Moving on. Grief and relief in equal measure

Phew! Yesterday was my first day out of work in decades and I've survived. Coffee and pastry in bed courtesy of my gorgeous, hard-pressed wife. Bit of aimless internet browsing. Ordered some mouthwash and a boxed DVD set. A lot of chat and 'wowness' reacting to the overwhelming tide of support and love flooding in from social media. Twitter, Facebook both busy. LinkedIn bonkers, absolutely bonkers. 450,000 views when I last looked, and I only posted two days ago. Lovely, lovely comments to warm my confused and doubting heart. Confused and doubting because even yesterday, I really wasn't sure I had done the right thing. For me or for the family. More coffee by the sea to reflect and breathe. Multiple visits to the loo as a result.

My LinkedIn post was something of a eulogy to Dixons Carphone and how the team have treated me during my time there. After all, I strolled in twelve years ago oblivious to the fact I had MS. And rolled out in a wheelchair. All the time, from diagnosis through to departure, I have been so very well treated, and I won't forget it. Should be the norm, but it isn't....

I've been rather quiet on my blog, and indeed on social meeja, while I wrestled with the idea of leaving my safe, cosy job full of great colleagues and handy benefits. (Handiest of all, pay). Change is hard and scary at the best of times, but when I genuinely don't know what's next, it's just terrifying! Who'll pick up the phone to a bloke in a wheelchair? How long will my fuzzy brain stay not-too-fuzzy-most-of-the-time? This growing feeling of grief I have felt these last few weeks at the thought of leaving, and of missing colleagues. Will it go?

It's been perhaps six months of angst since it dawned on me - and Mrs W - that maybe I should move on. I was working harder and harder. A bit to prove to myself I was still functioning. A lot because I needed to just to keep up. Some point soon I was going to let someone down, and I was exhausted.

And 2017 didn't help at all in the whole process. It was far and away our 'Annus Totalus Grieficus'. Losing my beloved and beautiful younger sister. Leaving my own small hospital ward at exactly the same time, knowing that two brave, cheerful guys in it would soon be dead from aggressive cancers. Moving out from our dream home (and away from a dream group of friends) to kick-start a new existence by the sea. Experiencing a 'faux grief' when our then 11 year-old ran out in front of a car and was hit full on at 40mph. He was out of hospital the next day with only deep cuts, bruises and a bit of internal bleeding. A miracle, but the 'what if' hangs over us every single day, even now. And to cap it all, our kitten dying the very next week to bring everyone's trauma - especially our son's - flooding and wailing out... Oh, and then our gardener briefly disappeared down a gaping sinkhole that suddenly opened up. on our lawn Turned out to be an abandoned well, but made for a good story and summed up our year perfectly.

Grief, grief, grief.

So how do I feel now? Relief relief relief. Looking back, Dixons never put a jot of pressure on me. Hopefully because I was doing a half-decent job. Partly perhaps because they appreciated what was happening. The pressure was all me. Already I am getting back on an even keel. Now I have time to stretch and exercise. Moments to nap. And on the flip side, the phone-calls and emails haven't stopped with juicy opportunities to explore. So much so that I have pushed everything back to next week whilst I take it all in.

Leaving Dixons Carphone was a surreal and painful thing to do. Leaving colleagues I have kinda grown up with was awful. But now I know my body and the winning 51% of my befuddled brain was right. And Mrs W is always right. Onwards!

Urology. Rhymes with Eurghh-ology

Urology. The dark arts of investigating malfunctioning bladder and bowels. I doff my cap to anyone who enters or leaves medical studies and says, "I know, I'll become an expert in wee and poo and stuff."

Sadly, like many a person with Multiple Sclerosis, I'm well-acquainted with urologists and their capacity for rummaging around and describing with complete precision the shape and size of my prostate. All the while chatting to me about the time of day or this afternoon's weather.

And the title of my blog, "One man and his catheters," may just indicate one routine I have to follow three or four times a day. The first time I did it, the nurse training me, (no, she wasn't young, Swedish or gorgeous), told me she feared I would pass out. It really is rather scary at first poking something up your willy. But it soon becomes as routine as brushing your teeth. And much quicker. Best not mix the two jobs up though...

Usually a urology check-up lasts a few minutes at most. This afternoon, as a result of my recent morphine-hazy hospital stay with a stonking bladder infection, I'm in for a thorough examination. Could be up to four hours they tell me. I'm wincing thinking about it. And I won't be reporting any details back, thank you.

Death sentences and Life sentences. The blue pill or the red pill?

Hurrah! I'm out of hospital after a total of 13 nights fighting a bladder infection and temperatures twice steaming scarily over 41 degrees.. My ward routine that started around 5am with a rude awakening for blood pressure checks and a refreshed IV drip is no more. It's been replaced these last mornings with a gorgeous 6.30am start, the time my two much-missed children are allowed to start bounding around the house before school. I'm utterly exhausted and I'm blissfully relieved...

My last five hospital nights were spent in a ward of four chaps including myself. One stubborn but lovely old gent of 89 also recovering from an infection. A big nose, a big smile and capable of humongous, prolonged noises when sitting on a commode thrice daily.

Another, a bushy-haired, goatee-bearded Scouser, was trundled in a few hours after me with increasing back pain and a hacking cough. It had come out of nowhere. When he arrived he was extremely and forever uncomfortable. By the time I left he was the colour grey, in agony, on constant oral morphine and had been diagnosed with at least three cancers, including bone and the esophagus (throat, roughly). It was terrifying to see him worsening what seemed by the minute, and torture every night listening to his suffering. He had a wicked laugh and kept it going through all the bad news and grimacing. He made a special effort for the constant stream of worried family and friends dropping in. Heartbreaking.

The last of the four was a 6 ft 7in East Londoner, loud and sweary of mouth. Never stopped talking but most of what he spouted was great fun. Like me, he has an 11 year-old son. He came in knowing he was two years into pancreatic cancer, but with a newly bloated stomach. It was drained of over 4 litres of fluid one morning - Charming, but I was delivering not far off that via a catheter, so each to his gruesome own. One morning, a posh-looking consultant marched in and drew the blue curtains around his bed. Those blue curtains are handy enough for privacy during a clothes change, a bed bath, or a musical sit on a commode (see above). But they're hardly the best way to deliver devastating news. I tried not to listen, but it was impossible not to. Right there, three metres away from me, he was told firmly but with compassion that he had three to six months to live. He hyperventilated, he wailed, he swore like never before, while I cried quietly to myself taking it all in.

As the curtains drew back, I considered pretending to be asleep, but instead took a deep breath, and asked him how he was. I let him pour out his grief and confusion, and slowly he came to a calmer place. He called his wife in and gave her the news. More counselling, more gnashing of teeth. Given I was feeling bloody awful myself, and with Scouser possibly facing a similar fate, these were perhaps the hardest, most intense few days of my life.

I have a life sentence. There is no cure for Multiple Sclerosis, and there's unlikely to be one in time for me. Indeed probably not for a long time after. At my MS Centre, I meet lots of cancer survivors who come in to use our Oxygen tank to accelerate the healing process. I learn so much talking to them. They are usually in remission, and hoping that they'll stay that way. I look at them unable to comprehend what horrible treatments they have faced. They look at me, permanently disabled. More often than not, I know they are glad they have 'only' had cancer. And I'm glad I 'only' have Multiple Sclerosis. We frequently and guiltily say it out loud to each other.

The guys in my ward were cruel extremes, but definite Life Sentence or (potential) Death Sentence. Which would you choose? I hope you never have to.

Blue Lights, Morphine and a Resuscitation Room

OK, so there's me booked to speak on Wednesday to 500 health professionals at the thrilling 'Infection Prevention and Control 2017' event. Lots of clever, senior medical people in the line-up And little old me, who wouldn't know his Metatarsal from his Metabolism. I was there because I'd been on the other side of the fence, twice hospitalised by bladder infections, or UTI's. Urinary Tract Infections. I do know that hokum phrase at least.
Here's proof I was on the line-up. I had 20 minutes to talk about my bladder. Rock 'n Roll...
Infectioncontrol2017.co.uk/speakers
So of course I had a blog lined up in my mind. How fun it was to say 'willy' at a medical conference. How when my first bladder control symptoms emerged I lived in France, so I could pee anywhere. That sort of thing.

And then guess what? Sunday night before my grand outing I felt weird, Monday too. And by the evening with a raging fever and painful cramps setting in down my left-hand side, I knew I had another UTI. The two nice paramedic chaps knew I had a bad case too and blue-lighted me to my unfortunate home-from-home, Luton & Dunstable Hospital. I was whizzed through from A&E into my own hideaway, disturbingly called the Resuscitation Room. They assured me this was just about speedy availability, but I did wonder just how serious this was going to be.

The team had a nightmare undressing me, as the fever had already paralyzed my left arm 90 degrees at the elbow, and was scrunching my hand into a painful, immobile claw. Removing my shirt around me was like a puzzle, though I did let them know they were welcome to cut it apart, so desperate was I start being pumped full of whatever.

Whopping catheter shoved in you-know-where, canular inserted (in my arm!), blood and urine samples carted off, UTI confirmed. But the pain in my cramping left elbow and hand were off the scale now. I was breathing fast and short, and my heart was pumping like a mouse's. I heard the word 'morphine' mentioned, and once that happened, I wouldn't stop nagging those around me to do the deed. It felt like hours, though was probably a matter of minutes. Morphine, marvellous morphine, intravenously. Almost instant, glorious pain relief and some freeing up of the tension. My fingers could move enough to take a crap selfie.

A whoozy two nights in an Acute Ward, with further odd morphine doses as the antibiotics grappled with my gremlins and my temperature - over 41 at one point... And early Wednesday morning a transfer to a normal,  four person ward. That three night stay has a whole other blog in it.

Suffice to say, I'm out and alive. Grateful to the overstretched NHS for acting so speedily, and for filling me with so many needles. And this visit, on at least two occasions, the morning toast was warm. A butter-meltin' miracle...

And now the unpleasant waiting game to play with Multiple Sclerosis. How much damage is done, how much can I recover? Right now I'm awaiting a home follow-up visit, then I'm back off to bed... No morphine though, but that's because there's no pain, hurrah!