Not for the Squeamish...

4 Days after the Operation

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Are you impressed? This is my scar today. I might put one on each week to document how it heals. Although once the radiotherapy starts it may get worse for a while. The white dressing is where they took the drain out. Will I ever get my swan-like neck back? :-)

It is still a bit achey so I can't sleep for more than a couple of hours as it gets stiff and painful after that. I'm not very good at sleeping sitting up, sadly.
I have an appointment to go and see the Practice Nurse on Tuesday so that she can check that it all looks good and change the dressing. Then I have an date with Mr Hughes on 20th February, when he will let me in on the next stage of The Plan. He should have all the results back from the labs by then and we may have more idea what we are dealing with.

Had a lovely pyjama day today, enjoying looking out of the window at the snow, knowing I don't have to go out there. More bits of my hospital experience keep coming back to me. On the first day after the op I had a visit from a nice nurse with a very nervous, large chap in tow. She explained that he was a medical student and would I mind if he had a go at taking some blood from me?  Well, I guess you have to do your bit for education so I said yes. She talked him through it step by step, though it was a little disconcerting when he pointed at my arm and said "Is that the vein?" I was kind of hoping he'd checked out the diagrams at some point before this.

He jabbed the needle in and to my surprise he had hit the spot and blood was coming out. He couldn't get the little bottle attached though and it lost it's vacuum so he had to get another. It did hurt a bit while he was fiddling on the tray to get one as he wasn't keeping an eye on the needle and it was pulling. But he did get two little vials full and his tutor was pretty pleased with him by the time he'd finished. I'd give him 8/10. He could have smiled a bit :-)

I did my exercises properly today. The physiotherapist gave me a sheet with them on just before I left the ward. She closed the curtains around us while she took me through them. Mostly head and neck stretches, with some right arm lifts too. I can do most of them although trying to put my left ear down to my left shoulder really hurts the most. They suggest taking painkillers before you attempt the exercises. I guess you have to try to stretch the scars so they don't heal up too tightly and restrict your movement. I'm pretty happy with how much my head and arm can move.

Not entirely sure about my tongue and bottom lip though. It makes talking difficult, as it seems to get in the way when I try to say things like "visitors" and makes eating tricky too. I had Ready Brek for Breakfast - which was easy. Then Laura made me banana pancakes for lunch, which being fairly soft took longer to chew - but were delicious. For dinner tonight Nathan made his legendary chicken, bacon, mushroom and leek pie, which I love. I tried a small piece with some mashed potato - and got through most of it. So as you can see - I'm not exactly starving! It just takes a while to eat - and I'm exhausted by the end of it.
Hmm - I think it's time for a lie-down now. Or maybe a game of online poker ;-) xx