Ward Grand Slam

Most floors at the Royal Free have 4 wards arranged in a square and named based on the direction they face e.g. 8 North, 8 East, 8 South and 8 West. When I arrived for my transplant I was given a room on ward 10 East. After surgery I was in ICU on ward 4 South. From ICU I travelled back up the building to a room in 9 West. 9 North is the normal ward for liver transplant patients and I was moved there a few days before they let me go home. 

Having stayed on wards facing all 4 compass directions and done so in the correct order going round the compass, I have achieved what is known as the "Ward Grand Slam". As far as I know, I am the first and only person ever to claim this accolade. I am also the creator of this title and, until someone reads this post, the only person that even knows about it. I suspect the Royal Free will want to put a plaque up to commemorate my brilliance but my humility will cause me to turn down the request.

All jokes aside, I cannot tell you how much pleasure it gives me to have stayed on wards facing all 4 directions. My brain loves patterns and sequences and order and this makes him very happy. The only way he could have been any more happy would have been if the floor numbers had followed the Fibonacci sequence or similar. Anyway....

While ICU was technically a ward it was not really talked about as such. All talk was about "the ward" which was the promised land where you got to go once the doctors decided you were well enough. 6 days after my operation I was taken up to the ward around 11pm. I'm afraid the rest of this paragraph is fairly unpleasant and undignified and I apologise to any sensitive readers. My arrival on the ward was in the aftermath of having had a whole bunch of laxatives trying to give my bowels a little nudge. They had got the message! Early in the morning of my first day on the ward I failed to get to the toilet in time and found myself stood surrounded by everything my body had finished processing. It was truly disgusting and I hated that I couldn't stop it. It had been my first attempt at using an actual toilet since the operation. I pressed the call button knowing the ward was hugely understaffed and stood waiting for 45mins until somebody came. The first person who came couldn't hide his annoyance and was angry with me. I was devastated by it all. Once everything had been cleaned up and I was back in bed, I sent a voice message to the whatsapp group of people who had been praying for me. My voice was weak and I cried as I asked them to pray. This was my lowest point of the whole journey since the transplant and I felt utterly broken and weak and ashamed.

But, from the bottom of the valley, the only way is up and the next week was one of constant improvement. While the doctors had all sorts of blood tests with which to assess my progress, the main marker I had was how many times I could walk around the ward. Two laps, 5 laps, 6 laps, 8 laps, 11 laps....it felt so good to be able to see and feel the improvement. I continued to be determined to do whatever they pushed me to do. The kids hadn't been allowed to come and see me in hospital and any delay to getting back to see them and Bex was not going to be because of a lack of effort on my part. 

Gradually I began to have fewer tubes coming out of me. Catheter and lines in my neck had gone in ICU. Cannulas went. The drain on my right side was removed. Finally they removed the left side drain and took out 26 of my 53 staples and I was one sleep away from freedom.

 

On the day I left the hospital I saw myself properly in the mirror for the first time. It broke me again. For all the positive steps I had made, there was still this skeleton of a man looking back at me. I couldn't believe how thin I was. From the point when I started to get ill at Christmas to the day I went home, I had lost around 15kg in weight. It was a stark reminder that, even though this was a great and significant day, the road to recovery was going to be long and slow. 

16 days after I arived, I was leaving the hospital with a new liver, a small mountain of meds, several booklets of information and an incredible joy and thankfulness for a new start, for God, for my friends and family, for the medical team at the Royal Free and, especially, for my donor and their family. I returned to be greeted by homemade banners and hugs. This slow-moving, wounded man was back where he belonged and couldn't have been happier.