N3il’s Blog

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

Well it really is 10 days since I arrived for my operation and in some ways the time has flown by and in many way time has really dragged away. But I feel in can say that there is light at the end of the tunnel. Hopefully I with all things being well the plan is to be home by mid week.

As for health progress there a bit to fill you all in with.

I’m no longer a’Man of Steel’ as all the staples holding my face together have been removed, which has also made my face less pulled together so more comfortable. I still have some tape strips just to protected the scar.

For my swallowing, I’m still being fed and watered via the tube through my nose, which does mean I never really feel hungry, but I do still feel thirsty partly because the ward is always so warm and I can just give myself a syringe full of water. So part from syringes of water the rest of my daily food comes in the from of a 1500ml carton with a liquid the colour of cup of tea, but with a more soup like consistency. I did walk by on the ward a couple of days ago where they was serving everyone’s lunch and even hospital food smelt great and did start to realise what I’m missing out on at the moment.
Re learning to swallow is taking a bit of time and on Wednesday I had Video fluoroscopy which is an X-ray of me swallowing and they found out that the automatic safety aspects of my swallowing was far better than they was expecting them to be. I have since been doing lots of exercises to improve these abilities and after learning to swallow a tea spoon of water and am now able to sip water, the goal in the next 24 hours must be to sip ‘Pepsi Max’

Over the last 3 days I’ve had a bit of a runny nose which hasn’t helped especially when trying to sleep, but hopefully this is behind me and last night I had 2 blocks of 3-4 hours sleep, which is more that I’d had over the last 10 days.

It’s been great to see some friendly faces over the last week, although some should have been kicked out from the hospital for not showing full respect for a sick man! Mum has been down form Ipswich 4 times in the last 10 days and Sue has been everyday but one.

There are still some challenges ahead like eating! And I also found out Friday that I will need to have some radiotherapy which wouldn’t happen for another 6 weeks or so. My left eye still isn’t right which makes reading or evening watch TV an effort as I can’t fully focus and general I have a way just to getting fit. I’m so thankfully that I am though the worst bits and it now just putting all the pieces slowly back togetherness.

Thanks again for all your prayers and support and we have definitely know God’s protection on my life through all this.

Just to finish on a high. Movember has been a great success for me and our team bandofbros_spc. The team has raised between us £1250 and I’m straggled that I have raised £415 myself. So a great big thanks to everyone of you who has support me and my team through this effort.

If nothing else Movember is about us men looking out for out health and getting help if we need to.

Thanks Neil

No, not Superman, just a man with metal staples in his head…

For those of you that are interested (especially Dr Liz Cameron) here is a photo of my 57 metal staples (which are obviously from my battle with Lex Luther)

I’ve heard via Sue that some of you kept waiting of these regular updates to know what’s going, so we know Jeremy household has been a bit slack with the blog, but I’m now back on the case and will try to update you all more regularly.

The last week has been a bit of a journey and as you can imagine we have been a bit pre-occupied with trying to get my body back in working order. I am on the slow road to recovery and am aware what my body has been through in the 15 hours operation and every day is about achieve one small step. I was aware of some of the complication that I would be facing after the operation, but I didn’t quite understand or appreciate what they said when I would have to re-learn how to swallow, which when you can’t eat or drink any thing direct down your throat you realise just how much you take these things for granted, I am now just thankful that I am though the operation so far and generally just how healthy I have been in life so far.

Sue has done an amazing job in the last week with juggling the whole stress of seeing me,feeding the kids and working and still managing to update you guys as much as possible. I also want to thank you for your amazing support of me, Sue and the kids, and for all your prayers and for all our friends at St. Paul’s who have been sorting out meals for Sue and the kids each, day, which have been one least thing for sue to have to think about. Thanks

And remember, no, it’s not a bird and no, it’s not a plane, it’s SuperNEIL!!!

There’s still 3 days left in Movember, and it’s not too late to sponsor me or my team me on this link www.mobro.co/neiljeremy1. So far our team has raised £898, thank you for all of your support so far!!

At time of writing this they are talking about getting me home early next week. So if you do pop by for a visit in the next week you might also be asked by Neil to help write a blog post (just like Pete Doorey has done today)

Two days to go before my first operation this week and I have had another short pre operation hair cut.

I will need to be at the Kings hospital by 7am on Tuesday for  Embolization operation and hopefully I should be in and out on the same day, Wednesday will then be a day recovering at home, before being at Guys for 7am on Thursday. I will be in Guys for a least a week, possibly 2 weeks. Sue will keep you all up date with progress on this blog.

If any of you might be thinking of paying me a visit in hospital, which your welcome to do, we would just ask that you contact Sue my wife who will be coordinating visiting during my stay in hospital. The is mainly due to the fact that we really won’t know how I will be feeling or whether I’ll be up to see many people.

If you have her mobile can you text her, otherwise email her on sue@beetlebug.co.uk. Please say in your text or email, who you are and that you want to visit me and Sue can then let you know whether I’m feeling up to visitors and when would be good times to visit and what ward I’m on. If you want her mobile number beforehand, then please text or email me before Thursday.

Thanks again for all your ongoing prayers and support.

With 7 day to go till the main operation, I now have another operation on Tuesday, total 2 operations in one week.

Today I had a call from Kings hospital asking me to go in next Tuesday for a procedure called Embolization (wikipedia link). This procedure is used to slow or stop blood supply to a tumour, thus reducing its size. It will be done under local anaesthesia and will be similar to the ballon occlusion test I had 3 weeks, as they will again go in via a catheter put in my carotid artery in my groin.

I was aware there might be a possibility of this, but had hoped wouldn’t need to have it, as the bruising on my legs has only just gone from the last op 3 weeks ago. But after reading up on Embolization on the internet I can see why my consultant wanted to get it done as hopefully it will start to reduce the size of the tumour, before the main operate on Thursday.

I’m still looking for sponsorship for Movember and you can sponsor me on this link mobro.co/neiljeremy1.

Thanks to everyone who has sponsored me so far as we have raised £168 and our team moteam.co/bandofbros-spc has raised £473 in total.

Thanks again for your support and prayers at this time.
Neil