Ready to be better again

13 January 2006

8 days ago I had my kidney stone blasted to smithereens at Maidstone Hospital. I’ve been recovering from that for the past week and while half my brain now wants to be getting on with things, doing blogs, taking photos, going for walks and so on, the other half of my mind has the attention span of a gnat and is being tired and worse than useless, while my physical self would much rather curl up in bed and do nothing but sleep. Perhaps someone could explain to me why brain surgery is easier to get over than a mildly invasive procedure on my kidney? While you mull that over, I shall try and recap the last week while I listen to my iPod at a volume that is quite plainly not good for me. But I’m young and reckless, so never mind.

I was summoned to the hospital at 8.50am and we made our way there, only to then be left waiting for 4 very boring hours in the discharge lounge until a bed came free for me. I had to wait for hospital transport to pick up the patient who was in “my” bed. I did wonder why she couldn’t wait for transport in the discharge lounge and give the damn bed to me, but it was not to be.

When I was eventually admitted onto the ward, things got going fairly well. A young female doctor came to take my blood and was soon joined by the anaesthetist, who wanted to know the usual things about allergies. Meanwhile, my veins had gone into hiding and, despite gently poking about a bit, the doctor couldn’t get anything. So the anaesthetist, in all his arrogant wisdom, had a go on my left arm. Inspecting the inside of my arm, he started waving a needle about near my wrist and, yes, shoved it into the vein there. It hurt a bit, especially as he took a whole syringeful, but when he came to fishing about for a bit of cotton wool so he could remove the needle, that’s when it really hurt. I could see the needle pointing back up towards the surface and was desperately pulling my arm down from his grip to stop the needle making an exit from the inside. I was on the verge of kicking him when he finally took the needle out, leaving me with a big red, swollen and bruised patch on the inside of my wrist. My poor vein.

A bit later, the surgeon came round to see how I’d been and to remind me of what he’d be doing. His words: “We’ll go up your natural passages”. Meaning: “I’ll stick this laser up your fanny and you’ll like it”. He’s no foot-stroking Chris Chandler, but he’s nice enough. When he said that they might keep me in over night, I warned him, “I will have to kill you.” “Well, we’ll see how it goes,” he said.

At 3.40pm I was finally wheeled off to theatre and Mum and Dad were able to go home and end their unintentional nil by mouth stint. When I was at King’s, the theatre was miles from the ward so I was rather surprised to arrive at my destination after roughly 5 yards. I’m not entirely sure why 3 porters were needed. They were quite fun guys though, even if the nurse did have a hell of a job trying to get them to turn away why I scooted from my bed to the trolley in my fetching hospital gown.

I was wheeled into the anaesthetic room to be hooked up to things and stuff before the anaesthetist made his return. I’d not got my glasses on by now and the four other people in the room were just a blur. Blurry or not, I wasn’t going to let the anaesthetist get away with what he did to my wrist and brandishing my swollen wrist in front of him, I said, “Look what you did!”. The other guys were shocked at my grave injury and asked, “Who did that?” “He did!” I said, pointing. “If it weren’t for the fact you were wearing glasses I’d have poked you in the eye,” I told him.

This warning evidently didn’t go in, as he proceeded to size up the veins in my left hand for the IV access. “Sizing up” meant looking for a vein, finding one and then repeatedly flicking it fucking hard. Seriously, one more flick and I’d have flicked him across the room. I still have a small bruise on my hand, keeping company with the one on my wrist. Quite something for someone who doesn’t bruise.

Blurry people then started pumping things into me. Antibiotics went in that increased my heart rate – should we be concerned that I felt the increase before the monitor picked it up? Then a sedative that gave me the same taste in the back of my throat as anaesthetic does, making me think they’d lied to me like they did at Kings (“this is a painkiller” “huh?” zzzzzz). Then having given me a few moments to feel woozy, they finally gave me the proper stuff. zzzzzzzzz

I woke up in Recovery and was surprised to find myself in my usual sleep position: on my front with my head on my arm. I’m fairly sure that I heard one blurry nurse tell another “this is how she sleeps”, so I do wonder if I’d previously given her some semi-conscious trouble about it that I no longer remember. As I came round more resolutely, I had a horrible feeling of heaviness in my bits, like the need to pee. A blurry nurse put a pad under me, but (probably moments) later I couldn’t remember what she’d done, so I didn’t dare try and pee in case there was nothing there.

I was wheeled back to my ward, where my lovely (although slightly ditsy) nurse told me that Mum and Dad had just that moment rung to see how things were going. I don’t know how time was passing at this stage as I was ever so tired, but was desperately trying to fight it so that I could go home that night. I managed a pretty good – and beautifully red – wee and then the nurse brought me some food to eat. All the while I was trying to drink more and more water, determined not to stay overnight.

The food wasn’t anything great. Warm quiche (I always have quiche cold) and warm ice cream. I ate both slowly and they went down ok. The slightly sloppy ice cream was certainly no problem, it just took me back to my childhood when I used to beat ice cream into a puddle before eating it anyway.

Mum and Dad arrived, full of homemade vegetable soup, and we waited for the surgeon to make his rounds and – please – send me home. The water was still being downed and I managed a couple of smaller wees, although with the night shift changeover, the service wasn’t so sharp and so the bedpan sat keeping us company for longer than was perhaps necessary…

Mr Surgeon finally came to the ward and reported that they’d got the stone good and proper. He zapped it with his laser, scooped up the bits and put in a stent. He said I would have a cystitis-y feeling for a while and would pass bits of rubble, but … I could go home.

We got my things together and I made my way very slowly to the car, hobbling along like a very old cowboy. I was worn out and think I may have slept a little on the way home. Once inside, I asked Mum to shut down my computer. “Do you want to check your mail?” she asked. “No, I’m going to bed,” I said … and the world nearly ended, but pulled itself together just in time.

I was feeling a bit sick, but was thinking that I just wanted to take a couple of co-codamol and go to bed and not being sick was generally a better idea than being sick. But then events overtook me and I threw up all the quiche and water I’d had at the hospital. Then I took the tablets and went to bed, feeling a whole lot better.

An hour later, I was up again for the first of the hourly (eventually two-hourly) claret-red wees that night. I had some more co-codamol at about 4am, but I’m relieved that having been to the bathroom, I was straight back to sleep again as soon as my head hit the pillow.

The next day I did a lot of sleeping, sitting around, weeing and painkiller-swallowing. I was quite miserable for a while in the evening as it didn’t feel like I was making any progress and I wanted to be up and doing, preparing food for Dad’s birthday party the next day. I felt a little better after a rest and managed to help a little in the kitchen. That night’s sleep did me more good and although I was stuffing in the co-codamol, I had quite a good day on Saturday and certainly had fun at Dad’s party. I just wish I’d been well enough to take more photos, this one here is about the only good shot I have. Still, there’s the summer party yet. It’s definitely on, according to all the guests who were saying goodbye to each other with, “See you in the summer!”

On Monday, I was going to be out of my big fuck off painkillers, so I rang the surgery and asked for my GP to ring me. He rang back in the early afternoon, not long after I’d taken my last two. He had no idea that I’d had my op and wondered if the hospital had faxed the letter intended for him to another doctor with the same name at the hospital. Anyway, I explained I was out of my 30/500 co-codamol tablets and asked for some more. No problem, he wrote me a prescription for a box of 100 and sent it out to the front desk for Dad to collect for me.

It’s now Friday and my need for painkillers is greatly reduced, I’m getting through the night without a trip to the loo and the pee is now clear again. I’m still knackered though (said she, typing nearly an hour after her self-imposed computer curfew), but desperately want to be back on top form again. I want to go for a walk, I want to take photos. I need to go shopping to get some things for Suzy’s birthday on Monday and I want a new handbag. This all requires leaving the house, which I haven’t done since last Sunday, when I nearly dropped down with exhaustion on a short trip to Tunbridge Wells. I did get some super new straighteners though, so it was kind of worth it. When I went to say goodbye to Suzy at her Gecko stall I told her, “I’m in pain”. “You look it,” she said kindly. So I went home and took some co-codamol.

Now I must go to bed, ’cause there’s all these things I want to do and staying up now doesn’t make them more likely to happen.