Two more to add to the collection
Yep, two more to add to the collection…sick notes, that is. I realised this morning that I’d forgotten to send my initial sick note from the hospital into work…duh! And now I have another one to add to the collection as well – another two weeks from next Monday. Just finished photocopying them before I send them off…
This week’s been rather mixed. My head’s definitely better than it was before the op, but it’s been an “up and down” week. I’ve discovered the morning bad heads creeping back in. I think though that’s because when you’re horizontal and gravity can’t do it’s stuff, the shunt(s) doesn’t (don’t) do it’s(their) stuff and drain as much either. It very quickly wears off once I’m vertical anyhow, which is good.
Though I’ve been pottering around the house a bit, I haven’t yet actually been out of the house since I left hospital, though I’m sure the outside world’s still there. Next week I’ve got a number of medical appointments, so I’ll be getting out and about and generally being upright more and doing stuff, so I’ll have to see how I get on with doing more. My doc’s signed me off work for another two weeks, and I’m thinking all being well maybe I’ll be able to go back to work then. If I do, it’ll be a record.
The fastest I’ve gone back before was after my last LP shunt, which was after 5 weeks. That time though I’d only got one wound, the back one, as it was just a matter of putting an extra valve in. I think after the original LP shunt op, it was probably something more like 6 or 7 weeks. The first DVT, a blood clot in my calf. Though I was recovered from the op itself, I was then off recovering from the DVT and getting drained of blood on a regular basis, as well as being injected with anticoagulants.
I’ll see how things go over the next couple of weeks.
Mainly this week I’ve been troubled by the niggling, and sometimes downright painful abdominal pains. New shunts, or newly messed around with shunts irritate stuff and you get all sorts of weird pains. The tubing of the shunt irritates the internal organs, as does the draining fluid, as bits of plastic and CSF were never intended to be floating around in there, and it takes a while for it to settle down and your insides to get the idea that the irritating tubing’s there to stay and there’s no use complaining about it. It settles down after a while, but it’s damned painful at times.
Aside from that, my head’s still rather sore, which is hardly surprising given that it had a hole drilled in it and then got a load of metalware fastening it together. It’s not so bad in the day, but I’m still very limited in what positions I can lay in at night. The fact I can only sleep on my left side is damned irritating, and my back’s protesting loudly at the moment.
Anyhow, stitches come out of the abdominal wound tomorrow when the district nurse comes. It’ll be the full 14 days since the op (doesn’t time fly when you’re having fun! 
) so it had better have finally properly healed by now. When the district nurse came on Monday to inspect it, she said it’s always difficult getting ones around the navel to heal, because whatever you’re doing when you move around, that bit moves, so it often takes longer to heal. It’s not painful at all though, though I’m sure it will be tomorrow when they get pulled out. Anyway, I’m off to find a bullet to bite on in preparation…
(well actually, I’m off to bed, but that doesn’t sound quite as impressive )
