The Adventures Of Samwise

Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham Charity Above is a link to one of the most important charities in my life. This is the hospital that repeatedly saved my life, and asked nothing in return. This is the hospital that continues to care for me, that gives me small home comforts when away from home, that literally does everything from keeping me breathing to helping me go to the toilet (in more ways than one). So it's fair to say I am grateful. Now, it may not seem vital what they do, as what they provide isn't healthcare  as such, it is wellbeing care and research and equipment. It's no secret that the NHS is struggling, just as it is no secret that it saves lives every single day.  But that's something for a different post, as I have an awful lot to say about the NHS, and everything we take for granted. So anyway, for the NHS to run and continue to save lives, it has to do just that, focus on saving lives. Meaning that often when you're in hospital, things that

So the last few days my lungs have been kind of hurting. At first it was like "oh that's irritating", which not so slowly progressed into "oh shit I can't breathe". So I did what I always do. I went to my all knowing font of knowledge. My big sister, Hope. She's an A&E Doctor and by far the smartest one in the family, so if she tells me to do something, I do it. She told me to go to A&E, so I did, because even if she's miles away I feel she'd still slap me if I didn't. As anyone who regularly visits hospital will know, you never go to an A&E without packing at least an overnight bag and something to do in the waiting room, that's just silly. Conveniently, my brand new backpack arrived that morning, so that was cool. My Mom seemed less impressed with how excited I was to use it than I was. Something about it being more important that I breathe. Now I know I wasn't well, because I kept coming kinda close to passing out o

There's one way to wake up that I absolutely hate. It means I have massive anxieties surrounding sleeping anywhere other than my own bed, and anything other than alone. Because when I'm asleep I can't stop my bag from leaking. I can't know until I've woken up. Every single morning the very first conscious movement I make is to put my hand on and around my stoma bag, to check if it's leaked. I'd say about 5% of the time it has, and that doesn't seem like much, but that's over once a month. It's not always massive pools of poop everywhere, sometimes it's just started to leak and I can rush to the bathroom and sort it out before it's got anywhere. But not always.  So here is a photo that I wished never to show anybody ever, because I'm ashamed of it. But then I reminded myself that I'm not doing it on purpose, it's nothing I can avoid, and at least I'm a-fucking-live.  So this is my mattress. Covered in stains. It's