Day: 23 February 2020

Sleep last night was OK – maybe because I didn’t try to force it and stayed up until my eyes were closing by themselves, and drifted in and out of sleep til 2am or so. Got up to go to the toilet, spat out a big gob of brown stuff, and immediately felt a big lessening of the pain on one side of my throat – it went from maybe 7 out of 10 to 3 out of 10. I think the scab has started to come off.

Unfortunately the other side is still pretty sore, so I stayed up for a little while, took an Endone at about 3am and crashed pretty hard after that.

When I woke up I was very sore and clogged up as usual, so had a shower (which seems to loosen the gunk and help provide relief) and while showering, spat out something small and black. On closer inspection, it turned out to be an (intact) stitch. This concerned me a bit, as I expected them to stay in until they dissolve… but while I’ve still been spitting small amounts of blood on and off throughout the day, it doesn’t seem excessive so I don’t think anything’s opened up that shouldn’t have.

Skipped the Endone this morning, and just took Targen plus the anti-bleeding pills. Managed to get out and walk the dog, as well as vacuum and mop the floors this morning, and spend a bit of time with the kidlet this afternoon so it’s been a kinda productive day.

Mealtimes, as usual, have been the most painful, so I haven’t eaten a great deal today. But aside from when eating/swallowing, the normal day to day pain has definitely eased a little, particularly on the side where the scab has fallen off (which is where the blood seems to be coming from). After dinner (which was a bit of a battle pain wise.. it was only chicken soup!) there was a bit more blood in my spit than usual, and I was pretty close to phoning the hospital for advice. However I sucked on a zooper dooper and the bleeding seemed to settle down so I decided not to bother – if things are still bad tomorrow I’ll give them a ring, but I’m about 80% sure it’s normal to bleed a bit more as the scabs fall off.

I’ve managed to get through the whole day without Endone. There’s a T20 game on tonight from South Africa, so I’m sitting here drinking a cold bottle of electrolyte water, and I’ll try to watch the cricket for a while instead of sleeping.

When I was considering phoning the hospital, I took a few photos of the current state of my throat, it’s pretty disgusting looking. If you’re squeamish, maybe don’t enlarge it or look too hard:

I mentioned in my Day 5 post that I did a huge poo today. Well I actually wrote a couple of posts about it on a forum, and decided to cross post it here, just because. So here goes:

It’s true what they say about opiates and constipation, probably exacerbated by eating a lot less than usual. I’ve just produced (and it took some work) one of the most amazingly huge BMs in the history of log cabins. A triple flusher, as long as my forearm and almost as thick. I kid you not, it was almost Instagram worthy.

Oh seriously, it was a doozy. Like you know when the midwife is telling the mother not to push til it’s time? I was in there for like half an hour feeling this immense weight on my o-ring, but nothing was happening and I didn’t want to force it, but then all of a sudden this contraction happens and there was absolutely no control, it was time to strain. So that went on for a few very long moments, at the same time I’m trying to make sure I don’t valsalva and make my throat pop open. Then when it’s over I realise that I barely felt a thing snap off, and didn’t really hear a splash either, so I’m expecting to see these little rabbit pellets like what happens sometimes. So I look down to see something the size of a large blue tongue lizard stretching from below the waterline to half way up the bowl. I wouldn’t have thought it was anatomically possible if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes.

I found some Senna laxatives after that and popped a couple. Not going through that trauma again… it’s been a rough week.