Today I had an appointment with the Gynaecology team at the hospital. I go every 3 months to get the injection that puts me into menopause and stops the endometriosis from causing even more havoc.
Today the clinic was running really late and after a 45 minute wait I was called in. It was a nurse I hadn’t seen before and she was absolutely lovely. But I did get a lecture from her and the consultant for not taking my HRT medication. I hadn’t been taking it as I’ve not been experiencing any menopausal symptoms such as hot sweats, anxiety etc and didn’t really fancy taking another medication. But the consultant explained that the HRT will help protect my bones from osteoporosis which can develop after menopause. I had a Dexa bone scan about 9 months ago which showed I had already begun to develop osteopenia, the prequel to osteoporosis, and being on TPN I’m already at a higher risk of having bone problems than other women. The consultant said that if I didn’t start taking the HRT then she wouldn’t be able to prescribe the injections anymore as it wouldn’t be clinically responsible for her to do it.
So instead of getting the injection that lasts 3 months today, she would only prescribe the 1 month dose do she can check in 4 weeks whether I’m taking the HRT.
I also spent the best part of an hour in the queue to speak to one of the GP receptionists. When I finally got through I asked if I would be able to have an emergency prescription of oramorph as my bowels are not working properly and I feel like I’m on the verge of an obstruction.
To be honest it’s my own bloody fault. Last week a friend came up from Hertfordshire with her daughter and we went out for dinner on Wednesday night. We went to Pizza Express and I made the mistake of having some pizza. The following day we went to Liverpool to visit Hubby’s brother and his family and we went out for dinner at Prezzo. I got a bit carried away and even though I ordered off the kids menu I still ended up having 3 courses. Yes, they were small portions but I probably ate more that night than I would eat in a week!
The following day I was in agony and I ended up spending all weekend in bed. My bowel had slowed right down and pretty much nothing was coming out. The pain was awful. I was beginning to think I would need to make a bank holiday weekend trip to A&E but I remembered that I had been given some enemas from the hospital. So on Sunday night I gave myself an enema (always a pleasure 😉) and waited for it to work. Overnight I had diahorrea but in the morning I was back to being in pain. It clearly hasn’t shifted everything.
So a week after my adventure in Prezzo I’m still struggling. I’m taking lots of pain relief but it doesn’t seem to be going much. So I thought that if I swopped to liquid morphine it might be a bit more easily absorbed. The GP rang me and said that she wasn’t happy to prescribe the Oramorph without seeing me incase I was obstructing and needed to go to hospital. I did say that with all due respect I probably knew myself better than her if I was obstructed and when I needed to go to A&E but that I knew she had to protect herself by seeing me.
So at 5pm I was sat in the GP surgery waiting to be seen. After 15 minutes I was called in and the GP apologised for keeping me waiting but she had been reading all my recent hospital letters (I’m surprised it only took her 15 minutes to be fair!) She did my obs, which were all normal, but when she examined me I was in so much pain I could barely handle being touched. She told me she couldn’t prescribe the oramorph and that she wanted me to get looked at up at the hospital. She was pretty certain I was heading towards a full blown obstruction and that if I stayed at home and dosed myself up on morphine I would just be masking the problem and that I might aswell get myself admitted sooner rather later when things might take a turn for the worse.
I tried my hardest to persuade her otherwise and even said that if she’d prescribe me a small bottle of oramorph it would see me through the night and then I could ring the ward in the morning and get admitted straight onto the ward, bypassing A&E but she was having none of it. Instead she rang the on-call gastro registrar, explained what was going on and told them I would be up to the hospital shortly. I guess it was inevitable that I would end up back in hospital but after having 4 months at home I had been lulled into a false sense of security. I left the GP with a letter for the gastro doctor, feeling a bit like I’d failed at staying well and went home to pack an overnight bag.
I do keep a suitcase packed ready for a hospital stay but because I was going to AMRU (Acute Medical Receiving Unit) I didn’t want to be lugging loads of stuff about, especially as Hubby wouldn’t be allowed to come into the ward with me. So instead I chucked my toothbrush, clean knickers, pjs, tablet, chargers and medication into a rucksack and was ready to go. When I told the kids I was going to have to go into hospital they just looked at me, shrugged their shoulders and went “alright Mum”. It’s become such a normal thing it doesn’t even register as an event for them! So after a few hugs I was in the car with Hubby driving me to QMC.
He dropped me off at the main entrance and luckily AMRU was less than a minutes walk. I handed in the letter from my GP at the reception and within 10 minutes I had had my bloods taken and observations done. But then came the waiting. At first I was waiting in the reception area and they had a small sofa I could lie on. This was great as I find it helps to lie down when I’m in a lot of pain. But after about 2 hours I was moved along the line and put in a chair in front of the nurses station. These are the high backed chairs you find in hospitals and care homes that are super uncomfortable and not any good for sitting in for long periods of time. From there you waited to get upgraded to a reclining, lazyboy style of seat and then if you were really lucky you would get one of the few beds available. I wasn’t holding my breath about moving out of the chair from hell though as I overheard one of the nurses in the handover say that one lady had been in the reclining chair for 27 hours and there was no bed for her!
But having a Hickman line does have its benefits. Because the nurses on F22 are the only ones trained to deal with lines I can only be put on that ward. And because I needed my feed (or at the very least, fluids) it meant that I needed to be on F22. So I reckon I jumped the queue because after being in AMRU about 6 hours I was being transferred up to my second home. Some of the ladies that had clearly been waiting hours and hours shot me evils as I was wheeled by, but to be honest I didn’t give a flying fuck!
So I’m now on F22, in my own room, with my own bathroom and being looked after by all the lovely nurses that know me well. At the moment the plan is to wait and see if my bowels start working over the weekend and if they don’t then we will reassess things on Monday. On the plus side Dr P, my new gastro consultant, came to see me. I had only previously spoken to him on the phone outside of Leicester Square tube station where I revealed details of my bowel disease to every passerby (but that’s a blog post from a few weeks ago that I have yet to finish!) He asked whether the antibiotics he’d prescribed for SIBO (Small Intestine Bacteria Overgrowth) had made any difference and when I said no, he said he wasn’t surprised. But it was worth trying and we can tick that off the list ✔️
The next step is to have some more imaging done and to start a biological drug treatment. This will hopefully kick my new (but still slightly uncertain) diagnosis of crohns into remission and help prevent further obstructive episodes. But for now, all I can do is to wait patiently for my bowel to wake up and realise it’s supposed to work and watch lots of Netflix this weekend while I’m waiting!
Comments
Post a Comment