N3il's Blog

Wishing you all Christmas Greetings
and a Happy New Year from the Jeremy’s

To all our family and friends.

After being a bit distracted this last month with hospitals, we just haven’t been able to get around to sorting out Christmas cards, so this year we are resorting to sending out greetings via this blog.

Fortunately on Monday the doctors were happy that any infection that had caused me problems last week had cleared up with the antibiotics and so I was released from hospital yesterday (Monday). We are now looking forward to heading up to my parents in Ipswich for a couple of days over Christmas.

Please continue to pray for us all as my radiotherapy starts on Monday 30 December for 5 days a week for 6 weeks and then it will be a month after that before life will start to get back to some sort of normaility. So thanks again for all your support and prayers at the time.  We will continue to keep you updated.

Have a Happy Christmas and a peaceful and healthy New Year.

Love Neil, Sue, Dan, Sophy and Amy

I was taken by ambulance into hospital last Tuesday 17 December after  throwing up and then becoming very confused. After spending  a couple of hours in emergency at the Pru hospital in orpington. I was later admitted Tuesday evening as I had some sort of infection in my head and they wasn’t sure what it was do to the surgery I had recently had.

Today is Sunday 22 December and I am still in hospital  as they wanted to make sure I finished the 5 day course of antibiotics and so hopefully I will be going home tomorrow.

The last 5 days have been tough as for 4 of theses days, I’ve had my own room and  have been spending alot of time on your own and when your not really sure what’s going on or how long your gonna to be in for. This  I thing has been partly done to the fact that I have had 2 different hospitals dealing with me and no-one has really known all the facts and details and which is why I thing I’ve been in limbo land. Hopefully tomorrow this will all be over.

So please pray that this is the case and that any infection is cleared up And next week on Monday 30 December i will be starting my radiotherapy for 6 weeks. Sue is gonna to do a blog soon to fill in more of the details of the last week.

It’s now just over 3 weeks since the operation and day by day life is very, very slowly improving, but we still have an tough 2 months ahead.

I still getting all my food and medications via a noise tube, but my ability to swallow and drink fluids is improving daily. It might take a a while until I can start to eat food normal, so the prospects for Christmas aren’t great.

Bedtimes are still pretty hard as I have struggled to learn how to breath and swallow whilst lying down, but this has slightly improved this weekend and I have been able to get brief periods of 3-4 hours in a stretch.

My eyes haven’t improved and this has made it difficult for me to concentrate to read or write , which is one of the reasons I haven’t be able to blogging much recently, but do bear with Sue and myself as we will still write as often as we can.

The week did  off badly with having 3 teeth removed, which have now finally healed. The end of the week wasn’t much better , as I did find out before leaving the hospital that I would need to have 6 week course of radio therapy in the new year and it was confirmed on Friday that this treatment will start on Monday 30 December and will mean going up to Guys Hospital for  20-30 minute appointment 5 days a weeks for 6 weeks and on Friday I had to have a mesh mask made of my head, which which fits over my whole head and will keep my head in correct place for the treatment. This is quite an uncomfortable mask as you have no space to move at all in it, but hopefully it will only be on for 15-20 at a time.

So please continue to pray for me that  I might be able to get throughout these next 2 months and that hopefully I might see small steps of progress each day. This is still a daily roller coaster of  emotions for both myself, Sue and the kids and thank you to all of  you have been supporting at this time.

Neil

I’m at it again, updating my blogging skills after a short break.

Neil is now home, hooray! He came out on Wednesday after a very long wait for medication. It is much better for him and us now he is home, if a little daunting. I have added nursing to my skill set and the medical staff seem to think I am doing a pretty good job so far. It is a bit worrying that nurses take a 3 year degree to become qualified, yet overnight I am expected to do the same job! It is taking us a bit of time to settle into the new routine, but we are getting there. My school have been brilliant, giving me the end of last week off and to the end of this week too. Neil has been very tired, but overall is sleeping better and not in too much pain. Although he is taking sips of water, swallowing is still a real challenge. You don’t realise how much we take for granted simple things, like being able to swallow saliva, until you can’t do it.

With the help of our amazing friends, we were even able to give Dan an eighteenth birthday party on Saturday at home. Neil managed to stay downstairs for a couple of hours, until he got too tired and retired to bed.

One of the downsides of being at home is that we now have to attend outpatient appointments, which are held at Guy’s and St Thomas’s. This means that we have to travel up to town for appointments, which is not great when you are recovering from major surgery, can’t swallow and are being tube fed. We spent the whole of Monday doing just this, seeing the speech therapist, special care dental team and then the eye specialist at St Thomas’s. It was an awful day, not only because we spent over 7 hours at appointments and travelling, but mainly because when we saw the dental team, who were checking the teeth prior to radio therapy, the consultant said he needed 3 of his back teeth out and then proceeded to do it there and then! I think Neil was in shock for the rest of the afternoon. It was just awful, feeling sore and with a mouthful of blood, we then had to make our way over to St Thomas’s to see the eye specalist, travel back during rush hour, eventually returning home at 7pm. What made it even worse was the fact that one of the teeth they took out, he had just spent £200 on getting a ‘super’ filling, only the week before his surgery! Grrrrrrr!!

Something to pray about is Neil’s left eye. The surgery has left him with a large blind spot in this left eye, which makes focussing tricky. The consultant thinks that over time the brain should learnt to compensate for this, so that it doesn’t’ notice the blind spot. All those who have been praying, please pray that this will happen. Also, pray that the swallowing will get stronger so he will be able to tolerate some food over the coming weeks. It looks like he will continue to be fed by tube for a further few weeks yet.

Well, that’s it for now. Once again thanks for all your support.
Sue & Neil

Hi guys
Just a quick update here on Tuesday 3 December, to let you all know that I have been told I can go home tomorrow, to sleep in my bed, watch my TV and but still eat hospital food!

But this is only because I’m still Have a fair way to go in learning to eat and drink again and there is still a whole physical programme to work on to get my body working fully again. But at least it will be at home.

It’s been great to see more do friends today in hospital and I will be great to more of you when I’m home. I also know that after Christmas I will need to start a 6 weeks course of radio therapy, so I just going to enjoy Christmas with our families and the great community of friends around us who have been a great source of food and blessed to us and my family and hopefully start to enjoy the pleasures of eating and drinking nice stuff over Christmas.

Hopefully see you all soon.
Neil