YOU NEVER KNOW WHAT IS AROUND THE CORNER

 It has been ages since I posted. A lot has been going on in real life and I haven't had time or inclination to post. On 23 July, Bill got up from the table and walked around the corner to his study when I suddenly heard him say, "What's going on ?". Then I heard his feet shuffling followed by a crash. I knew he had fallen. I rushed into his study and found him unconscious on the floor. He came to when I touched him and spoke to him. He was on his side and he rolled over and attempted to get up but I insisted he stay still and rest for a bit. His glasses were broken on the floor and his face was bleeding where they had dug into his head. His paper thin skin had been torn off his arms and bleeding. Luckily, it wasn't too hard to stop with a handful of tissues. While I was doing this his Apple watch was asking if he was okay as it had detected a fall. I knew he wouldn't be able to get up off the floor so I said let the watch do its job. So after 60 seconds the ambulance service spoke I answered and explained what happened and they told me how to stop the bleeding and sent an ambulance. 

Bill spent three days in hospital. They x-rayed his head to try to establish why he blacked out. Everything looked okay except they found a screw loose!!!(Hee Hee). The little screw that holds on the arm of his glasses had embedded in his head. So they dug it out and sewed him up and patched up his arms and sent him home with a change to his medication to try to avoid low blood pressure.

The next day his knee swelled up and he was in a lot of pain and couldn't walk on it. He was having loads of trouble trying to get around the house. Village friends lent us a wheelie walker and we hired devices to help him get out of bed and chairs and in the bathroom. Our daughter flew from Melbourne to come and help. She is an angel. However, the pain got worse and the skin went red so we had a video consultation with the doctor who suggested he went back to hospital in case it was cellulitis. 

Unfortunately, our favourite private hospital was full so he was taken to our local public hospital. After a week of investigations and intravenous antibiotics they transferred him to a private hospital where he still is today. He has been treated for gout (uric acid crystals) and pseudogout  (calcium crystals) in the knee. He is having more drugs and physiotherapy. Just as he was beginning to walk a little on the painful leg  he developed pneumonia so that was a set back and more intravenous antibiotics needed but all his veins collapsed when they tried to insert yet another cannula after a few days. So now he is on another tablet.

He had a terrible cough but it is subsiding now. The doc said his chest is clear but they saw a shadow on his lung in the X-Ray so now they are investigating that. Poor guy has had enough. He is sick of being unwell and of being in hospital. Our other daughter flew from Melbourne for a week to cheer us up and help at home. We are so lucky to have such fabulous daughters. They both flew home last Monday.

Hopefully I'll have some fun things to write about soon.

The public hospital had modern equipment, great nurses but too many people and not easy to communicate with doctors.

Learning to walk again but it was painful. In a private hospital, which is showing its age but he had a room of his own with a view and good nurses and a doctor who spoke with us every day.

Our girls come to cheer up their dad.

Then pneumonia strikes.

HE TRIED TO OUTDO ME AND WON.

 Not long after I came out of hospital after having a bowel blockage, I noticed Bill didn't look himself. I asked if he felt okay and he said ''Not really". But he couldn't pin point where he felt bad. After a week he got worse and I took him to the doctor who sent him for a blood test. The results weren't good. He had high urea and low haemoglobin. Doctor took him off one of his many drugs and told him to have another blood test in three days. Over those three days, Bill deteriorated so much that I nearly took him to hospital but we hung on for the results of the next test. Doc said,"Good news and bad news." The urea count had gone back to normal but the bad news was that the haemoglobin had dropped to a dangerous level and he needed to go to hospital and have a blood transfusion. He was obviously bleeding internally. So off we went to emergency where they gave him an endoscopy and discovered blood in his stomach but they couldn't do anything due to the anticoagulant drug that was in his system. So he was taken off the drug and given two bags of blood. He looked and felt better after that but he had to wait seven days for the anticoagulant to leave his body. Two days later he needed another transfusion and his blood pressure was dropping dangerously low a few times. Finally, his haemoglobin count became stable and he was allowed home for two nights but had to return for another gastroscopy and colonoscopy to find where it was bleeding and seal it with APC (argon plasma coagulation). It wasn't a pleasant time for him but it is all over and the bleeding found in the caecum has stopped and he is on the mend.

He was so sick and weak he couldn't move out of his chair.

For the first 6 days he was in a noisy room but then a kind nurse found him a quieter room. He was happy about that.

Now he is mended and is getting back to his old self and even cooking dinner.

We even go for short walks around the village and check out the wild life.