Thank you all for the wonderful messages and emails, texts, Tweets, FB comments, blog comments, phone calls, face-to-face contact and general loveliness over the last 19 weeks. You'll never know just how much you've all kept me going whilst Pauley's been in hospital.
And finally, on Tuesday, he's coming home ... after 20 weeks (bar 2 days). That's almost FIVE MONTHS! After the awful 13 weeks in Yeovil Hospital he moved to St Mark's Hospital in Harrow on 13 July and began to improve from day one. Having lost so much weight he weighed just under 8 stone, he is now, thankfully almost at his target weight of 10st 7lbs. This is due to the nutrition mentioned in the last post, which will continue once Pauley gets home. He will be 'hooked up' to it every night for 12 hours for as long as it takes. It may be for life, or it may just be for a few months, or somewhere inbetween. Only time will tell us the answer to that one.
A fridge is being delivered tomorrow for the nutrition bags to be stored (they're delivered in weekly or fortnightly quantities), together with all the other required apparatus. Then on Tuesday the first batch will be delivered before Pauley arrives home. He should arrive early-mid afternoon and initially a nurse will come in every evening and morning until we're both proficient at the sterile connecting and disconnecting of the line for the bags. Once we pass that test she'll come once a week as I understand it.
Life is going to be very different both initially, while Pauley gets used to the outside world once again and I get used to having someone else in the house after all that time on my own(!!), and also long-term once we adjust to the (albeit minimal) constraints. He eats and drinks normally, but very little nutrition is actually absorbed, but there are a number of no-go foods and drinks. Low fibre, high fat, plenty of salt; full-fat milk, nothing fizzy. So, definitely no beans of any sort, no broccoli stalks, no potato or fruit skins for starters!
But we have ... LIFE ... and for that I am exceedingly grateful ... and having had time to take stock over the last few months I think we both realise that life is for living, not for racing from pillar to post, chasing tails and worrying that we're not achieving, but for enjoying each other's company and taking time to smell the roses ...
Sue x
