Back from hospital and hopefully with pneumonia being the past…

Week 03 2013: back at work from home. I still feel really tired, it is amazing to see how just 1 week can bring your energy level down. I definitely made the right decision not to travel to Houston, I would have been useless I am afraid while I could resume my activities normally from home. It is good to get back in a discipline to kick me and get back in action and feeling that I am back in business. It was a great transition week to travel to The Hague and meet with team and stakeholders.

Week 04 2013: first day outside this year and it is to travel to The Hague, luckily the travel was ok even if snowy and a bit slower than normal as there have been few accidents to be seen along the way. Again being in a pattern was good to get back to speed and meeting people is always a good therapy. Interestingly enough I had lunch with a colleague I have not met for 2 years and he could not recognise me! Thank you cortisone!!! Nevertheless I understood that one relative of his got a pneumonia too and it took 3 months off to get better so one way or another my 2 weeks is still reasonable. My current main issue being that my feet and legs are swollen again… All was back to normal at the hospital but now it is hard to wear shoes!

Week 05 2013: 2 days at home followed by 3 days in London in back-to-back meetings and early trains. I hope it is not too presumptuous to travel that much and have that many meetings… I keep my fingers crossed! Trip to London was ok despite ticket that was for the wrong date… I ate a minimum and slept in the train for a couple of hours and walked slowly to reach my cab in St Pancras. I was afraid to get my legs and feet swollen after so many hours sitting in cars and trains but so far so good. I feel bad as the rest of the family is stuck at home with flu but it makes me think that I am better off here in London than sharing germs in my living room! If all goes well they should not be contagious when I am back Friday but they are so great to wear a mask as soon as they feel sick that even so I would feel safe with the ones I love.
Last part of the trip was painful… Slept a couple of hours with soar throat and running nose… I have to relax a bit this w-e and hopefully the whole family will get better next week! I keep my fingers crossed I won’t have to go back to the ER.
Another sleepy w-e with a bit of stress as I Monday will be my monthly visit and I am not sure I am heading in the right direction…

Week 06 2013: strong start of the week… Aerosol plus planned bleeding and blood test for my visit with the haematologist later in the day!
Good news is that if I still feel tired, it is normal knowing that someone healthy will take minimum six to eight weeks to recover from a pneumonia like the one i had and usually spends two to three weeks at the hospital… So having stayed only seven days in bed, it is totally normal that I feel more tired than usual.
When I mention “good news” means that not all the news are good… Mainly all is ok but my Gamma GT doubled while at hospital then doubled again since then! Clearly hard to define the source of this and imagery did not show anything. So we keep cutting on medics to check which ones are impacting my liver including cholesterol. I truly hope it will help because the phase implies radiotherapy and that is no fun… You can read in my fifth chapter. I top of that I also have to live with the cortisone side effects but, as they say, this is the most efficient way to get it all fixed.
As my next four weeks will be traveling to London, Houston, The Hague and Strasbourg, I hope that it will all work and have the opportunity to relax that old body :-).

Hope you will find the weekly approach ok… It helps me to update diary style based on events. Feel free to let me know.