Charlotte's Heart Transplant

I can only apologise for it taking so long to get this blog post up! As much as I enjoyed my time in Wythenshawe hospital, now that I'm at home I've been busy jumping new hurdles, achieving new milestones and I've not really wanted to look back in the past other than to realise how far I've come! So I've decided to quickly sum up my couple of weeks on the ward so that I can then move on to updating you on all the exciting things I'm not experiencing! But if you have any questions or want more details please just leave a comment or message me on social media. Monday 12th March Today was my first rough day. I'd been getting better each day and I kept telling myself that each day will be better than the last when in reality, recovery is much more like a rollercoaster. Gemma (one of the healthcares) washed my hair yesterday which was amazing because it makes you feel so much better! I still can't have a shower because I have pacing wires that are attach...

There is a very strict routine on the ward. The day begins at 6am, although I have to go to the toilet around 3 times during the night which is annoying, I miss the catheter! So at 6am the nurse comes and does observations which is temperature, blood pressure, oxygen level and heart rate, I have IV antisickness which is 20 minutes, then IV paractemol for half an hour and then an IV antibiotic for half an hour. So I usually go back to sleep after the observations and just leave my arm out so the nurse can swap over my IVs! Or some mornings I am wide awake so I just stay awake and go on my phone. Then at 8am breakfast arrives. By this time I'm starving so I love hearing the breakfast trolley come round! I have two pieces of toast with orange juice followed by rice krispies (I am a creature of habit and I ate this everyday for 2 weeks). When I had heart failure I was never hungry and I couldn't eat until much later in the day so it's amazing to be hungry when I wake up and I...

Firstly I apologise about being so behind with my blog posts! I want to update evrryone everyday now that I'm home but I'm still behind from when I was in the hospital! However, once I moved to the ward it was mainly just a couple of weeks of resting and physio and the days went by pretty quickly so my blog posts will start to include a few days in one and I'll hopefully be up to date soon! Saturday 10th March So I was told I'd probably be ready to move onto the ward by Monday (which even that sounded very scary! It has only been a couple of days since I came back into the real world!) but the doctors came round this morning and have said that I'm moving today! Jim Quick is the name of the ward at Wythenshawe, named after a fellow heart transplantee that did a lot of fundraising for the New Start charity following his transplant in 1987 (he was only the eight person to have the operation), and he was actually a business owner in Cheshire which is where I live. ...

Friday 9th March My second day conscious! It's really annoying having the feeding tube in my nose! I'm not in pain which is nice, I have IV paracetemol in the morning and that's it but I'm just lay in bed so that's possibly why! It's crazy how quickly you lose your muscle, I literally can't get my hand to my face so I have to keep stretching my arms and wiggling my feet. But there are 2 nurses just for me while I'm in the side room so they literally do everything for me, including sliding me up the bed when I need repositioning! Today I had physio come round and I got out of bed! It was very weird, there's no strength in my neck so I literally can't lift my head up on my own! Once it's up it's okay but if it flops back onto the pillow I can't lift it up again. So the physio girls helped me sit up and then sit on the edge of the bed, I sat for a minute and just made sure I wasn't dizzy. It was very disorientating sitting up but...