It is 2am so now Wednesday morning and therefore 9 weeks since my lung first collapsed, and I think I may be finally losing the plot (yes there is an assumption there that I had any vague grasp of it to begin with). The last few nights I have found it quite tricky to settle, getting to sleep around 2.30/3am. As a hospital never sleeps, the phone by the nurses’ station will sporadically ring throughout the night. Every time it goes I now find myself sitting up, craning to hear any sound of movement or excitement, and wait with bated breath hoping that a few minutes later the phone in my room will ring, and it will prove to be Harefield ringing to tell me they have potential organs. I go through periods of not dwelling on transplant at all to it taking up a good deal of thought time and recently the desperation has really kicked in again. This combined with the slightly flat (nay, deflated, much more fitting) over the last few days has made me worry about my mental resilience, and whether I am holding up all that well at the moment. However I needn’t have feared as in good old typical completely illogical style, my brain seems to have jumpstarted itself in the most bizarre fashion.

Having come off of suction earlier today, I have been trying to move around the room more, it is an absolute joy just to be able to walk to the window or into the bathroom and back, even though this is quite a precarious and tricky act ensuring all tubes buckets and wires are in the correct position and not tugged. On returning to bed a short time ago, I bounced up onto the mattress and in a slightly over enthusiastic bid for independence used my right arm to push myself up onto the bed. Clearly not the most sensible thing to do when you have a drain precariously balanced in between your ribs. Something wasn’t too keen on my acrobatic attempt and I felt a little nudge, followed by a rather incensed and wheezy sounding puff. Puzzled, I breathed in and out again and gave a little cough to try and locate the source only to realize indignant puffing was coming from the hole in my chest, and by putting my hand there I could feel the air puffing out, quite a bizarre sensation. You may not be surprised to hear that this is not listed in the big book of things that chest drains are supposed to do. Strangely enchanted and fascinated by the new talking hole in my chest I coughed a few more times – just to make sure I suppose, perhaps it follows the mentality of prodding a bruise or something to find that yes that does in fact still hurt – before bleeping the nurse to tell her that I may or may not have misbehaved at the dead of night yet again.

She went off to call the doctor and she came swiftly to have a quick look. So at 1am I was in the interesting position of sitting on the bed, with me, the doctor and the nurse all staring intently at my chest, straining hard to hear of any signs of escaping air. The doctor began feeling to ensure air was not gathering under the skin, checking the breast tissue surrounding the drain and out of curiosity I also started poking around the surrounding area. We then began poking at the left side of my chest in order to compare, all whilst listening in hushed concentration and no doubt pulling that face of frowning and staring upwards which is somehow required, when I became acutely aware of just what this scene of intense nighttime groping may look like to someone who happened to walk in. Suddenly I was overcome with the overwhelming desire to giggle, not particularly advisable when wanting to appear convincingly sane. All seems fine however, and the puffing died down fairly rapidly, so she has stuck an airproof dressing over the top as a precaution but my obs are excellent so we will ignore it till the morning unless anything changes.

You see this is why I love my little brain. I love the fact that I should have (and would have expected to) pout considerably over this and yet my brain decided tonight that it would find it immensely amusing, thus using it as leverage to snap me out of a malaise I have been in danger of slipping into. I would like to take credit for this and say that it is some careful planning and forethought that allows said event to amuse me, but sadly no it is a case of simple minds simple pleasures, or rather illogical minds illogical pleasures. It reminds me of the tableontubitis episode as documented here, which had a similar affect on my mental state. Think I might attempt some sleep now, you never know I may even behave myself until the morning if the poor on call doctor is lucky.