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Well That Was Moderately Horrible
Dec. 17th, 2014 06:56 pmOr 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.
