Engine Problems, or Lessons Learned from a Hospital Visit

First February Blogpost! Woo!

As many of you may have picked up, I was taken to hospital twice in two weeks due to pancreatitis caused by pernickety gallstones. I have now been discharged and am fine and well, although very tired, sore, and a little shaken by everything.

Lessons I have learned from all of this:

1. Take aches and pains seriously. Gallbladder issues can be so painful you feel like you’re giving birth to one of those chestbursters from the Alien films. A gallstone episode is sometimes known as biliary colic. If you get increasing pain in your upper abdomen (just under your chest, it is not a heart attack!) which reaches a crescendo and then diffuses slowly over the course of an hour or so, that may be the sign. My episodes have varied in terms of pain levels and how long each episode would take, but they all started with the same discomfort that morphed in to pain. The worst times I was genuinely frightened as that was a whole new level of pain. I didn’t go see my GP about these pains until after the third or fourth episode, purely because it was starting to happen on weekdays (and thus work time). Let’s pause for a moment: I waited until something was going to bother me AT WORK to seek medical help. Because apparently hurting and being in agony in my own spare time is ok? No, it isn’t. I would ask and beg all my friends, family, strangers on the street to seek proper medical attention as soon as you are able if something is not right. You know yourself well enough to know if a pain isn’t “normal”, and if something just isn’t right. Your time is just as important as “company time”.


2. As much as the NHS want us to use it, I’m not wholly convinced by NHS 24. To those who don’t know, NHS 24 is a telephone helpline for people to call up if they’re feeling a bit under the weather but can’t see their GP. During the swine flu season a lot of people were asked to call NHS 24 if they displayed flu like symptoms INSTEAD of visiting their local doctors’ practice, so they didn’t cough up their flu germs on everyone. HOWEVER, calling this number and having to go through that rigmarole when you are alone and in pain is an agony all in itself. After getting your personal details they then have to determine whether you are so ill you merit an ambulance, and if not, you get passed over to a nurse on doctor. These people can’t see you, so they can’t take your temperature, see that you’re covered in sweat and flailing like a child with colic and they certainly can’t give you any drugs to help it! “Get warm, take some paracetamol and take deep breaths” was actual advice given to me by a nurse who had ascertained that I possibly had acid reflux. When she said that, all I could think that those Gaviscon (a branded UK antacid made to combat acid reflux) adverts *really* downplayed the level of pain experienced by acid reflux sufferers. Don’t get me wrong, she did well given the extreme limitations of that service. It is, in my opinion, not an ideal service for people going through acute pain.


3. Surgery is terrifying and really cool at the same time. I went in to the theatre on Valentine’s Day. Let me tell you that exposing myself to a bunch of surgeons, nurses and anaesthetists and getting cut open was not what I had planned for that day, but it couldn’t be helped. I am slightly embarrassed to admit that I was not as brave as I had earlier let on to said surgeouns, and a tear or four escaped while I was lying under the harsh lights, listening to my own pulse racing on the heart monitor and keeping track of the ca. 5 - 6 people that I could see. That was before a nice lady doctor knocked me deeply unconscious with the power of drugs, of course. The seconds before my enforced Sleeping Beauty moment I willed myself to marvel at the miracle of science. Gallbladder removal surgery is usually done as a keyhole operation. Think about that. No one has their hands in you, 4 small cuts and some telescopic instruments are all they need. Apparently the procedure only takes about 45 minutes. My lunch break at work is 50 minutes! All that jiggery-pokery and playing peek-a-boo behind the liver, and hey presto, the gallbladder has left the building, in 45 minutes. It is deeply cool and awesome. NHS, take my money, it’s all good!


4. Be nice to porters. A totally under-appreciated group of people in the healthcare system, they are the ones who make sure you get to the right place. Going for an MRI? They’ll wheel your butt over there and back again. Going for another procedure somewhere else? No problem. Oh, changing wards? That’s fine. They spend their time wheeling people in beds and wheelchairs from place to place to let the nurses and doctors pend their time doing what they do best. Oh, and a shout out to lab techs and other unseen and unsung folk who work in the medical profession, you’re all part of the great science machine.


5. I hate morphine. The second time I went to A&E the doctor had only squeezed a minuscule 2 ml of morphine in my veins, when I grumbled and asked what on earth that was. Yes, it took away the pain, but it also took a dimmer switch to my cognitive thinking abilities. It was like someone was smothering my thoughts with a metaphysical pillow. Not to mention the nausea. While she laid off the morphine for the evening, I had a re-visit from my newfound nemesis post-surgery (apparently it’s the recovery drug of choice), which a poor surgical nurse had to witness the effects of. It may just be because I’m a control freak about… well me.. I hate being incapacitated in a way not of my own choosing. 

6. And let’s pause for a moment while I recite my ode to nurses.
Nurses are actually awesome. I know we all say this, and we all lament how underpaid they are, but they REALLY are. Don’t get me wrong, they aren’t all “nice” in the Sunshine Sally with Rainbow Sparkles kind of way, but bloody hell they do a lot of work. They are the ones who make sure you have tissues when you’ve burst in to tears in front of the 10 consultants and their minions who talk about you and not to you. They are the ones who tie your open-back (really irritating for someone who turns in her sleep, by the way!) hospital gown properly because you can’t reach the ties, and bring you lots of tea (or coffee). They dispense your medicine, turn down your bed, help you wash your face when you’re away in morphine-hell, make sure you get fed and watered, and are not bothered by various bodily functions and reactions. It was a nurse who helped me sit up and get out of bed the first time after surgery, a nurse who dressed my wounds, and a nurse who told me what to expect when going home. Being an introvert, I love the night nurses, who glide across the darkened ward and fix your saline drip while you sleep, or apologise when they wake you because they have to check your blood pressure.


7. Speaking of wards; I have a newfound admiration of the system. There’s a new giant super-hospital being built in Glasgow, which is proposing to have everyone in individual rooms. Again, the introvert in me rejoiced! I am not a-social or anti-social, I do like people, but I like to control who, when and how long. I can get over-saturated with human contact, especially around people who aren’t my family and very close friends. So the idea of being in a ward with 3 other people is a bit freaky to me. However, there was no way around it. The beds were far enough apart that we could sit happily in silence and have our naps (sweet, blessed naps!), but close enough to have an occasional chat. I am now a bit of a convert to the system, for a couple of (possibly weird) reasons. Firstly, being in isolation for prolonged periods of time can’t be good. One of the ladies in my ward had been there for over a month! Can you imagine if she’d had to sit in a room on her own all day? Second, knowing other people are in the same boat is both comforting (in the “I’m not alone in this” kind of way), and also a bit humbling. It forces you to stop thinking about you and your pain for a moment and share a sympathetic and empathetic moment to someone else’s pain. I think that’s incredibly important, not just on hospital wards, but in society in general. The moment we remove ourselves from others entirely and fail to see and acknowledge other people’s troubles, pains, joys and successes, is the moment society, in the true sense of the word, dies. But that was possibly a bit too philosophical. You can’t blame me really, I had a lot of time to sit and think!


8. Now, my last point: Having someone at home who tidied the house, went shopping for me and made me dinner on my first day home is awesome, and I am incredibly grateful to the Man of the House for the pains he has taken to take care of me! <3

A bit of a long post about something we are apparently not meant to talk about in polite society, hehe. As I’ve been signed off for 3 weeks I don’t know if I’ll have anything to really blog about, but in any case, I will endeavour to make my next post a bit more lively, hehe. But if I start blogging too much about daytime TV, please please please put me out of my misery!

Happy Halfway to Weekend and Good Health to all my readers!