My nurse from the Brompton came today to take some bloods to see if we can work out if I have an infection brewing. It is hard to know as there is such a fine line, plus my lungs in their consistently Diva-like behaviour have decided that oral antibiotics are clearly passé so prefer to jump the queue straight to IVs. She did point out that it may not be anything new, and instead just my lungs new level of function since the summers antics. If that is the case then I am sure I will adapt, I am more worried about infection going untreated and causing further damage…I shall just wait and see and not ponder on it till tomorrow.

Far more excitingly, yesterday a nice man from the Oxygen company phoned me to say he was on his way round with a liquid oxygen…thing. The real name of it escapes me, mainly because it so resembles a Dalek I keep expecting it to start wheeling after me down the corridor shouting at me in a monotone way, I am rather tempted to name it Derek, Derek the Dalek makes me giggle every time I say it (I name all my equipment for those who don’t already know, v bad habit which I now cant break for fear that new equipment would spontaneously disassemble out of jealousy). He arrived and came in to assess where my dalek should go (sadly this meant he got to see the chaos that is my house at present due to a busy week or so) and eventually settled on the hallway, as it is well ventilated, not near any electrical equipment, and near the front door which was quite important as this beast weighs 11stone. The engineer was fantastic and explained everything really clearly. He was here for some time, going through all the technicalities (there are a lot of them) and demonstrating how everything works (I’m not sure I understood everything as I tend to change things in my head so that I remember them, for example the fact that “steam” will start to escape from main dalek as little cylinder is nearly full translates in my head that dalek is getting puffy having overexerted, which I don’t think is quite accurate). So I now have a great big dalek sitting in the hallway, and the small clever refillable cylinder which will give me back some freedom, yay!

Spot the difference...

To be honest I am mortally afraid of the thing, which I shouldn’t be as it is clearly very safe, as long as you don’t do anything stupid like try and touch the nozzle you use to fill it up with as your hand will probably stick to it what with it being stupidly cold - I don’t think I am exaggerating when I say -200 degrees (incidentally when someone tells you constantly to make sure you don’t do something, does anyone else develop and overwhelming urge to do exactly that?) So nervy in fact that when he left and the small cylinder started making what I can only describe as honking noises I phoned him straight away and asked him to come back, only to confirm that this is just because it is new, and releasing pressure or something…I don’t know, as long as it’s not about to explode or something I don’t mind, although if said noises continue going out in public is going to be rather amusing (“would you like any cash back?” “Yes please could I…HONK” like some childish comedy gag).

When he was explaining to me how long it would last, saying how I could go out for half a day but then might need to pop home and refill it, I felt tears of happiness at this potential new freedom forming but managed to swallow them down before coming across as a hysterical over emotional woman. Even if I need to run it on 4 litres I can go out for about 4 hours but most excitingly, when the cylinder runs out, the fact I can refill it from the dalek in the hallway means I won’t be trapped at home waiting for a delivery of new cylinders. I road tested it last night and headed over to a friends house for lasagne and a sophisticated and profound film (pretty woman). The cylinder was quite well behaved, it seems to honk less when in use but complied and did kindly so at least three times which I appreciated for amusement value. I can now look forward to attending our Gospel workshop fundraiser for the CF Trust this Sunday (info@performingforcf.co.uk for more details) which I didn’t think I would be able to go but am excited at the prospect of being part of what should be a fantastic day. Hurrah for Derek the Dalek!