Subscribe
I was discharged from hospital today, and am at home with a bag of antihistamines and steroids to continue what the IV drugs started. Here I am.
Not quite back to normal… but I now recognise myself when I look in a mirror, which is a great step forward.
I don’t mind telling you that these last few days have – to use a medical term – completely freaked me out. It’s so frightening not to know your own face. It’s scary when people double-take at you. (No-one did that in a horrible way. It’s more a ‘my eyes just need to check what I’m seeing’ reflex.) It’s weird when your field of vision is limited by your swollen eyelids – like peering at the world through a letterbox.
Of course being in hospital doesn’t really help – all of the noise and to-ing and fro-ing and truly (and I mean truly) dreadful food – and the lack of sleep compounds everything. Don’t get me wrong, I’m grateful that the hospital system was there and intervention was possible before my head exploded, but boy, am I glad to be home. We returned at around 1pm today and I went to sleep, instantly, for four hours, during which time nobody came to take my temperature and blood pressure, try to make me have a strange meal at a strange hour, or shout ‘Nurse! Nurse! I need to open my bowels!’ every ten minutes ten feet away from me. Bliss.
I realised at some point during the night that I wasn’t going to wake up with my face pinged back to normal; that this is all going to take a bit of time. My skin has the consistency of a block of Parmesan cheese and is still pretty swollen, but given how bad it was I think I can live with a gradual return to normality. (Which will seem, to me, like breathtaking beauty!)
But I am shaken by all of this. Alan points out that I wasn’t really prepared for it, in the way that one is prepared for and half-expecting chemotherapy side effects; that’s certainly true. I’d also convinced myself that the worst of the treatment was over. I can’t tell you how often I’ve had conversations along the lines of, “I’m so glad that the big stuff is now over, just the tablets now, back to normal, la la la” over the last couple of weeks. I guess I spoke too soon…
Oh your poor face. I know it's not healing fast enough for you. By the way your hair looks fantastic! It's really growing back. I'm so glad you're out of the hospital. Take care and sleep well in your own bed:)
Stephanie, I'm really starting to think that there is no such thing as 'getting back to normal'. I really am starting to think that life is changed forever. Not necessarily all bad, but really, life is changed for good. You will never go back to what you were.