28 days later...

... And I'm finally line free! Hallelujah! I have gone through exhausted, past shattered and arrived at catatonic. I've tried to think of ways to describe it, having a head full of cotton wool making all my thought processes dull is one part. Having limbs like lead whilst trying to walk through treacle kind of gets the physical aspect. It's just all a bit blurgh. To be really rather annoying, it turns out that the original sample that set off the whole MRSA panic in the first place has been reexamined and reclassed as not MRSA but MSSA, or methicillin sensitive staph aureous... All that barrier nursing and schmozle wasn't necessary! Gah! A least the drugs do seem to have finally worked and my chest has improved and is drier than it has been for a long while, so I'm hopeful that I might actually be able to stay off the ivs for more than just a month - fingers crossed...

I have also had my first proper shower for 28 days! Yes, I know that sounds utterly disgusting and like I have not washed in all that time, but don't panic, I have! The problem with having a port is that the needle is in my left upper chest, and it's covered with a fairly large dressing. You have to try and keep this as clean and dry as possible to minimise infection risk. The port line goes all the way to just by my heart so if bacteria got into it via the access point it could go very quickly right round my blood stream, not something I want to happen. So you have to be really careful to not splash it- not easy, especially when you have long hair which needs washing. This means showering becomes a fairly comedy routine or trying to shower one side of your body whilst sponging round the dressing! The other rather ick thing is that when you take the dressing off after fourteen days there is rather a lot of dead skin and oil from your skin stuck under it, so after 28 days it is just gross, but now I am clean and fresh and can splash about in the shower as much as I like- bliss!