Rehab Week 8: Homeward Bound

It seems that my long stay in hospital is finally coming to an end. Yesterday marked my four-month anniversary. Seems like I’ve been here a year. Of course I don’t remember much of the first eight weeks I was in so much of a drug-induced daze. But the dreams were amazing, mostly very dark and scary but amazingly real at the time. But back to now…

On Thursday, the wound was inspected again and revealed some more good progress. So much so that the Doc suggested I’ll be going home this coming week. But before I get too excited at that prospect, we decided to do another of those irradiated white cells gamma camera tests I talked about in this post.

I found out a little more about the test. For instance, the second blood extraction of 20 ml is used to separate out some extra plasma, which is then combined with the white cells extracted from the first blood sample before they are reinjected.

The other tidbit is the isotope used to irradiate the white cells, a metastable nuclear isomer of the element Technetium, 99mTc. OK, enough of today’s chemistry lesson.

The test was conducted on Friday afternoon, full results not known until Monday I’d say, although the technician did say the initial scan showed a much improved result over last time. Promising at least.

If the test comes up clear, then I’m heading home, possibly on Tuesday.

That’s pretty cool news, it will be great to be back home. Of course that just presents a few more challenges. My wound has not yet finished healing and so I’ll still need community nursing care for the dressings and it could still be 6-8 weeks before I get a prosthetic. So still quite a while getting about on crutches in front of me.

Keep safe out there guys.