Ch. 3: Three Days
Ch. 3. Three Days:
Precious Moments.1.
Audio Typing.2.
Peritoneal Dialysis.3.
Crosskeys College.4.
Gift of Life.5.
Kidney & Pancreas Transplant.6.
Blood Poisoning.7.
These were not easy times. Life for me, coping with the darkness, was most challenging.
There was no time for inhibitions. No room for fears and unacceptable thoughts.
Suddenly, a whole new world opened up, as I began to find my way from A to B, by using a white-cane!
By this time we had already moved from Blaenavon to Crosskeys, where we lived in a small terrace house. This was more practical, as our previous home was a five bed-roomed converted public house, having three reception rooms – and needed a lot of upkeep!
1 After loosing my eye sight; I frequently went to a school to accomplish initial skills in white-cane training.
The primary and junior school was built on the side of a hill in a Welsh coal mining community – not too far from where we were living.
It was quite a modern building for the area. It consisted of units of classrooms and offices built side by side, formed in a concrete square structure. The interconnecting rooms were designed with the playground in the centre of the building complex.
The layout of the building was the ideal place for finding my way up and down corridors, through doorways, descending and ascending stairways and familiarizing myself with tactile surfaces on the ground.
On one such visit to the school, I had progressed quite well, so well, it was now time to venture outdoors.
Yippee!
Under the observation of my instructor: with the aid of my white-cane, I would tap my way along the ground, searching for different textures, obstacles, curbs, steps, corners, walls, exterior doorways and so on.
Anyhow, it became apparent at one time, that we were being watched.
I was later to discover that a little boy who had been watching for quite sometime, seemed totally mesmerised by what he could see.
He was obviously intrigued by the way a grown man was moving a white-cane across the tactual surface, tapping the cane in an arched formation as he walked along the way.
What could he be doing?
I had ventured around the playground, manoeuvred my way up and down steps and became fully aware of my bearings – all with the aid of a white-cane.
My navigation skills were developing quite well!
On approaching the young boy; who by this time was completely focusing his attention on what I was doing, I suddenly became aware of his utter delight.
The lad was wholly spell bound!!
As I got closer to where he had been observing my progress; the little lad appeared to be jumping up and down with positive glee.
Wow!
Failing to contain his excitement; he came closer and announced with uncontrollable joy, “I know what you’re doing!
– You’re looking for gold!
2 Anyway, as time progressed, and I found confidence in using my white-cane, other doors opened up for me.
I began a course in audio typing, and on completion, for a short while – gained experience working for Torfaen Borough Council – in the Pontypool Council Chambers – as an audio typist.
3 Then, in 1990 my kidney function failed; and, consequently, I was on continuous Ambulatory peritoneal dialysis.
This dialysis was unlike Haemo-dialysis because, fortunately, I could move around as normal and carry out my daily activities. I was not connected to a machine!
Another plus of CAPD was that it was done at home, four times every day. The procedure took less than half an hour each time and was reasonably easy and pain-free.
With CAPD, I first needed to drain the waste stuff into a lower bag. I then drained in the first dialysis solution from a higher bag, which was normally hung from a picture hook in our living room.
Well, that was, unless we were on route, and at that point we would be a little creative, by hanging the bag from the coat-hook in our car!
[On one occasion, I can remember doing the whole procedure in McDonalds!]
Anyhow, as I carried on the sequence of steps: Via the catheter, which was placed into my abdomen, the solution would go into my peritoneal cavity. The old fluid was exchanged for new. Then, the dialysis solution was left in my body for approximately five hours, and during that time it did the job that my kidneys used to do.
After about five hours, I simply repeated the process all over again!
4 Adjusting the times I did my dialysis for my own convenience was an asset to me. No longer was I tied to the time clock.
Bottom line, through every day of the week, I adapted that schedule to my daily itinerary. In addition, from Mondays through to Fridays, I was able to work the schedule around my routine of studying music and computers – Information Technology – at Crosskeys College.
I was the college’s first blind student! Consequently the one-year diploma course in music performance and technology was tailored to MY needs, but in the main I did the same as everyone else. The course included study in the music business, e.g., understanding music, history of music, performing music, composing, sequencing and recording.
When I initially lost my eye sight, a social worker, after being introduced to me, bluntly told me I’d never be able to fly an airplane or operate a computer. The latter he totally got wrong. If only that social worker could see me now. Furthermore, I never even wanted to fly an airplane anyhow!
So, as part of my physical rehabilitation, my restoration and recuperation as a blind person, I completed training in new living skills, white-cane training, audio typing, and now a full-time college course.
And to think I attended college while also having to dialyse myself!
5 I began peritoneal dialysis in May 1990, and this continued until a year later on 30 April, when I received a phone call which would be my gift of life.
Can you imagine how I rejoiced in God! Still do!
After having the appropriate, suitable blood tests, we were told by doctors in the Cardiff Royal Infirmary hospital, that my blood matched a kidney donation. Woopee!
6 The best news was yet to come: Not only was there a kidney donation, a pancreas was included-that would change my way of life-finally for the better! Praise Him!
On 1 May, 1991, I became a joyful recipient of a double transplant kidney and pancreas. The thirteenth such operation accomplished in Wales.
Because of my new pancreas transplant, I would no longer have to be treated for diabetes, no longer a need to take insulin. And finally, for the first I could remember with clarity, I would no longer need to adhere to a low-fat and low carbohydrate diet.
Did I actually invent the phrase “Sea changing? That’s what I experienced. Truly a sea change! A profound transformation.
7 However, always those howevers, after the double transplant of kidney and pancreas, I seemed to spend more time hospitalised than I spent at home. I would be discharged one day from Cardiff Royal Infirmary and return the next. Each admission would be at least three or four days, sometimes longer. This continued from May 1991 through September of the same year. Finally, on this particular day, I really thought on September 6, I would be sent home for good. Yeepee!
Early that morning I awoke to go to the bathroom. I had lost quite a lot of weight, weighing only just over 7 stone. I’d been having a special injectable food solution into my neck. This was at long last due to be removed. As I entered the bathroom, suddenly all the energy and feeling in my arms and legs left me – just disappeared. What a traumatic experience. Thank God for a fellow patient who could hear me struggling and summoned the nurses who came running to my aid. They were eventually able to practically drag me back to my bed where I lay for what seemed a long time, gasping for breath.
Doctors and nurses were rushing in and out. They came and went, came and went again and again, taking blood, frantically checking my blood pressure. It seemed that no one could help. No one knew what was wrong. Was it finally time to go home to be with Jesus? Only He knew.
Eventually a professor came onto the transplant unit. From a distance he’d perceived something was dreadfully wrong. As he came to the foot of my bed, I went into cardiac arrest! I can even recall the pressure from the professor’s hands on my chest as he desperately tried to revive me.
Meanwhile, Judith was at home because we were scheduled to move into a new house that day. Somehow, Judith sensed that things had gone wrong with me at hospital. She frantically phoned the unit, but, of course, she still didn’t know the severity of my emergency. Naturally, the staff at the unit were only allowed to brief her with little detail. So, Judith dashed from our house and all her responsibilities of moving, leaving the removal men to cater for themselves. She had to get to the hospital!
When she arrived at the transplant unit, she was to discover I had been rushed to intensive care. She was met by my consultant at the entrance to the intensive care unit, and Mr Peter Griffin took her to his office and briefed her somewhat.
He Showed Judith my blood results on his computer visual display unit, and Judith was told that I only had a nine percent chance of survival.
In fact he added,
I give David no more than three days to live.
She and I, as well, later found that it appeared I had developed septicaemia – blood poisoning, caused from having the feed line in my neck for too long.
Anyhow,back to the intensive care unit – Judith was not allowed to come in to see me; so sadly, she left the office.
She went home and began telephoning everyone she knew everywhere in the United Kingdom and as far as Australia. She pleaded with them, imploring them to pray for a miracle for me.
Back in intensive care, all my vital organs had collapsed. Quickly concern was growing about my transplants, as well as my heart. Thirteen tubes were attached to me, as well as various machines, dripping with medication and blood transfusions, etc. All were part of the panic scene that surrounded me. It seemed that I was being kept alive by a respirator.
Eventually, Judith was allowed into the intensive care unit.
As she stood at the end of my bed and pleaded in a quiet voice,
Hello Princey Boy.
When I heard her, it was as if new life and faith had entered the room.
Immediately I awakened, breathed hard, and smiled, although I was still very critical. This was still only the first twenty-four hours, and don’t forget, I had been given only three days to live!
Three days later I was sent back to the transplant unit. Four days later I was discharged from hospital to at last be reunited with Judith and move to our new home at Malpas, Newport, South Wales.
Bible Words:
Don’t fret or worry. Instead of worrying, pray. Let petitions and praises shape your worries into prayers, letting God know your concerns. Before you know it, a sense of God’s wholeness, everything coming together for good, will come and settle you down. It’s wonderful what happens when Christ displaces worry at the centre of your life. – Philippians 4: The Message.