Monday started well. Work was ok, Caius had the day off so I had a wardrobe delivered to go in the spare room once all the work on the main bedroom is done. Except that I failed to tell him the bit about awaiting to assemble it and came home to find a nearly complete wardrobe in the bedroom that I had spent Sunday clearing out and clearing. I completely exploded. The poor guy ws trying to be helpful and all I could do was yell at him. Not nice. Few people have experienced the full extent of my temper but Caius is one of them.
I left for rehearsal and managed to calm myself down. Rehearsal was intense and I was not quite prepared for doing so much dancing. We were learning a big routine and by 8:30 I was pretty tired. After a group tea break, we cracked on but I found myself struggling so sat myself down to watch and learn. About 9:15 I was becoming a bit fuzzy and realised that having not expected to do so much dancing, I had probably had too much insulin- thank goodness for the emergency haribo in my handbag!
I had calmed down quite a bit by the time I got home and yet another well meaning gesture from Caius was taken badly by me and once more, I snapped. I really do worry about the effect my volatile temper has on my relationship but hoping to get this sorted soon with a referral back to liaison psychiatry. Once I'd been through a full spectrum of emotions ending in hysterical sobbing, we managed a real conversation. We concluded that I probably ought to stop the show and see if I could take some time out from work. I ended up on the phone to Dad at 2am to sort out logistics and see if I could get back to Devon for a few days next week.
Tuesday was not so bad. I had a meeting with the mentoring team at UWE who are able to provide support for students who might have some difficulties doing the courses for various reasons. They have made sure that if I a can't make it to lectures, there is a note-taker available and I'll be seeing an advisor once a week to help keep me on track and approach my tutors with me should I find myself struggling at any point. This was a real reassurance for me. I followed that with a wander around Bristol Harbourside and Park street to get some raffle prizes for the work raffle. I managed to score some pretty good pieces that went down well at work on Wednesday.
Wednesday at work was good and I was looking forward to seeing how the raffle would go down on Friday and how the different buffets across the office were going to work out. The evening was lovely and relaxed and ended up with good old Great British Bake Off!
Thursday at uni was better than expected. Having got myself into a bit of a panic about not having managed to do all the reading, I arrived early, went through one of the worksheets which seemed ok and chatted to a few others on the course who were also finding that there was far too much reading to manage. I actually understood the epidemiology lecture and got the maths right and had a good idea about what was discussed in the workshop. The economy epidemiology lecture I seem to be finding harder as there is just so much new information in such a short space of time. The same goes for the two afternoon lectures. They are one after the other with about a 20 minute break in the middle so it's a fairly full on information overload. Again, I found the content interesting though and I'm finally doing a course where I can see practical applications straight away.
After uni, I went to visit the lovely Beth who supplied me with tea and tart. We had a really great catch up (it's been far too long!) but this is where things started to go downhill... It seems that my gall bladder did not enjoy the pear and chocolate frangipan tart quite as much as I did. There was rather a lot of gurgling and I became quite bloated. I didn't want to ruin the catch up though so did what I do best and ignored it. I figured it would settle down and it did seem to as I drove home and walked about a bit. There was a bit of niggling going on for the rest of the evening but I do get this quite often and it goes a few hours after eating. I tried some bland food in the form of toast for dinner but didn't feel particularly hungry. At 10, I went to bed. I usually find it painful to lie on my right side so sleep on my left right at the edge of the bed. The pain came back a bit stronger. I was trying to dose off but it kept getting worse until I was wimpering rather pathetically at Caius. He dosed me up with codeine and waited to see if it would have any effect. I lay back down and the pain inreased. I started to worry when it was not only painful to breathe in but it was shooting through my shoulder too. Caius made the decision to take me to A&E. By this point I was struggling to stand or find any comfortable position. In A&E I was sent through pretty quickly and got my hopes up that it was going to be a smooth visit.
How wrong I was. They had found me a bed. Despite me telling them that it was almost certainly colycystitis and that someone needed to let the liver team know I was in hospital, no one did. I waited 4 hours to see a doctor who after giving very vague information, spoke to dad who also said that both the BRI liver team and the Royal Free transplant team needed to know that I was in hospital with a possible infection. Unfortunately, having an infection means that I would have to be suspended from the transplant list until it has cleared as surgery at this time would be too risky. No one spoke to either liver unit from what I can tell. The surgical team were called which is normal procedure for a normal colycystitis admission but completely pointless for me as removing the gall bladder is not an option. At around 12pm on Friday I was moved to The Surgical and Trauma Assessment Unit (STAU) and I phoned the liver specialist nurse myself. No one in the department had been informed of my admission. As soon as they knew, the nurse was down on the ward to see me, make sure I was given antibiotics and sent to the liver specialist ward. It was so frustrating that it took all that time to get the right people contacted especially when we had asked them numerous times to get in touch with the liver specialists. I was so angry that I'd ended up having to do it myself in order to get the right thing done.
Anyway, I was transferred to the right ward and have now been here since Friday evening. It looks like I'm unlikely to be out before Monday as the people I need to see aren't in at the weekend. I also need to be monitored on the IV antibiotics and need to make sure I am re-listed for transplant ASAP. Once I've escaped, I'll head down to a Devon for some mum and dad tlc, a whole lotta rest and cuddles with the dogs! Until then, I'll be keeping myself entertained with whatever I can find on the iPad - any suggestions very welcome.
Keep Smiling :-)
No comments:
Post a Comment