Pity party

I don't really feel like blogging today. I've spent the last 36 hours in bed and in pain and I'm feeling pretty down. But I think it's important that I detail all my journey, partly so that I can look back and remember the ups and downs and so that you guys reading this really understand the whole picture.

Yesterday morning I got up and had a shower. I felt more tired than I had been feeling but thought it was because I had had a busy weekend of going out to ikea and friends visiting on Sunday. 

Then the dizziness and nausea kicked in just after lunch. It came pretty much from nowhere and hit me like a ton of bricks. Every time I stood up I thought I was going to pass out. The room was spinning so bad that I had to call the nurses to help me back to bed from the loo.

The pain in my tummy and rectum was also getting worse. I was in agony. The doctor came and did some blood tests, sent me for a chest X-ray and told me not to get out of bed unless a nurse was with me as my blood pressure was very low. 

I hardly slept all night as the pain kept waking me up. I was ringing my buzzer every hour for pain relief because the pain just wouldn't go away. 

When Dr 18 came to see me this morning and told me all the tests had come back normal and that there wasn't an obvious cause for the pain I burst into tears. And just sobbed. 

I think in that moment everything just overwhelmed me. The pain. The exhaustion. The fact that I've been away from home for nearly 4 weeks now. How much I was missing the kids and my husband and the sheer frustration of feeling so awful but nobody knowing why. 

Dr 18 held my hand and said that they would work it out. He would increase my pain medication to help me get on top of the pain and told me that I must have a sleeping tablet tonight to allow my body to get some proper rest. He is going to order an ultrasound on my gallbladder just to make sure that's ok but I know that it will show there's nothing wrong, just like all the other tests. 

I'm not making this pain up, I told him. It's here and it's very real and the fact that nobody knows what it is worries me. I asked about whether I could be intolerant to wheat or gluten or anything but apparently my symptoms don't fit, nor do they fit with celiac disease. They don't seem to fit with anything and that's the problem. 

He told me that he still thought my insides were upset after the colitis and all the operations. That they're just taking a long time to settle down and maybe eating and drinking is aggravating it. Maybe I would need to really limit my oral intake and go back onto feed for a little while so he asked the dietician to come and see me. 

She suggested that I go onto liquids only for a few days to see if that helps. Then we will gradually introduce foods to see if I have any reaction to them. So for now I'm drinking Ensure (they're a bit like slim fast - a milkshake to replace meals but with all your vitamins and minerals in them) and having a calorie shot that also has vitamins in. Yes, it tastes as disgusting as it looks. 

I'm desperate to go home, there had even been talk of me going home tomorrow, but I don't know if that's going to happen now. And to be honest the thought of going home in this much pain terrifies me. 

You see I told my kids that in this operation Surgeon A was going to fix my tummy and that when I came home afterwards that would be it- no more sleeping in hospitals. So I need to go home and be well and stay well. I need to be well enough to take them to school, to help them with homework, to have their friends round to play, to tuck them in bed at night and read them stories. I need to be well enough to be a wife and mother and try to piece my life back together. I need to go back to work. I need to do so many things and nowhere in my plans did having this pain or needing to be fed feature. 

So today I'm feeling just a little bit sorry for myself. I've not answered texts and declined a visit from a good friend because I just couldn't face seeing or talking to anyone. 

People tell me all the time that I'm strong, that I'm the strongest person they know, that I'm an inspiration to them, that they don't know how I keep going. And that's why this post has been so hard to write because it feels like I'm admitting to everyone that I'm not the strong person they all think that I am. That I've given in and had a pity party today. That I've been weak and cried and felt sorry for myself. 

I'm hoping that after a good nights sleep and an increase in my pain medication that things will be better tomorrow. 

NB x