After the big adventure of moving to the proper ward it would have been nice if things settled down a bit but really it was just the start of the rest of it. I was still in a pretty serious condition, on high levels of O2, steroids, lack of sleep and still bunged up with fluids, although not quite as bad as what I had been.
Due to the lack of sleep, high dose of steroids and low oxygen levels they kept having to take bloods from inside my arm to check for the CO2 levels to make sure they weren’t dangerous but each time where “reassuring” and nothing too serious, but because of all this I was starting to hallucinate and hear things, it happened before where I would see shadows in the corner of you eye but this was a completely new level.
On the wall facing me I could see a projection and it was someone playing VR, it wasn’t all action and they would stop every so often and run around for a while and then go into puzzles and you could see them working out what they were doing to get the solutions, even loading screens and accompanying sounds with what they were doing and them talking as well. On the loading screen the name of the game popped up, I can’t remember what it was but I looked it up at the time and it was an Oculus 2 game and from a quick look at what was shown it was exactly what I was seeing and hearing. I’ve never seen or played an Oculus 2 so how I knew what the gameplay would be like of a game on hardware I’ve never seen I have absolutely no idea.
And to be told that it wasn’t real was pretty hard to believe, and I’m still not convinced it was just in my head, like it was right there, it was happening. It was like seeing a flying pig and it coming over and saying I’m a flying pig and everyone around being all “there’s nothing there”.
But later that night I knew I definitely was seeing things, every time the minute hand went round past a number on the clock it stopped, climbed over to the number and then ate it, don’t ask, not a clue but it was fun to watch along with the heavy metal music that was playing through the O2 pump, again, not a clue but if that music wasn’t really there I have some imagination.
The following day the tablets were starting to be reduced and after that I began to sleep a bit better, the O2 levels were starting to be reduced as well, so from the Sunday things gradually started to improve.
On the Tuesday I was informed that they finally got a positive result for something and that was a form of coronavirus, not covid-19 but one of the umbrella ones that would normally not affect people but due to the weak immune system it hit me bad. Thankfully with finding this out they were able to restrict the antibiotics down more so I wouldn’t have to take as many.
On Wednesday evening I felt a real change, I wanted to eat, drink and watch tv rather than just roll up in a ball and things started to improve dramatically after that, reducing the O2 levels and being able to do a bit more exercise. I still needed some O2 after doing anything and was on a much lower dose. Sunday was the last day of my antibiotics and the only thing to really do after that would be to get off the O2 and get the energy levels up. This isn’t exactly the easiest thing to do in hospital though, it’s not like you need to actually get up to do anything so everything is such a chore. Just getting up to do a few exercises or going for a walk, rather than at home you’d be going and making a coffee and moving further than 2m to go to the toilet, making dinner and just generally doing things around the house rather than sitting in bed all day.
The doctor was concerned that if I was to go home too early I wouldn’t be able to do anything and end up back in hospital, but I don’t think this would be the case I feel getting home would encourage me to do more and I’d be able to build up a bit faster than lying around. I left the decision to them though as I don’t want to ruffle feathers and screw things up. There was talk all week about going home but eventually on the Friday it was organised to go home, though many times before this has been said and I’m still there a few days later, I don’t build my hopes up too much until I’m walking out the door.
And finally at about 4 I was in the car going to my parents…