It's been a while...

Oops.

And apparently I only blog on family birthdays now, as today my tiniest dot of a sister Abby turned 21 and is now a big grown-up. Sort of. Happy birthday boblet xx

So let's talk about me (well this is my blog after all...)

When last I wrote, I was still needing monthly bronchoscopies as that pesky lower lobe in my right lung was convinced that closing up in a sulk was the right answer. I had also been chasing my fundo op for some time. Quite a long time. Too long for my liking actually.

Anyway, the good news is I was fundoplicated (word? if not, it should be...) on 7th April (when they called to change the date I was ready to go a bit stabby, but luckily it was only to delay it by 24 hours) and it was ok. A and my mum came up with me on the day, and all seemed to be going fine, until the surgeon took a look at my stomach and noticed the scar from my MI op which I had at birth. Cue a slight panic as my scar is rather large, and they were immediately concerned that keyhole surgery would no longer be possible. I was told I'd probably need open surgery, an epidural, and a couple of nights in intensive care. You can imagine how well I took this and sulky my face became.

There was also a minor panic when they read my chart and realised I was a transplant patient going under a GA (random nurse reads "lung transplant" and sees "DANGER") but luckily I had a wonderful anesthetist who took one look at me and said "don't be daft, she's stronger and fitter than most of us!" Luckily for me, it all went very smoothly, the surgical team were excellent and I woke up relieved to discover that it had indeed been done via keyhole. Eating and drinking was very tricky at first - I could only really eat soup for the first week and even drinking liquids too quick caused a lot of pain - but I'm now pretty much back to a normal diet, except that I cannot eat quickly, and I cannot eat half as much as I used to be able to (neither of these are bad things).

The most exciting news of all is that my lung function has already improved. In fact, Harefield were so thrilled with my report that Dr C has taken me off the various nebulisers I'd had to go on to stablise things. Needless to say, I'm over the moon, and to anyone being "threatened" with this operation, yes it isn't very nice, yes it is a hassle, especially the lack of eating part afterwards, but I know many many people for whom it has worked wonders, and I appear to be one of them. Not nice in the short term, but worth it by far in the long term I hope.

So that's an update on me. I'm going to write another little blog now, which I think will autopost tomorrow. Bit like buses, my posts.