Hospital 1 and Janus 9

Thursday 28 April

I had lots of discomfort in my intestinal region over night. Luckily my daughter slept over, as we are due to have the second lot of iron treatment early that morning.  When she got up, I told her how worried  I was about the increase in discomfort so we called 111, and they said, A and E, asap. 

We packed a bag, thinking that it was better to be prepared.  When we got to A and E, there wasn’t too much waiting - first for the general check up and then for the blood to be taken.  Then we were seen by a young doctor.  I told him my symptoms and he agreed that  they didn’t bode well, but he wasn’t totally convinced that I was in an emergency situation. But he sent me back to the nurse to have a stoma put in. He asked me if I thought itwas a blockage and I said a skinny yes. and sent me for another CT scan. When the results came back, it confirmed that my blockage in my large intestine was now complete, and that the rest of the bowel was backing up, full of stuff that couldn’t get through.  He put us in a private room, had me put on a gown,  and before long I was being whisked off for surgery.  

By this time, it was about 7 at night.  The surgery took from 8-12, and was apparently not at all straight forward.  First of all, the possibility of my bowel bursting had been a very close thing - within minutes of that happening, and if it had, it would have been curtains for me.  Then I had taken a blood thinner that morning. If it had been the planned surgery, I would have been off blood thinners for 2 days before it happened. So bleeding was an issue, and I had several  transfusions.  Then due to electrolyte imbalances, my heart started to go wonky, and the junior doctor who was our main informant, said they feared they had lost me.  But I pulled through. 

At 5 am I was awake and feeling a lot brighter, as they took me to the High Dependency Ward.   I had oxygen, saline drip, on line pain killers, all sorts of tubes all over the place.  

On that ward, we were very lucky with each getting a nurse.  The 4 bed ward had 2 vacant beds. My nurse was called  Vilm, or something like that.  He was very gentle and caring  taking my stats every hour and telling me to push the blue button whenever I felt pain.

Before my sister died she told me how wonderful it was to have a button to press for pain and that she had felt better than she had for a year. So I was keen to give my blue button a go.  I used it often and much more than actually needed. But I was told I couldn’t overdose on it. 

Groups of doctors came around  cheering me on, and everyone saying how well I was doing. I did feel well.  It was like I had been given a new body in exchange for 6 inches of my gut. But the cancer must have affected me in many more ways than the obvious. 

I was allowed soup and ice cream, and helped with my stoma, which was all very scary at first. They said they had to do the stoma as they couldn’t do the anastamosis of plugging my small intestine directly into the remains of the large intestine, because the quality of the gut was too poor and it wouldn’t have worked. 

All went well, until it was time for bed that night, and suddenly everything went very dark.