Riding the Rollercoaster

After June’s prognosis, I finally summonsed the courage in July to reply to the phone messages from the local West Auckland Hospice team who had been referred my case from the Hospital Oncology team.

The timing turned out to be fortunate with the day that I first met with them (Wednesday), I ended up being admitted to Auckland Hospital due to a downturn in my health. Basically, since the day before (Tuesday), I had been feeling extremely tired, nauseous and unable to keep food down so had spent Tuesday in bed. With my situation worsening, they recommended I go into hospital so they could assess and care for me there. A CT scan on the Thursday also showed that there had been bleeding in my brain which would have contributed to my feeling nauseous and tired.

The other side effect from this process was that my ability to hear properly was majorly affected – I could still hear but my ears were in a constant state of ringing, as though I had been in a very loud concert for a prolonged time and just walked out. Conversations with people became very hard, especially when I could not see their lips to marry the sound & words. The closest sort of condition I could find to equate it with is Tinnitus which is common with soldiers but can also affect people with brain tumours. I couldn’t have phone conversations and had to communicate in writing a lot.

So basically in the space of less than a week, I went from feeling fit & healthy and on top of the world to feeling like I didn’t want to get out of bed in the morning.

Not fun.

But thanks to some high-powered drugs and some lovely people from the Hospice team, I’m getting back on my feet. I got out of hospital on the Friday and have been at home all week resting up and trying to get things back to normal as best I can. Obviously with the recent changes to my health situation, I have to be more careful about what I do and where. And I also have to ‘expect the unexpected’ because anything growing in the brain can cause random events like the hearing issues or seizures or anything.

So, all in all, not the kind of fortnight I was hoping for but I’m glad I made it through in one piece and am still here to regale you with the story 🙂

Keep believing!
David