I had a surprise today. Just before lunchtime I looked up to see my Mum and Dad walk onto the ward. I was so pleased to see them and it was lovely that they would spend their day off from work travelling up and down the A1 to visit me.
It really cheered me up, especially as Dr 7 had some bad news for me on his ward round this morning. You know the bleed that I had from my Hickman line on Sunday? Well it turns out that as well as the blood pouring out, some bad bacteria has gotten in and infected my line. Another bloody line infection.
I don't know why I was surprised when he told me. If anything is going to go wrong, it will happen to me. Nothing ever seems to be straightforward. I am now on IV antibiotics for seven days meaning that I will be stuck in hospital for at least another week! Aaaaarrrrggggghhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I have spent most of the day hooked up to a drip as I'm not doing very well with my eating and drinking at the moment. It looks like my bowel hasn't taken kindly to being manhandled and is protesting. I can manage mash potato and gravy, the odd biscuit here and there and if I'm very lucky, a packet of crisps but that's about it. I did have a few forkfuls of plain, boiled, white rice today but couldn't stomach very much. My appetite comes and goes but I am generally not very hungry and am losing weight (on the NHS diet I have lost nearly 4 stone since last July! It's better than slimming world but is quite a radical way to lose weight!)
It looks like when I go home I could still need some IV fluids or feed (TPN) to keep me nourished so they need to get the Hickman line clear of infection so that it can be used again if need be.
I realised that Mum and Dad would be able to take me out of hospital and back to Hobbycraft but being on the IV fluids meant that there would be no sneaking out today. Instead I had to ask a nurse to disconnect me and get permission from Dr 7 to leave the hospital. He said I could leave for an hour with his blessing as a trip out would probably do me good. That's the great thing about this ward- they understand the link between the body and mind and take a holistic approach to your well being. They know how important it is to have day release to get home to see family, or just to go out to the shops for an hour and know that it can be as good as any medicine for making you feel better.
But I was only allowed out for an hour or so as there was a slim possibility that I could be called for an endoscopy if there was space on the list this afternoon. I had a little wander around Hobbycraft and bought some more cross stitches to keep me going during the next week ( or rather Mum and Dad bought them for me as Hubby still has my bank card!) but after half an hour I was tired and in pain and ready to get back to my bed so we headed back to the hospital. What we hadn't thought about what how busy the carpark was going to be and we we ended up driving round and round for half an hour to find a space. Considering the fact that 2 hours of parking costs £2.60, it had cost us £1.30 just to find a bloody space. There's no system to stop cars from coming in the carpark even if it's full so you just end up with loads of people driving round and round looking for a space, with them all getting madder and madder.
Once I got back to the ward I flopped onto my bed, rang my buzzer for pain relief and was hooked up again to the IV fluids. I was told that the 'top and tail' endoscopy will take place tomorrow afternoon so I'm nil by mouth from 7am and no drinks after 11am tomorrow. (I will cover in another post what an endoscopy entails- it's not one for the faint hearted!)
Another lovely surprise was a patient I had been in Fredrick Salmon ward with and had bumped into at Costa the other week was back in outpatients seeing her surgeon today. She went to see if I was still on Fredrick Salmon ward but they told her I had been moved to IFU and she came up to see me for 20 minutes before getting her train home. We had a lovely chinwag and catch up and compared our post surgery hair losses and scars.
Because of the line infection they had to take blood from my Hickman line and also from a vein and send it to the lab to be cultured. This is to see what bugs are grown so that they know which antibiotics to give me. It also tells them if the infection has spread to my blood stream or is contained within my line. I have very bad veins and all the nurses on the ward hate having to bleed me. They couldn't find any decent veins in my arms or hands, so resorted to using one in my foot. I can tell you that having a needle put in there really does hurt like hell. I should get the results from those tests in a day or two.
So I'm off to bed knowing that tomorrow I will be having someone looking at my insides from a camera that they will shove down my throat and up my arse. Just then ought of it makes me clench my bum cheeks together!
Fingers crossed for lots and lots of sedation so that I don't remember much and don't feel too much pain.
NB x
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