The assessment days

Tuesday 5th May,

Tuesday morning, my alarm goes off at 6am, followed by a knock on the door and a shout from my dad, but that's to no avail as I still manage to fall back to sleep, only to be woken at 6.30am the time we were supposed to be leaving by my mom going spare!

I jump out of bed, which isn't wise as being on oxygen doesn't allow your body to move quite so quickly so I instantly sit down on the edge of the bed, luckily the night before I had packed my bags for the overnight stay at Papworth so I wasn't in much of a rush I just needed to wash, get dressed and pack my NIV machine.

We finally get onto the road and the traffic is horrendous, most of the way, then when we hit the A16 where we sit in stationary traffic for over half an hour causing us to be late, and I hate being late.

We arrive at Papworth and mom drops me at reception and goes to park the car, I check in with reception and make my way up to Baron ward, where I settle into room 13 and just as mom comes onto the ward we are whisked away to lung function to start the day of assessments on my lungs and heart.

I have 3 different types of lung function tests done then I get a break before having to do a 6 minute walk test in which I managed to walk a meager 140 metres. After that I am wheeled back up to the ward where I get to relax for about 30 minutes before being take for a heart ECHO scan.

This takes around 45 minutes to complete, this is an ultrasound scan on the heart looking at all the different chambers of the heart to make sure it's strong enough to cope with the transplant operation. Once that was finished and I was taken back to the ward again.

As I get back into my room two very nice phlebotomists come in to attempt to take another 10 bottles of blood off me, unlike the lady in transplant clinic they were very unfortunate and stabbed me several times and got nothing out of me.

After giving a urine sample and two sputum samples that was my day of tests complete so me and mom relaxed for a few hours and even got to sample the delights of the mallard ducks that come and graced us with their presence outside the window of the room for a while before we got ready and went to weatherspoons for a meal.

Wednesday 6th May

Another early start to the day with a wake up call from the nurse at 8.30am as I was booked in for my lung CT scan at 9.30am so she wanted me to have plenty of time to wake up and get dressed.

I went to the toilet and came back to the room and the porters were outside my room at 8.45am ready to take me to CT so I rung my mom and told her to meet me at transplant clinic as straight after the CT scan I was being taken there to meet Sadie the nurse, Paul another of the Transplant Co ordinators and Dr Jas Palmer the other of the two Transplant consultants.

After breaking the CT scanner while I was having my scan I was wheeled round to Transplant clinic where I was met by the goose and we sat and chatted for a while, I was then called in to speak to Sadie and she gave us a lot of facts and statistics about the transplant and the operation.  a lot of our questions were answered by Sadie as they came up through out our chat so we didn't feel like anything was left be be asked at that point.

I was then stabbed a few times to get the bloods the guys failed to get the day before! Then it was my turn to go into speak to Paul which was very brief as Dr Palmer came in and we commenced with our consultation. He was a little worried about my compliance issues I'd had previously but he was convinced I'd turned the corner and said I was an ideal candidate for new lungs and said I would need to come back next week to meet the surgeon and anaesthetist to make sure they were happy then they would discuss listing me!

I was over the moon and could finally allow myself to see a glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel but I knew it was still only a tiny glimmer and it was very very far away!