The 22nd of April. I have pulled a muscle deep within my backside and it is causing me a fairly serious amount of pain. Ibuprofen isn't an option because of potential dangerous side effects and I can't use something like Voltarol because I cannot find the muscle to rub the gel into!
This morning I did normal, boring things, then at half twelve, Mommy and I went to Tesco and M&S to get me some protein snacks and more vegetables and soup. I must have appeared vastly interesting to small children, as in Tesco, a little girl pointed at me and said "She's got pink hair!", then in M&S, a tiny boy pointed in my face and said something made indeterminable by his dummy, but it sounded like "Radish"! That's fine; I'll be a radish.
This afternoon, I had some of the Super Vegetable Soup, then I did some exercising (just not any squat-like exercises). My mouth seems okay - comparing photos of it every day is helping me keep track of how it's progressing.
A guy I've met a few times called Stephen is dying. He's been terminal since 2012, but now he's in the TCT unit with a collapsed lung, with maybe only a day or two left. He seems okay with it. I'm not sure how I'll feel at that stage; I really hate not being able to breathe comfortable but I don't want to die in a hospital. I don't know how I'd be able to sleep, but any sleeping tablet would suppress my breathing more. It makes me death a little more real.
The 23rd of April.
I've been on the precipice of tears all day because of Stephen. It's not because i know him particularly well or he's had a massive effect on me, it's just that it's making the prospect of my own demise a little bit more solid. I am desperate not to die in hospital like he will because it would feel like I had been beaten, but logically I am not sure how I could avoid it. Dying from an infection is very different to your body slowly switching off, which is sort of what's happening to him, I think. When I get the untreatable infection, if it's anything like my most recent cholangitis attacks, the pain will be immense so I'll be hopped up to my eyeballs on IV morphine at the least, plus whatever they are giving me to try to control the fever. When things start shutting down, ICU is probably going to be my destination, but I can't bear the idea of it being the final place I close my eyes.
So thinking about that has taken up most of my day. I did some exercising as it's a good distraction, but all in all I'm a little lost today. I've got to go to the QE tomorrow for photopheresis, and right now I really can't predict how I'm going to deal with it.