4 miles - tried to lenghten my stride

seemed to go quicker. I dunno but it was 28 deg c so  borderline hard work

rough

felt rough all day. managed  52; 30  10k  though

Gym sydenham

no decent looking women in my range although did get invited to a boxing class. i might give it a shot next week...maybe not. dunno

asside from that usual TM , wieghts, core. s now more venal than ever, really vile. fat arse too

hello all

9 miles in what qualified as a LSR. the longest i've run for ages and wasn't feeling brilliant.

two mins plank - s looking at me strangley. christ she's got a fat arse

no training on sunday

but a quick 4ms yesterday. almost a temp run.

Ian's account of his near death experience below

After they removed the implant they took out the airline but couldn't get me breathing again, so they stuck another tube in and waited a couple of hours and gave it another go.

No luck, I was still not breathing and my condition was deteriorating. So they put an emergency third tube in. As you might imagine, between intubations, and the removal of the implant endoscopically, my oesophagus and trachea were pretty traumatised and my throat had now closed up too.

At this point my life signs starting disappearing and they realised I was dying on the table, so they made an emergency transfer to Intensive Care at Charing Cross Hospital.

I don't have any memory of what happened next but it seems that as I arrived I'd come out of the anaesthetic and was thrashing about and screaming that I was choking.  According to my night nurse they hit me with a team and poured drug after drug into me to try and get me taking in oxygen and quietened down. Eventually they got me absorbing oxygen again and sedated me. I take it I was a bit of a handful.

The first thing I remember is waking up in the darkness of the early hours of the morning looking like you saw in the piccy. Tubes in my mouth, up my nose, up my dick, five tubes in my right arm and three in my left, and hooked up to a cardiogram and O2 meter. Not breathing on my own at all but feeling calm as hell and vaguely curious and amused - they were some DAMNED good drugs. I do remember asking the nurse to take a picture as I thought it was pretty amusing to be on what looked like the Enterprise Sick Bay and that I'd been turned into a Borg.

The next day is a bit hazy. I know I got hold of my phone and started sending emails to let people know what happened.  I've seen them since and realised how out of it I was.  I can't tell you how grateful I was for that phone. I couldn't speak and could barely hold a pen to communicate. With no family in this country, and right over the other side of London from all my friends, I was feeling pretty isolated - emails and the internet helped enormously, especially when I started getting replies. Thanks guys.

I've heard a few possible explanations for what happened. At first they said my lower lungs had collapsed, maybe because of an infection they found (but later said that the chest infection was probably post-op), then that the anaesthetic may have went where it shouldn't and paralysed my breathing, then just admitted they couldn't tell exactly what had happened but maybe all three together.

They did make it clear that I'd nearly died twice by that point. It had been touch and go.

Next day I started choking again. They were reassuring me that my stats were fine and there was no reason to panic, but I knew I had no air. I certainly knew. Ever properly suffocated? I don't recommend it. When my time does come up I hope it's a nice quick heart attack, because that was hell on earth.

I'm not sure if this was scheduled, but I think not: the doc in charge turned up with a load of students and two VERY burly nurses they had called up from some other ward in case they had to restrain me again.  They were insisting I was fine, but I knew I wasn't.  At one point I turned and I could see huge black clots in the tube, which I pointed out to them in the most reasonable of terms. Something along the lines of punching the cot sides and screaming, "Look at the fucking tube!"

At this point it all turned nasty.  The doc was telling them to clear the tube but they couldn't find the right connections and the tube was incompatible with their mobile unit (bear in mind the tube had gone in at another hospital) and then the suction machine wasn't working. At this point I'm punching and kicking the sides of the bed and shouting and they are telling me off that I am just panicking and that my signs are absolutely fine.

Some quick thinking nurse grabbed a hypodermic, punctured the breathing tube and started trying to draw the clots out as they appeared up the tube. Probably saved my life again.

At some point, despite not having another intubation ready, the doc decided she had to take the risk and take the tube out. It was make or break I think, either I'd breathe on my own or die. So she starts hauling it out like a sailor hauling in a line. At this point I'm not only choking but I'm throwing up some horrible black and grey bile straight from my lungs.

She whips the tube out and I do indeed start breathing, with some effort. I can see the tube and it's black along about 6 inches and the doc says, 'Oh look, it WAS blocked, must have happened right at the end. No wonder he started struggling'.  No shit, Sherlock.

They quickly shoved a full CPAP face mask on, small problem being that when they broke the bag open it was a completely new model none of them have seen before and they couldn’t work out how to get the bastard thing on.

After a while they managed it and I started breathing again.  Now I have tried the little CPAP masks they use for sleep apnoea and they are just a bit irritating.  These CPAPs are nothing like that. The pressure is enormous and every single breath has to be a conscious effort to force your lungs in and out.  It's kind of like rowing a  boat and each tiring stroke is a breath, but unlike the boat you can't rest and float downstream for a bit. Frankly it's mostly like being smothered with a pillow and trying to force in each breath. And it's moisturised with steam, so it's like a sauna mask too. Not nice.

I spent the next 8 hours in one of those until I complained that I didn't have the energy to keep fighting for each breath, so much so that they agreed to move me onto a smaller mask early.  One last little joy with it though.

At some point they decided to add an extra antibiotic into the mix. I swear to God I've never seen a syringe the size of it, it was like a mini bicycle pump.  My body clearly didn't like it as I immediately threw up copiously into the face mask.

This is another experience I would not recommend. Having a sealed and secured full mask on your face and then seeing a tide of black bile suddenly fill that mask up past your nose, and to then start drowning in your own vomit is another of those experiences I could have gone through life without.

I have to say ICU is another world. I had a nurse solely for me and sitting next to me 24/7. The equipment is so Science Fiction I can't tell you. The beds (not really beds, some kind of cot) are like transformers: the staff can morph them into just about any shape and configuration. Amazing high tech stuff.

There was a little parting gift in having my GN tube pulled out my nose. As the nurse said, 'Gosh that was a long one.' I was tempted to say that wasn't the first time I'd been told that but didn't feel it was wholly appropriate.

After that it started to pick up.  They transferred me to a High Dependency Unit for a night, here it was one nurse to two of us. The poor bastard in the other bed had his kidneys and liver fail and was in a pretty bad way.  I, on the other hand, was picking up at an incredible rate. By the morning they decided to transfer me to a general ward and removed the tubes from my arms.

It was on this ward that I started starting eating and they took the catheter out.  It was a wonderful feeling being slowly divested of all the medical paraphernalia and returning to normal. Almost a rebirth experience. Nothing says you are alive like being able to pee independently.

There were a few more problems to overcome. The chest infection kept going, I got a cold, my arms became infected with phlebitus and I had an outbreak of cold sores around my mouth and in my throat. Still have all those.

A few last things I'll say about the hospital experience.  Moving through the three units so rapidly gave me an insight into the NHS I've not had before.  I was amazed how active and busy the nurses were and the staggering amount of record keeping they had to do.  As a professional visiting my local hospital that had not been my experience in the past.   I'd seen a lot of slipshod and lazy nursing and they had no idea what was going on with their patients, but this was nothing like that. I saw some amazing and hardworking nurses. I don't know how they keep it up on a daily basis.

But I also saw the standards in the general wards and know where all the criticism about the NHS comes from.  The contact time doctors have with patients is clearly inadequate, the quality of staff clearly deteriorates and the good staff are overwhelmed by the staff to patient ratio and the amount of work that needs doing.

Can I also mention that there was something ironic about the fact that the books I'd taken to read were Heinlein's 'Job' (I promise you I empathised) and a book about work structuring our lives (I missed my 25 year at work presentation by being on the cusp of life and death)?

Did I mention that on my third day in my employer emailed me wanting to know how soon I would be out of hospital and could start working again soon? Nice.

I still need to inhabit everything that happened emotionally and get some meaning from it.  A few days ago I was dying and now it seems like nothing happened.

this weeks work out

friday 10K quite quick no garmin. today  gym hung over very sweaty

10k

i think you could call this a quick run with fartlek in the second 5K. 1m 45  plank
my friend ian ended up in ICU , he's ok now

first day not training since 12/8 this year.

enrolled in the bexhill halk yesterday. must run a few on sunday

gym with the sydenham fuckwits

sorry  that was unfair and only partially true. didn't feel that brilliant today so struggled . didn a 1.40min palnk along side some boxer types who were doing crazy stuff. enrolled for the bexhill half today. must get back into the lsr groove. going to try on sunday

ladywell 10k

hung over, and fried breakfast. very hard going. writing not happening

ladywell areNA GYM

Intervals on TM. S with kids at clairs ( who)

bumped into marshall arts policeman

ladwell - 6 miles

encouraged by the brilliant graffiti nder the last bridge before sydenham i did 6 miles i didn't think i was going to do this morning.

prose tommorow  - subject the first s

ran to work agian

10 miles, or 20 miles in the last couple of days. garmin playing silly buggers. Quite quick there, quite slow back.

no writing today - thought i'd tackle s ( the other one) next

10 miles today as i ran to work

it was quite hard on the way back.  writing delayed. s very shouty

more on todays run

reallly leged it up the final hill. i think those interval sessions on the tm help

thinking abot run ing to work in the morning

10K usual route - some stuff on the worlkd of work

wold have one longer but needed to be home to cook dinner etc.

These days i think about the mechanics , the metronomic notion of getting up in the morning and the time i can't either do what i want , or can't really enjoy what i shouldn't be doing . Because i exactly shouldn't. To make these evening pieces a little more alive, not so dead , not so stilted perhaps i should keep a notebook and make triumphant entries in it throughout the day. This is a good excuse to buy a notebook.

Is this too close to write about, has my pride  and  my inability to take these clowns seriously affected my prospects. I think it has. i'm afraid right now, of losing everything ; including my health. This fear has work so tightly bundled within it that it is difficult to talk about withot seeing everything else  flow from my chest to my mouth like a river you should swim from.

gym sydenham - interval 2 on tm

there is something to be said for going a  little later. i wonder what that might be, hey noting to loeave home for unless of course you have to leave home

 i'm going to try and flex my writing muscle a little by chosing a topic for each day of the week. and then nailing a couple of hundred words a day. ambiutious i know but i like the idea of it. that's enough.

tommorow's dreaded topic...................... the world of work

6 miles usual efffort

I'm going to start writing something about a  set theme here every day if i can

gym

sydenham gym , very quiet  there for some reason. wieghts after tm intevals is a struggle. more an better food needed

yesterday 6ms usaaul route , felt  ok.

went to see emma - lovely , really lovely evening.

need to thjnk about writing something

6ms

really couldn't be bothered to do more. i was thinking of doing more but couldn't be asked/arsed. Sandrine looks at me like she hates me, sheer contempt.  she should start looking onto my soul. Fucking Fire Ent - cunts. they are picking me off.

listening to nick lowe on radio london with danny. really what could be better

fuck me - intervals at the gym

yet another shit , down in the mouth, tom waitsian  kind of day. neq lost, marriage lost.  realy caned it at the gym this Pm after work. really fjucking caned it. discovered TM intervals and i see a theme  developing. M the graphic designer gave me a further insight into the misery we all seem to live  with. he still loves his ex wife of 20 years. ffs

cut short run

4ms quickish due to real life setting in.

gym

sydenham usual but more plank

ladywell - fuck me i'm boring

10k in 53.30 fastest ever i think

boring boring

6ms ladywell loop

gym

usual fuckwits, usual routine

6miles

usual route, quite hot, over dressed, quite hard, body was staying stop a little, didn't.