The plan was to get back to the Schön-Klinik in Eilbek as soon as possible. We moved to Germany and expected to get deep into early neuro rehab (it’s easy to forget that these days). We expected to hear whether this would happen later in the afternoon or tomorrow. When we arrived in the UKE, the nurse said he was ok, nothing major to report. Then we noticed that they had reinserted two drainages that they had taken out  one after the other over some days only recently. I went out of the room and asked the nurse whether she considered this ‘no change’; she said that a doctor was going to talk to us.

The radio was playing ‘Holes’ by Passenger on our way back from the hospital, and, maybe for the first time, I listened to the lyrics:

“I know a man with nothing in his hands, nothing but a rolling stone
He told me about when his house burnt down, he lost everything he owned
He lay asleep for six whole weeks, they were gonna ask his mother to choose
When he woke up with nothing he said I’ll tell you something
When you’ve got nothing, you’ve got nothing to lose”

After more than a week in the UKE, a consultant (Oberarzt) in the UKE wanted to speak to the two us. Not in the room, but in a quiet corner of a very long corridor. They had discovered relatively large amounts of fluids gathering in Pádraig’s left lung; tried to drain them; turned out the fluids were in pockets and/or the exterior of the fluid bubbles was jelly-like and solid enough not to exit via the drains. For various reasons, the consultants told us, this fluid had to be removed relatively soon from Pádraig’s lungs. He said it appeared as a postoperative reaction. They would, for about 24 hours, try to flush the fluids out; if that failed, they would decide, tomorrow, whether Pádraig had to be operated again later in the week.

When I heard this, my whole body felt like as if it was being drained. We had asked, every day, about progress, possible complications, symptoms of possible complications – nobody had ever mentioned that something like this could happen; now we were told by the Oberarzt that this reaction of the body (to produce these fluids) was quite normal.
Pleurothorax & drainage – keyhole surgery/bullectomy – emergency surgery after a blocked drainage and continued internal bleeding – and now pleural effusion (an abnormal collection of fluid in the pleural space) and possibly another operation?

As we got closer to our new home, Passenger kept on singing:
“Now I’ve got a hole in my pocket, a hole in my shirt, a whole lot of trouble, he said
But now the money is gone, life carries on and I miss it like a hole in the head”

There is, of course, a chance that today’s conversation was just a pre-caution, just in case the more conservative therapy of draining the pleural cavity to dissolve the jelly-like collections of liquid didn’t work. We’ll find out sometime tomorrow.

Well sometimes you can’t change and you can’t choose
And sometimes it seems you gain less than you lose
Now we’ve got holes in our hearts, yeah we’ve got holes in our lives
Where we’ve got holes, we’ve got holes but we carry on

Today’s German Music Tip
Marius Müller-Westernhagen, Bin wieder hier (1998). A bit sweet but one of my all-time favourites – the feeling of being at home (or being away from home, as it might be), must be one of the deepest and strongest feeling one can have.
What’s hot
NOPs
What’s cold
OPs
The German word/phrase/verse of the day
Das hat mir gerade noch gefehlt.

Twitter: @forPadraig
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web: http://www.caringforPadraig.org