POST DOUBLE TRANSPLANT RECOVERY

Fortunately for me they found one and good job too, because if they’d failed to locate one I believe a body with failed liver function can only last for about 72 hours on life support before irreparable damage occurs. So on Dec 11^th 2012 I received my 2^nd liver transplant. When I came to after this latest episode, I do have to admit I was feeling slightly under the weather. Life support makes your brain swell, therefore your head swells to accommodate it, and the pressure causes the blood vessels in your eyes to burst. 

I entered hospital feeling fairly fab, groovy, windswept and interesting (well I sort of believed it and that’s all that mattered), but I came out of surgery looking old, bloated, tired, ill and worse for wear, resembling some sort of ‘thing’ from the bottom of the swamp one describes to scare one’s grandchildren during bedtime stories. Back in intensive care my blood was now coursing with an ever expanding range of exotic chemicals to compensate for the surgery. Anti-biotics to prevent infection, immune-suppressants to prevent liver rejection, anti-acids to prevent acid release into the stomach, steroids to do what I can no longer remember, soluble aspirin to reduce the risk of blood clots through the hepatic artery, a CMV infection inhibitor and lots of other stuff too. I even gained 10kg in weight caused by a non-functioning liver during the surgery/life support process.

My whole body was swollen, my genitals looked like a spitting image caricature of the real thing, my stomach was swollen, tender and full of staples, my mouth and nose were crusty, and my bloodshot eyes were capable of turning the nurses to stone Medusa like were they to accidentally gaze upon me without making the sign of the cross first. However, the hospital staff were necessarily brutal in their regime of ‘encouraging’ patients not to feel sorry themselves, suck it all up, not to be wimps, and get the hell out of bed (not so easy when attached to a bewildering display of tubes, bags and surgical accoutrements). 

Hey ho, after 13 days I was ready for discharge, just in time for Christmas, December 21^st 2012. On that day I was finally disconnected from the last encumbrances to my freedom, the catheter, cannula and assorted drainage bags. But the intervening 13 days had seen some spectacular dashes to the porcelain chariot situated in the adjacent en-suite with markedly varying degrees of success and disaster. For those often and urgent impulses to engage oneself in the chemically induced throes of peristalsis would invariably arrive with barely enough notice to disengage oneself from one’s oxygen mask, untangle one’s wires from the cannula to the drip, electrically haul oneself upright enough in the bed without ripping ones staples out to then swing one’s bloated legs over the edge to begin the mad dash, which might all prove ultimately unnecessary anyway, for ignominious failure was often already upon one, resulting in that plaintive and hesitant call for help…………. Nurse!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!