X-ray

 

Having had two rather large operations on my neck within a month I am having problems with my swallow... 

On Tuesday 17th March I went to Dumfries hospital to have an x-ray taken while trying to swallow in order to see what was going on... As can be seen in the video as I swallow the drink or food gets lodged near the opening of my wind pipe and small amounts 'leak' down the wrong way, there are exercises to help prevent this but at the moment I am unable to do them. Fortunately things do seem to be getting better everyday as my neck heals.

If you look closely at my jaw you can see the reconstruction that was needed to rebuild me after the infection in October.

During this week I also had a routine check up with my consultant and for the first time of seeing him there was nothing wrong, my next check up is now in two months (finally something good to report).

 

Ready for Home.. Again!

That's a week since my operation now and today the 40 plus staples came out along with the tracheotomy tube, the drain came out yesterday... It's not been that bad here in Dumfries, room to myself and so many visitors I'm going to have to get home for some rest.... Still have the feeding tube in at the moment as swallowing isn't too hot but I'm not surprised about that... Looking forward to a walk on the beach with Troy!

Emergency Operation

So I got out of Southern General on Friday and had a great weekend at home, just like normal. Then Tuesday morning arrived, woke up at 3am for some pain relief no problem, straight back to sleep.... woke up at 6am and I couldn't move my neck, after a struggle to get up I looked in the mirror and my neck had swollen to the size of my head, not much I could do about it now so I decided to take some paracetamol and make an appointment at the doctors when they opened... Then all hell broke loose, the pressure must have found a weak stitch and blood started spurting all around the bedroom, this was rather un-nerving... An ambulance trip later I find myself being rushed through for emergency surgery to repair torn artery and wake up in ICU with a tracheostomy but a much smaller neck.... I am now in HDU and feeling fine with a move to a normal ward expected later today.... Dumfries RI is quite a nice hospital by the way.

Well done Vodafone

I was having problems adding credit to my Vodafone dongle so I used Instant Chat... Here's the transcript of our chat

Well done Louise and thank you...

Swans at Gartnavel

Southern General revisit

Well I've been back at Southern General Hospital for a week now, I had my neck dissection last Monday, the op lasted six hours but the surgeon managed to save almost all the important nerves and structure and was very optimistic... I've lost a lot of my swallow and my speech sounds like I have a pair of Rob's sock stuffed in my mouth at the moment but this should come back, I have no interest in rushing it. The main problem has been my neck drain, it should have come out after 3 days allowing me to get back home for the weekend but on Friday for some reason the amount of outflow doubled so I've been stuck here.... It's now going down at a good rate so I'm hoping that I'll get home tomorrow and start the real process of repairing myself......
Thursday 75ml - Friday 155ml - Saturday 120ml - Sunday 80ml and hopefully anything under 50ml for today, Monday