That was the week that wasn't - back in Ward 32

I've put off writing this blog and yet I shouldn't have. I just felt way too sick to begin it.

Back in Ward 32 - Part I

I awoke on the morning of Wednesday 12th August - the 'Glorious Twelfth' - being pursued by a problem. I felt nauseous immediately on awakening. And the nausea reminded me of a previous encounter with cellulitis. Not realising how seriously ill I was, I had tried to put off the situation as long as possible and then we needed to call a paramedic.

This time I wasn't going to wait. I saw inflammation near the scar and knew that it was time to go to hospital. Fortunately we were seen fairly quickly and ushered at least into a bed, because my head was beginning to loll and I felt giddy.  My blood count showed an infection, and a Moldavan plastic surgeon called Sergei told me that I would be admitted for IV antibiotics.

Back to Ward 32. Back to the same bed space I occupied before.

It is now a week since that night and when I think back, I don't remember anything much for the first three days. I was given two types of antibiotic intravenously - one was flucloxicillin and the other was penicillin,  Though I felt conscious enough, I was slipping in and out of consciousness for much of it.  I didn't speak to my ward mates because of the energy it consumed. Keith visited as usual every night  and I spoke to him on those occasions but I can't remember what it was really like. In the mornings it was always worse...nausea and swollen breast.

I do remember just weeping. The tears, flowing out of my eyes in torrents, feeling depressed and hopeless, but I can't remember the exact cause. I think on the first night I'd had no sleep at all because  of discomfort and pain; further punctuated by the obs rounds and the IV infusions, and then the sun came streaming in straight into the ward along with a loud chorus of nurses and healthcare assistants. Some staff nurses are gentle and let us sleep in the morning, but others believe in being sadistic. On this morning we had a sadistic team who walked in and flung our curtains back. It was the last think I needed and I got up and wandered down the corridor to the end if the ward, and there I sat noiselessly weeping for some time.

That night when my dear OH visited, I had a thumping headache and aching breast. I could not talk so lay in bed while he stroked my head.

My other real memory was that the original cannula inserted by Sergei on the 12th, needed to be removed - which was a pity as it was a good one. In the blackness of night I was visited by a dashing, tall gay nurse called Barry and he proceeded to try an fit me with a new one. He tried three times and each attempt was agony, and each time he failed. To his mortification he had to go and find someone more experienced, and an hour later a short gay sister came to my bedside.  She declared that the only place to spear me was under my left thumb at the bend of the wrist, which was excruciating to have inserted....but to be fair, the 6am infusion went well. It was not until my parents arrived to visit that the cannula gave up after the first bolus and the second was impossible to insert without serious agony. At first the nurse tried squeezing the syringe for a millimetre, and then resting, but even the resting was agonising. I was crying and calling out, "No! No! NO!" But she simply said that there was no reason for it to hurt so badly, as if I was making my pain up. My poor parents could only watch and stroke me while she pressed on, until finally she agreed to make up the rest of the drug in a drip bag. This seemed to work.

However that night it became apparent to the gorgeous night nurse immediately that this cannula was no good, and she managed to find a mysterious Night Sister who actually located  another vein to cannulate. By now I had completely run out of veins on my upper body and was desperate for this one to work. Huge bruises had appeared on the other sites attacked by Barry the Bruiser, which still persist at the time of writing.