Sorry old people. They also checked all my valuables because Luton is the dodgiest place on Earth, haha.

The usual selection of doctors and scans and being repeatedly asked if I was another patient followed before someone came up to me and was like “WE THINK YOU HAVE FLUID ON YOUR LUNGS” and I was like yes I told you that when I came in no points for you. But yeah, it became apparent that I am seriously full of fluid, my right lung especially. It's in a lot more places now though, both lungs, around my stomach, abdomen, bloody litres of the stuff. Which is why I couldn't breathe, I think they said my right lung pleura was about 50% full and the left a bit less. So working on about half the normal lung (that's science be quiet). And my normal lung is much less than a normal lung so really not much lung at all. Not enough lung to power a mouse or a small hairdryer or anything of use.

Then in the evening I was sent up to a sort of ward (less ward, more holding pen for people who they haven't decided what to do with yet) and at the wonderful hour of 4AM (like, why?) they wheeled me up to one of the short stay wards upstairs. Put a focus on the words SHORT STAY there. After a bit of bed shuffling I was finally settled in a little side room with a beautiful view of three windows and a small portion of roof. Which is where I have been frustratedly inhabiting ever since.

(well that was embarassing, I just had my lunch then got a bit overexcited dancing to an Electric Six song and had a massive coughing fit and the nurse came running in thinking I was dying and she's greeted with the sight of me literally dancing myself to death as I sweat and cough up yellow gunk to the beat)

The first day or two were actually quite busy and productive. They took a small sample from my stomach (see pictures) and drained a whole litre off my right lung (the doctor was very impressed with how huge my effusion was). That's nowhere near as bad as it sounds, they stick a relatively not too painful needle between your ribs near your shoulder blade and syringe it out. I think they could have got quite a bit more but the doctors hands got tired. It just kept going. I felt a bit like a beer keg. My boyfriend had to leave the room because he felt a bit faint. What a loser.

That was sent off to be tested and came back as not being infected which is VERY GOOD. Litres of infected fluid is much worse that just fluid. Had some heart and liver scans and shit like that and as far as I know they haven't been too squashed and are still working probably. I was having really bad backache because I could only sleep in one very specific position (balancing the fluid so I can breathe was quite the challenge) but now they've drained a bit that's much less of a problem. They think it's obviously the Dasatinib doing all this but Luton just isn't a haemotology or a cancer hospital so on Thursday they decided I definitely needed to be transferred to Sheffield. They initially said a bed should be free on Saturday but it wasn't and now it's Tuesday and I am getting a bit fed up. I want to be at work and having fun and I can't plan anything because I don't know which end of the country I'm in and I have no clean pajamas and ergh. There's just nothing happening here. I get a dose of antibiotics in the morning and the evening and they check my observations and give me cups of tea. That is my life now.

And that's it. The world in which I am trapped. Waiting for someone in Sheffield to die or go home. Preferably the latter. I want to be treated by nurses that understand that tea is both a drink AND a meal. I want to breathe that excellent Northern air. I want to be in the hospital that feels like my home, where I know all the hidey holes and all the best places to eat my fried bread and cause havoc. My soul is not in this hospital. All the stickers on my bin are upside down and it's driving me insane. No one tells me anything and I feel like that kid at school with no friends.

They've also lost my shoes. I realised on Saturday that they were gone, I presume lost en route between wards as who the fuck steals shoes but we'll never know. I went around all the lost property boxes in all of the universes but to no avail. I really liked those shoes. Sad face. So for now it's just me and my special socks.

OK BREAKING NEWS AS I WRITE THIS DRAMA IS UNFOLDING!!!!!!!!

This morning I phoned the Hallamshire to see if it was ok for my mum to leave a bag of clothes for me there for when I arrrive as I'm running out of stuff and she has no days off until the weekend. They said that's fine, also phone us back in in an hour because we'll know if you're coming or not then. So call back I did and they were like it's not completely certain but we think it will be today. HURRAH. THEN about half an hour ago my mum got to the hospital to be told “oh no you can't leave any stuff here she's not coming today or tomorrow has she not told you”. As you can imagine this made me NOT TOO IMPRESSED. I spoke to the nurse here who liases with them and she was all like oh sorry I haven't been telling you anything but I thought I just had to tell you when you were definitely going not when you were not going etc etc etc and I felt the cold ocean of NHS inefficiency roll over my face.

And henceforth I am now discharging myself. I would rather wait out this bed game at home than here. Then I can at least eat normal food and have a shower without having to walk on a bed of toilet paper (srsly whoever keeps lining the shower floor with toilet paper plz stop). I know it's a bit naughty but I know myself and I know my illness and there's no benefit to me being here now. I'm not an idiot. Plus I don't want any more of my beloved accessories to go missing. The only concern is that without the oxygen mask my oxygen saturation can drop as low as the mid eighties but who cares YOLO YOLO YOLO I want to go home and eat cheese.

So now I'm just waiting for the discharge process to begin. And pondering how many funny looks I'm going to get on the way home as my only footwear is a pair of my boyfriend's bright red socks. I already got stopped by police a week or two ago because my legs were so swollen that I couldn't do my shoes up and I was staggering around St Pancras Station like a drunkard (I think they were a bit embarassed when they realised they'd confused cancer with vodka). Why do only ridiculous things happen to me? :D

And that's fucking that. That is fucking that is fucking that is fucking that.

<3 p="">

********UPDATE BIIIIIIIIIIG SEXY UPDATE*********

I am now home in my beautiful flat. A giant meat pizza has been ordered and I think I might be the happiest girl in the world. I had a final insult to injury as I left, the doctor came to see me and was like we've kind of realised that you don't need to be in a side room so waiting for one is rather silly now we've worked that out we can easily transfer you over there. This is something I have been repeatedly pointing out over the past few days but was ignored. As soon as they got the results that my fluid wasn't infected I have had no infection risk and no need to be in a room of my own. So I've spent the past five days waiting for a room I don't need. Ergh to the extreme.

They said if I stayed in overnight I'd almost definitely go tomorrow but I was so done by this point. They said if I leave I should go to day ward on Monday which is just totally confusing (why can't I just take myself to the ward tomorrow what you on about) but I am doing no more thinking today. NO MORE THINKING AT ALL. Just eating and washing and harassing my hamsters.

I tried to take a selfie of me doing an excited hospital face but I looked so awful (my skin's gone proper dry and angry) that I gave up. However I accidentally left on the feature that takes a picture every five seconds until you stop it so I ended up with about 300 pictures of myself looking rather grumpy. This one stood out to me as I think the head in hands face of frustration perfectly sums up the past week of my life so I decided I had to share it:

Oh dear. The world eh?

Anyway, that's all for now. The saga is over, at least for today. And as I type this pizza has arrived. Get in me meat feast!

Bye bye boys and girls <3 p="">xXxXxXx