Chris got his first proper insight into hospitals and me over the last 2 days, which is impressive that it's been 5 1/2 years before he's been forced into that position. My stomach cramping from 3 weeks ago was still occuring and in fact had got really bad. Monday I'd been to A&E who had decided it wasn't appendicitis and sent me home with some painkillers. Thursday found me in Addenbrookes A&E as the problem still hadn't gone away, and I was generally finding it hard to do anything except cry out in pain. I wasn't spasming like I normally do, it was more like a sine wave; except the peaks were a lot lot longer than the troughs :( Anyhoo, 6 hours of A&E later, they'd decided there was nothing medically wrong with me, but as I was at Addenbrookes, they had a giant stack of notes in the system that said there's never been anything medically wrong with me, but I'm still FUCKED, so they transferred me to the wards and gave me morphine, which finally made the pain, not go away, but at least so I could function. I was poked about half a dozen times by different people, and eventually after 3 surgical visits they decided an ultrasound and surgical investigation the next day was the way forward. Fair enough, but this meant spending a night in hospital, and i HATE spending time in hospitals - too many bad experiences, it tends to make me irritable, angry, sullen, and depressed all at once. It also meant no food or drink, boo. Up on the wards things slowed to their usual halt that they do outside of the A&E dept, I eventually got more morphine, and they were even nice enough to hook me up to an IV feed of paracetamol to see me through the night, which it didn't of course.
I'd also forgotten just how much sleeping with a cannula in your arm fucking hurts. Anyway, 9am the next day the consultant turns up, announces he's cancelled my ultrasound and surgical investigation as he sees no point in it, that I can eat and I should be able to go home later that day. I tried arguing him. It wasn't worth it. I gave up. Nurses throughout the day tried to give me paracetamol instead of morphine as painkiller, which wasn't working; they also tried to give me various drugs that I've had before that have no effect, such as various anti-spasmodics (as discussed, I wasn't spasming though), or others that have in the past made me projectile vomit 30ft.
The consultant never reappeared. Being the weekend, I was unlikely to get a rearranged surgical consult or ultrasound or ct-scan in the next 2 days, and wasn't about to spend a needless 48 hours in my personal version of hell on earth. After effectively waiting 12 hours and counting for someone to come discharge me during the day, I eventually got up and left: jacked up on morphine, cannula still sticking out of my arm and orderlies chasing me down the corridor. At least I have style.
I really hate hospitals.
And I really hate consultants. They come see you for 5 minutes each day (10 if you get an afternoon round too), and think they know everything about you, cancel and rearrange all the things the other doctors and nurses have arranged for you, and generally fuck up your stay in hospital making it last much much longer than it should have done. For all that my trip to hospital did, I might as well have stayed in bed groaning to myself.
Next time I'm going to the US for 3 weeks, and then in the 2nd week going to A&E and getting investigated there. Where the NHS hate to give you anything as it costs them, the US will give you everything you haven't even asked for, as it costs you, which in my case will be my insurance.
In other news, conversations did not go quite as expected. And were interrupted halfway through, in part due to the above. Which now leaves it in an even more akward situation. It doesn't make sense to recover the old ground, but the second half doesn't really make sense out of the blue without the first half being in the immediate past. Hmmm... things to come.
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