FOBbing 'eck!

Well, that was certainly the shortest hospital admission I've ever had - in fact I wasn't even formally admitted.

I'd turned up to the transplant unit at 12:30 and after a short wait went into the treatment room and had a line put in my left arm, ready for the anti-sickness medication and sedation for the bronch and then for administration of any treatment needed. I then collected my notes and went over to Dutchess Ward with Vicky.

I sat on the bed, watched the end of Bargain Hunt and the start of the news, and a nurse came along with all the admission paperwork and a hospital gown, ready for the procedure. Then the doctor who I saw at clinic yesterday turned up and asked how I was doing - I reported that I was slightly better, my blows were up a little bit on Tuesday's numbers (but only a little bit - still a long way to go to get back to my best) and I was still running a bit of a temperature. He said he'd talked to Jas, whose opinion was that given the circumstances of the campylorbacter and the messing around with my immunosuppression that he would rather wait and see what happened in the next few days and see me in clinic again next week for a check up. The basic argument was that, yes, maybe it is a bit of mild rejection, but if it is bad then lung function will continue to deteriorate. As mine was stable, if not improving slightly, that was a good sign. Also, from a clinical perspective the treatment for the rejection would be increased steroids, and mine were already increased to 20mg. As of yesterday I have re-started the MMF and that will have an effect too, but will take 2-3 days to get the levels up in my blood and for things to stabilise. So, all in all he recommended I wait, and that it wasn't worth the risk of the procedure (which are small, but still exist - bleeding and even possibly pneumothorax/collapsed lung) since even if there was rejection it would likely be mild as I'm improving and there is no clouding on the X-Ray, and the treatment regime would be the same as I'm on already, if with a slightly higher steroid dose.

So he told the nurse to discharge me, which, since I hadn't yet been properly admitted just involved whipping the line out of my arm (removing a fair few hairs tearing off the just-applied sticky dressing) and waving goodbye.

I flippantly said in our conversation that "at least there is a bed free for someone else now", and the doc said that there was someone waiting...hastily adding that that wasn't the reason they'd decided not to FOB me...! So I reckon in truth it was a combination of the reasons above and a bit of medical triage - probably someone had come out of this morning's clinic with an urgent need for admission but they didn't have any beds.

On the plus side I get to enjoy a sunny weekend. On the downside I could get worse over the weekend, but I am hoping not and am feeling reasonably positive about getting better once I get the drug regime settled again. Onwards and upwards...