I am finally back home!

Well, that was a long three weeks with a tube sticking out of my chest!

I had a wider tube put in with a small procedure which was basically the same method as what I had to go through the first time. The procedure was painless, but this time, the aftermath was incredibly painful!

It was some of the most intense struggle I've ever had to deal with. The incision burned after waking every day, from inevitable irritation to it during sleep from the tube. The larger tube caused Pleurisy, which is inflammation (swelling and soreness) of the lining of the cavity the lung rests in. At the worst points, this made my pillow, t-shirt, and even my hair hurt my back when it touched my skin.

I'd learnt anything you'll feel with lung problems you're more likely to feel in the back by the shoulder blades, than the front of the chest, which many of us would automatically expect. The painkillers morphine and paracetamol (Acetaminophen for the US) were a godsend, and made it totally bearable.

Everything except the inevitable coughing, shifting congestion due to quitting smoking. I coughed normally a couple of times and created a stabbing pain in the shoulder that the pain meds couldn't touch!

Luckily for me, I learnt to do tiny cough cycles, where i'd inhale and then cough just a little, and keep repeating. That did the trick to shift congestion that wanted to move without knocking myself into terrible pain.

I decided after a little research to cut milk out of my coffees and avoid chocolate, bananas, and some other mucus generating foods, and also drank plenty of turmeric, lemon & ginger tea, to help cut through the congestion and break it down.

This made a difference within a couple of days to how much congestion i was getting stuck with, and cleared it up considerably.

The whole time, the plan was to move to another hospital when a bed came available, to get surgery for the hole in my lung that so far hadn't gone away, and wasn't showing any signs... but then, somehow, out of nowhere, the chest drain shown signs that i was healing! Nobody expected this! An x-ray later confirmed the suspicion! So, the doctors decided to trial me with a clamp on the tube, to simulate having no chest drain... which the drain bottle already behaved as such by this point.

The clamp caused no shortness of breath, which it would have, if I'd not been ready. So, we went ahead, and arranged the removal of the drain for later the same day. When the procedure was done, it was nice to be moving without carrying a bottle part filled with water everytime I wanted to move!

Stayed one more night, had an xray the same evening and the following morning, just to keep track of the lung, and it was looking normal!

This meant I was able to be discharged later that day, as I had a little time to recover from the removal already.

Now, I am gladly home!

But not without some wild stories of what I witnessed on the ward! I had nightmares the first couple of nights home due to hyper-alertness 24/7 in the hospital! Never seen anything like the behaviour of one particular patient! 😂

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In other news, Karma has been processing many orders today! So if you've placed an order, it's on it's way. Mugs should be arriving pretty soon!

Also, I've added a new section of free content, Music!

There's multiple things going on there.

A Spotify Playlists page, containing three playlists which have plenty of music for you to listen to... "The Great Sunset" showcasing a view of society, "Lyrical Listening" for solid expressions and life lessons, and "MuCelium", containing some vocal and some instrumentals, all the Jammiest Jams!

There's also Prisoner of Time/Chaos Peaks EP a page for my own recorded music, a video channel containing many recent Lyric Videos