It all started with the 12 hour op that I had to try & repair some nerves in my left
arm, after the op I was told to wait 18 months to see if the op was successful,
unfortunately it wasn't, but in that 18 months I had a torrid time with pain &
medication, the pain was unbearable & resulted in me going in & out of hospital to try
& get the right combination of drugs ( morphine, diazepam, oromorph were just
sending me scatty boo & not touching the pain ) which ended up being Neurontin,
Diclofenac, Amitriptyline, & a lot of help from a psychologist.
As all this was happening Carol gave birth to our son four weeks after the accident, so
needless to say I missed the birth with being in hospital, she used to visit me every day
with Mark & I would give him his bottle at my bed at the hospital, after a while I was
allowed to come home & it was great getting to do things with Mark as other ordinary
fathers do, but I suddenly hit a brick wall & ended up in hosp again because of the
pain, but they couldn't do anything for me, I just had to suffer in silence, but this made
me get more depressed & I did struggle for a long time.
Then out of the blue I was hit with another bombshell, I ended up getting pneumonia
& was in intensive care for a while, after that I was really low for a long time. I thought my world was going to end, I can honestly say if it hadn't been for Carol & Mark I
probably wouldn't have been writing this letter now. Just one morning I woke up &
everything was totally different, I got a new sling from the hospital, started to cope better
with the pain, all of a sudden life seemed to be worth living, to tell you the truth, I
don't know what made everything worth living for.
The next positive thing that happened was getting the car adapted for me to drive, &
that gave me a great boost, because I suddenly got my independence back, & didn't
have to get Carol to drive me somewhere for the first time in over 9 months,.
Then the next thing was to get things sorted out with my work to arrange a date for
going back, which took a lot of meetings, but thankfully I'm back now & into a
routine, but since then I've been on a mountaineering course at Glenmore Lodge (the national outdoor centre in Scotland) to give me the confidence to go back in the hills in the winter again, & funnily enough it worked, that was down to my best friend & climbing partner Gavin.
After the accident I put on about 4 stone in the time I was off work, but now I have
been doing a lot of running & munro bagging & have managed to go from 16 stone
down to 13.5 stone, so I'm chuffed to bits, and also I'm busy doing a computer course
(well my second one ) & it is going really great, I forgot to mention the reason I got ill
& went into hospital is that the phrenic nerve to my diaphragm was knackered so my left
lung doesn't work, but right now my life is going great thanks to friends & family & all
the other people who have helped in my continuing recovery, especially my wife Carol
& my son Mark, who I'm internally grateful for all their love & support.
Hope it wasn't too boring peeps
bigsel
Scottish tbpi
