Part 19 - Me n my bonce

The nutritionist visited me weekly to see how I was progressing, I was told that if I continued the way I was my NG tube could come out! OMG! I'd grown quite accustomed to my trunk and pegging it to my gown (aka Peggy) my drugs crushed and given to me mixed in yoghurt to ensure I could take them orally as awful as it was was just another step to getting better and back to as normal as I was/could be!
2.15pm that Sunday, they're late! Visiting started 15 minutes ago! Then the familiar squeak of mums shoe, here comes pizza! So out I get in my chair with mum now as I can use zimmer frame, dad was parking the car! For the first time in ages me, mum and dad had our first meal together! Pizza never tasted so good! Oh my goodness no stamina I couldn't finish the smallest of pizzas, my stomach had shrunk which wasn't a bad thing I suppose! Then a gurgle and an 'episode' luckily by now mum and dad had the getting and setting up of a commode and helping me to transfer off to a t and within minutes I was where I needed to be! A whole day of UNO playing, finally we found a game dad couldn't cheat at too! My catheta had also now started to play up it had been changed once when i was in HDU as was hurting and I think it was changed about 4-5 times whilst in Kinnier Wilson, each time I had a dose of antibiotics to prevent infection but it also made me very sore! Needless to say I got a urine infection in the end! The medicine that I was given for that made me pee like an alien (not that I've seen alien pee of course! Even whilst on my spaceship!) illuminous yellow! I thought something else had gone belly up with me before one of my nurses explained it was the drugs! Phew! Plenty of fluids and it returned to normal eventually! I continued to take the crushed up drugs in yoghurt or dissolvable form and the nutritionist agreed I could have it taken out! Yeah, woo-hoo! Then apprehension, how do they take this out, is it another operation? No we just pull it out! So like Paul Daniels doing a magic trick after the t shaped plaster was off, pull pull pull and a big last pull my trunk had gone! As it was coming out it made me feel like I needed to sneeze, feel sick, cough but was literally only seconds and it was gone! Mum had nipped down to get coffees (code for gone for a fag) while this happened so was quite a surprise when she came back in! Today was also the first time I had seen myself too, in my camera on my phone I took a picture before the NG was taken out then again after! My god, my hair, my eyebrows! I looked a lot worse than I expected, not sure what I thought I would look like! People kept saying my hair had really grown, well if it had really grown then they certainly had bic'd it for the drain I looked like a parrot! But I'm sure I could do something with it! Every time I had a visitor after that day it was like a party trick of mine to wiggle my nose and smile - ta da! Sounds like such a small thing now but felt like a huge hurdle at the time! Still to this day I haven't seen a picture or reflection of me with my tracheostomy in or my wounds on my head, the day will come I'm sure just not yet!