Frequent flyers

I think I should be eligible for some frequent flyers at Nepean Hospital by now (you know, if they had such a program.)

Or maybe like a "come 10 times, get a procedure FREE" promotion.

Something like that.

Because I ended up there again last week, after spending the wee hours of Friday morning throwing my guts up and having horrific stomach pain. (Why do these things always appear in the very dead of night? Why can't they show up at a more respectable time?)

Anyway, I toughed it out at home for about 3 hours, but by 4am I was so exhausted, and couldn't keep any painkillers or anti-nausea drugs down so we headed into the hospital.


Let me tell you, if you want to get admitted into a hospital quickly, all you need to do is get your heart racing. Literally. The past 2 times I have been to the ER I have gotten admitted straight away because I have had a really high heart rate (tachycardia).

On Friday (although it felt like Thursday night to me) my heart rate was 170 and when one of the nurses said to another "She's quite "tachy" ", the other nurse looked at her and went "Oh, you think?"


So that's my secret. Oh, and breathing really fast and looking in pain helps too.



Anyway, so I got admitted straight away and as soon as I was in a bed a nurse came to try to put an IV in my arm. Fun. I HATE needles. And I hate them even more when they don't go in on the first go. I have 3 puncture marks in both arms from attempts at getting an IV in. Eventually the nurses had to call a senior doctor to come and get one in, and she was pretty good.

I was so nauseous at this point that the pain of the needle didn't really bother me, as long as it meant I could get something to make me stop throwing up! And then we'd deal with the pain. And then they could take some blood.


So I got some good drugs (including my old friend Morphine, which unusually this time, sent me straight to Dreamland where I could hardly keep my eyes open and kept forgetting what day it was) , got rehydrated with not one, but three bags of saline, and then they started doing all sorts of tests on me - blood tests, urine tests, x-rays.

The possible diagnosis changed with the results of every test. At first they thought it was gastro, but then my blood tests were normal, so then they thought kidney stones, but my urine tests were normal.


And then - the big one - my abdomen x-ray showed some abnormalities, which led them to think I had a twist in my bowel, which would mean surgery. Again. Less than a month after the surgery on my pilonidal abscess.



I remember praying so hard for "just" gastro. I was happy with that diagnosis. I did not want another surgery.


Anyway, skip forward a few more hours (I won't tell you about how I got stabbed in the leg with an injection of anti-nausea drugs that didn't work, or the amount of times I threw up before, during and after) and the doctors (who were very nice) agreed that it was gastro.

I had a surgical follow-up just in case, where I was so worried he would say "Let's just do the surgery so we can take a look inside and see what's going on" so I really pushed the fact that I worked with kids a lot and had been in contact with kids that had similar symptoms, and thankfully he agreed that it probably was just a really severe case of gastroenteritis.



(Let me add that this entire time, I am nil by mouth in case I need surgery. My mouth is so dry that I would've killed someone to get a drink of water. It'd been at least 6 hours since I'd had a drink, and add to that all the vomiting, and man was I parched. And all I got was ice cubes, which let me tell you, do not do the job.)


Then , I get the glorious news that I can start eating and drinking again, and better news I have never in my life received. But, darn it, my stomach has like shrunk or something and all I can manage are a few pieces of mandarin washed down with some lemonade and water. Pathetic.

Oh, and as we're waiting in the car park after I got discharged, I threw everything back up. And I mean everything.


On the plus side, it's a great way to fit back into some old jeans.