Well That Was Moderately Horrible
Dec. 17th, 2014 06:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
davidgillonOr why IV morphine is now my second favourite thing in the universe....
I said last Tuesday the plan was to head North in the morning, that plan didn't survive contact with reality, in particularly the reality that had me dialling 999 at 6PM that night because the backpain and vomiting had reached the point I was yelling in agony and couldn't catch my breath. The paramedics rolled in almost before we were done with the basics of the call, scooped me off the bathroom floor and whistled me off to Medway-Maritime Hospital.
(Note 1: damn, ambulances are uncomfortable!)
(Note 2: IV paracetomol, surprisingingly effective).
I appear to have set some kind of record getting through A&E - the patient in the next bed overnight has a ward named after him, has won multiple awards for his work in the hospital, including a BEM (British Empire Medal) last year, his granddaughter personally upbraided the Director of Nursing in the middle of A&E over the care he was receiving and he still took about eight hours just to get a bed in an A&E cubicle. For me, they whistled me in, slung me on a trolley, grabbed some blood, moved me a bit further into the unit and then slammed me full of IV morphine (see opening comment on just how much I now love IV morphine). At which point one of the doctors seemed to make me his personal project and basically drove me through the system - A&E cubicle, X-ray, back to the cubicle, short wait for the bloods, and then he came back with the announcement I had pancreatitis, and within a couple of hours of dialling for help I was on a bed in the Surgical Assessment Unit.
I got a fairly quick explanation that the treatment was run by surgeons, but basically involved keeping me hydrated and my pain under control, and then spent most of Wednesday through Saturday being pumped full of: IV morphine, IV antibiotics, IV anti-nausea, IV anti-emetics, and with a constantly running side order of IV fluids - basically I sloshed. So I was also catheterised. Which isn't one of my new favourite things in the universe.
By Sunday the pancreatitis was just about sorted, bar bloods settling to normal. So I promptly got a chest infection (despite the IV antibiotics - so likely a virus) and I've spent the last few days with a hacking cough. My back isn't great to start with, the pancreatitis mostly manifested as racking back pain and nausea, and then I get something that constantly irritates my back. Sod's Law.
I nearly got out on Tuesday, but they decided to hold me another night just to be extra sure, told me I could go at 8AM this morning, and finally got the paperwork sorted at 2:30 this afternoon. So I'm now home, sore, tired, but mostly okay. And I still have to head North at some point.
Unfortunately one of the things they figured out was the reason I got the pancreatitis - gall stones, so I'm back in about six weeks to have my gall bladder removed. My comment on being presented with this option was 'Please, take it out and terminate it with extreme prejudice' (I decided 'Please, take it out and inhume it with an axe' was probably too fannish).
Other observations:
Do these people have a crusade against letting you sleep?
4 bed bays, not actually that bad (once we got rid of Mr 'Nurse! Nurse!' - I never once heard a 'please' or 'thank you' out of him in four days and he'd be demanding the nurses find the bed remote while they were in the middle of installing canulas or the like on the other patients), bar people like that it's nice to have a little bit of company in a similar state to you.
OTOH 4 bed bays at visiting time when you're neurodiverse and everyone else has multiple visitors you don't know holding multiple conversations that you can't escape from are pretty much hell on Earth
Some people really shouldn't marry each other, they just emphasise their bad traits. Perfectly nice elderly guy in the next bed, but whenever his wife turned up their conversation turned into Mr & Mrs Disgruntled of Tunbridge Wells/a UKIP parody. I think I even heard her criticising the Irish Navvies at one point - Good God, Woman, that was Victorian era!?!
My God was my treatment multinational, I had nurses from Spain, Ireland (Aine, looked about 12, brilliant nurse, ironically the one everyone had most difficulty understanding), Poland, Lithuania, and I'd guess from names/accents/ethnicities multiple parts of Africa, Malaysia and the Phillipines, plus of course Brits of multiple ethnicities. Just a great example of why immigration is so good for us.
I now have to re-evaluate a decade plus of back ache issues, because it appears all the really, really bad ones were actually prior pancreatitis attacks that didn't get bad enough to hospitalise me. And the best advice on avoiding any more before the op was 'Zero or low fat diet, but we've had people have them while on a diet of salad' - at least that's only six weeks or so, but Christmas Dinner looks like being slightly constrained this year.
IV Morphine dreams: weird. IV morphine fever dreams: weirder still. IV Morphine fever dreams as directed by HR Giger whilst experiencing abdominal pain: could really have done without those two.
I said last Tuesday the plan was to head North in the morning, that plan didn't survive contact with reality, in particularly the reality that had me dialling 999 at 6PM that night because the backpain and vomiting had reached the point I was yelling in agony and couldn't catch my breath. The paramedics rolled in almost before we were done with the basics of the call, scooped me off the bathroom floor and whistled me off to Medway-Maritime Hospital.
(Note 1: damn, ambulances are uncomfortable!)
(Note 2: IV paracetomol, surprisingingly effective).
I appear to have set some kind of record getting through A&E - the patient in the next bed overnight has a ward named after him, has won multiple awards for his work in the hospital, including a BEM (British Empire Medal) last year, his granddaughter personally upbraided the Director of Nursing in the middle of A&E over the care he was receiving and he still took about eight hours just to get a bed in an A&E cubicle. For me, they whistled me in, slung me on a trolley, grabbed some blood, moved me a bit further into the unit and then slammed me full of IV morphine (see opening comment on just how much I now love IV morphine). At which point one of the doctors seemed to make me his personal project and basically drove me through the system - A&E cubicle, X-ray, back to the cubicle, short wait for the bloods, and then he came back with the announcement I had pancreatitis, and within a couple of hours of dialling for help I was on a bed in the Surgical Assessment Unit.
I got a fairly quick explanation that the treatment was run by surgeons, but basically involved keeping me hydrated and my pain under control, and then spent most of Wednesday through Saturday being pumped full of: IV morphine, IV antibiotics, IV anti-nausea, IV anti-emetics, and with a constantly running side order of IV fluids - basically I sloshed. So I was also catheterised. Which isn't one of my new favourite things in the universe.
By Sunday the pancreatitis was just about sorted, bar bloods settling to normal. So I promptly got a chest infection (despite the IV antibiotics - so likely a virus) and I've spent the last few days with a hacking cough. My back isn't great to start with, the pancreatitis mostly manifested as racking back pain and nausea, and then I get something that constantly irritates my back. Sod's Law.
I nearly got out on Tuesday, but they decided to hold me another night just to be extra sure, told me I could go at 8AM this morning, and finally got the paperwork sorted at 2:30 this afternoon. So I'm now home, sore, tired, but mostly okay. And I still have to head North at some point.
Unfortunately one of the things they figured out was the reason I got the pancreatitis - gall stones, so I'm back in about six weeks to have my gall bladder removed. My comment on being presented with this option was 'Please, take it out and terminate it with extreme prejudice' (I decided 'Please, take it out and inhume it with an axe' was probably too fannish).
Other observations:
Do these people have a crusade against letting you sleep?
4 bed bays, not actually that bad (once we got rid of Mr 'Nurse! Nurse!' - I never once heard a 'please' or 'thank you' out of him in four days and he'd be demanding the nurses find the bed remote while they were in the middle of installing canulas or the like on the other patients), bar people like that it's nice to have a little bit of company in a similar state to you.
OTOH 4 bed bays at visiting time when you're neurodiverse and everyone else has multiple visitors you don't know holding multiple conversations that you can't escape from are pretty much hell on Earth
Some people really shouldn't marry each other, they just emphasise their bad traits. Perfectly nice elderly guy in the next bed, but whenever his wife turned up their conversation turned into Mr & Mrs Disgruntled of Tunbridge Wells/a UKIP parody. I think I even heard her criticising the Irish Navvies at one point - Good God, Woman, that was Victorian era!?!
My God was my treatment multinational, I had nurses from Spain, Ireland (Aine, looked about 12, brilliant nurse, ironically the one everyone had most difficulty understanding), Poland, Lithuania, and I'd guess from names/accents/ethnicities multiple parts of Africa, Malaysia and the Phillipines, plus of course Brits of multiple ethnicities. Just a great example of why immigration is so good for us.
I now have to re-evaluate a decade plus of back ache issues, because it appears all the really, really bad ones were actually prior pancreatitis attacks that didn't get bad enough to hospitalise me. And the best advice on avoiding any more before the op was 'Zero or low fat diet, but we've had people have them while on a diet of salad' - at least that's only six weeks or so, but Christmas Dinner looks like being slightly constrained this year.
IV Morphine dreams: weird. IV morphine fever dreams: weirder still. IV Morphine fever dreams as directed by HR Giger whilst experiencing abdominal pain: could really have done without those two.
no subject
Date: 2014-12-18 10:53 am (UTC)Well, I'm glad they treated it, and took the pain you were in seriously. Best wishes for the removal!
no subject
Date: 2014-12-18 02:39 pm (UTC)Yeah, I said that rather a lot ;)
Thanks.
no subject
Date: 2014-12-18 02:11 pm (UTC)(Also this description is exactly like what I've been reading in textbooks: pancreatitis is the most painful medical condition ever discovered, while paracetamol is a really good painkiller if you skip the bit where the liver metabolizes it into something that's better at killing your liver than actually preventing pain. But nerdery aside, all possible sympathy for the most horrible of bad days.)
no subject
Date: 2014-12-18 02:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-12-18 07:18 pm (UTC)And here, really, is all the proof needed for the magic of IV morphine: Some people really shouldn't marry each other, they just emphasise their bad traits. Given the general level of chaos, pain, and neuro-orthoganality, it's amazing you could notice this.
Or perhaps you're a novelist?
Glad you're home again, and best wishes heading North.
no subject
Date: 2014-12-18 09:08 pm (UTC)I just had a check on the web and the A&E department is actually catching serious criticism for its standards (particularly waiting time*). In fact there were major news stories speculating Medway-Maritime is the worst hospital in the country after it's latest assessment came out last month, but for me it got everything right.
* OTOH, as the senior volunteer in the bed next to me pointed out yesterday, we've gone from having three hospitals for a city of 250k, to 1 emergency hospital and one that's used for a limited amount of rehab work (mostly because the building is an architecturally protected Victorian pile and they can't shut it), while population is up to 270k. There's clearly internal management issues, but the main problem is systematic under-resourcing over the last 30 years.
no subject
Date: 2014-12-18 09:13 pm (UTC)I'm a novelist cursing the Cuban-American rapprochement because I have a plot point revolving on the availability of Cuban rum ;)
Fortunately easy enough to rewrite to scarcity vs illegality as the rum in question retails at about $1900 per half litre even in countries where it's legally available....
no subject
Date: 2014-12-18 09:25 pm (UTC)I'm appalled at the shutting down of hospitals: ours keep growing: 3 level 1 trauma centers (with helipads), almost 10 "urgent care" centers for UTIs, ear infections, and other less serious issues, more than 20 clinics. (Madison is also just 270,000, plus around 300,000 in the county). All this while the insurance companies and docs are whining about the evils of socialized medicine. We may be the most over-resourced municipal area in the U.S.
no subject
Date: 2014-12-19 12:02 pm (UTC)It's a very deprived area, so they tried to sell one hospital for redevelopment as housing in order to fund the redevelopment of the overall hospital system, unfortunately they couldn't sell the one they really needed to, so the deal really didn't work out, plus even the better of the other two has major structural issues - it's an old naval hospital that's had continuous add-on patching for decades rather than anything sensibly planned, and it's on a physically constrained site with inadequate parking, yet when they tried to build a parking structure for staff the council restricted them to 2 levels rather than the 4 needed - no one has been able to work out the logic in that decision yet! I was also told while there that they had agreement to move mental health out to somewhere else, to free up three wards desperately needed for medical/surgical use, but the council had been trying to stop them, which is just bizarre. The third hospital is even more physically constrained - it's on a steep hillside between two main roads almost in the centre of town and while its a rather gorgeously gothic Victorian pile is just too physically decrepit to use for modern healthcare.
There's so much blame to go around, but the staff are clearly working their hearts out to deliver the best service possible.