Part I | Part II | Part III

On March 10 I told you all that I had been in hospital due to some partially failed surgery. While I was in there I had quite an adventure. I was stabbed, jabbed and almost killed by one of the other inmates. This is a long story so I will splitting it into three parts.

I don’t really like talking about my health on this blog. In particular I don’t like talking about my PEG tube. This is a tube goes directly into your stomach kind of like a second plastic belly button.

I don’t like talking about it because it is a bit yucky. I also don’t want pathetic people who are in denial that their lives suck and who try to find others they think are worse off than them so they can make themselves feel better by making sympathetic noises, thinking, “Poor Chris. He gets fed through a tube. Can you believe that? His life must be so hard. He’s so brave…etc.” I have this tube because I have muscular dystrophy and have difficulty swallowing solid food. The good thing is I can still drink alcohol, so I retain my Australian citizenship.

I have had my PEG tube for almost 10 years and for nine of them it has had an intermittent leak. My surgery on February 24 was to re-site my PEG tube. They pulled out the old one and inserted a new one in a new hole 8 cm away from the old one. The old hole was supposed to close over in about a week, but it never did. Almost everything that was poured into the new PEG immediately flowed out of the old hole.

Eventually I got so dehydrated I needed to go back to hospital via ambulance.

The good thing about going to hospital in an ambulance is you skip all the waiting around in casualty (apparently, this isn’t always the case, but it has always worked out this way for me).

I had a really hot nurse and she managed to put the drip in my arm first shot. After a few hours I spoke to the doctor half an hour later I was sent up to the ward. So far so good, but it was all downhill from here. The only spare bed was in the cancer ward, which is in the old building at the Austin. This is the only active ward in the old building giving it an abandoned haunted creepy feeling.

End of Part I

Part I | Part II | Part III

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