D+230 - "When I get home * " and "Carry that Weight** "

Karine picked me up and I came home yesterday afternoon. The bug turned out to be an E. coli so presumably it escaped from my GI tract into my blood stream. The final diagnosis was bacterial septicaemia, a mild episode of it fortunately.  Haematology are brilliant at picking up and treating these infections really quickly.  They aim to have the infection screen (blood tests and swabs essentially) and the antibiotics started within an hour of arriving at hospital.  The timing and speed make a critical difference to the outcome.  We had phoned up the 24hr emergency haematology line and had arrived at the Day Case Unit a little before 8am.  It was already full of nurses and reception staff and the first few patients were just arriving.  Official start time is 8 o'clock.  Despite not having a booked slot I was taken straight through from the waiting area to the clinical area.  I'll repeat what I've just said above, haematology are brilliant.

After three days of IV antibiotics I was much better and am now on oral treatment for a week.  During my stay I was in three different wards (not counting spending the first morning in the haematology day case unit).  There were no free beds in haematology.  I'm now familiar with the Burns Unit and one of the Thoracic wards as well as the Specialist Receiving Unit.  

I'm going to discuss this episode in clinic tomorrow to see whether anything can be done to prevent a repeat.  I suspect the answer will be "very little".

One interesting aside, as part of the hunt for a cause, is that I had a non-urgent chest X-ray - i.e. they expected it to be normal (it was).  This was requested on Friday.  X-ray was pretty busy so my turn for an X-ray came round at 3.30am on Saturday morning.  I was woken up and told I was going for an X-ray, not a very patient friendly hour.  To be fair I was also told that in view of the hour I could refuse and it would be done later in the day if I preferred.  I wanted to get the diagnosis sorted out as soon as possible so off we went!

I asked the porter who wheeled me down to radiology about this and he said that routine X-rays at 3.30am on a Saturday were not unusual.  In July 2015 Jeremy Hunt accused the NHS of being wedded to a "Monday to Friday 9-5 culture".  If I'd had his phone number I'd have given him a call there and then to tell him that I was having a non-urgent investigation at 3.30am and what's more it was at the weekend!

Frustratingly, I've lost nearly 2kg during the past few days.  It takes ages to put weight on and is so easy to lose it when you're unwell.  I'm now about 4 or 5kg underweight - grrrr.

Whilst in hospital you have to have a blood thinning injection every day so another legacy from the last few days is some lovely multi-coloured bruises around my middle!  

*Beatles - "Hadr Day's Night" track 11
** Beatles - "Abbey Road" track 15

I was going to use Steely Dan's "Home at Last" from their album Aja but a couple of Beatles tracks seemed more appropriate in view of George Martin's death earlier today.