Ok, so my last post brought us up to an uncomfortable obstructive episode leading to a trip in the ambulance to the accident and emergency department.
By the time I got to A&E I was in quite a state. The ambulance men wheeled me in, and I was still clutching a sick bowl. I couldn't even sit up by this point. The only vaguely comfortable position was on my left side with my head propped up a little. My husband followed behind the ambulance in his car and it was a little while before he caught up with me, but he said, in his oh so gentle words(sarcasm) afterwards that I "looked like a beached whale" The whole of my torso was bloated, and fairly hard, and uncomfortable to press. Every Doctor and Nurse that came to see me commented on my distended torso, and I kept saying. "It doesn't look too bad today, it's been worse!"
I think that I'd got so used to the strictures, and how it felt when I was bloated, that I hadn't realised just how bad it was. I certainly felt the most unwell at this particular point, even if I didn't think I looked it!
As soon as I was seen by the Doctor, he gave me some IV antisymetics to stop be being sick, and some morphine. By this point, I was happy to be given whatever they wanted to give me. I just wanted the awful feeling to stop. I held onto my husband's hand and remember for the first time feeling completely helpless and out of control. I kept saying "I just want it to stop." He reassured me that I was in the best place, and we were going to get it sorted once and for all.
It was hours before I was moved from A&E, up to the Medical Assessment Unit - where they properly assess and treat patients before either sending them home or making them an in-patient. Whilst I was in A&E, they wheeled me into x-ray for a chest x-ray. I'm not sure what the point of this was, as the problem was in my gut and not my chest. It was possibly the most uncomfortable procedure I've had out of everything before or since believe it or not! They needed me to sit upright to do it, and to hold my breath for just 2 seconds. It was almost more than I could bear to be upright and still at that point!
Eventually I was taken to the MAU, and put in a little side room. Every so often a nurse would come in and take my blood pressure and pulse and note that I was in a lot of pain. I was sick again, and they gave me another antisymetic. It wasn't until nearly 10pm (I had called the ambulance at 10:30am) that the registrar came in and told me that the x-ray I'd had done was pointless because it only showed my chest, and that they would send me down to x-ray my bowel and get a CT scan done.
The x-ray of the small bowel was far more comfortable, as by this time I was dosed up on morphine, and anti-sickness. I'll describe the CT scan in another post as this may be of individual interest to readers and I'll give it it's own separate post.
Just before midnight, a surgeon came in to my room and sat on my bed ...
The surgeon said that the x-ray and CT scan showed that there were multiple stricures across my colon, and he suggested the Humira wasn't working as there was what appeared to be disease in my small intestine as well. He just looked at me and said.
"What we are going to need to do is operate to remove the diseased colon - and it's going to mean a bag."
I looked at him. Somehow it felt true and I wasn't particularly surprised that they would come to this conclutsion but it was still a shock, and I just simply whispered a profanity.
He looked at me and said "yes, I think I would say that too if I were in your position."
I asked when, if it was going to be in a few days, and he said. "We'll look to do it later on today." This is exactly what I or my consultant didn't want to happen. We didn't want it having to be an emergency.
Just before the surgeon left he told me that there was a lot of fluid backed up in my small intestine, and filling my stomach as well because none of it could pass through the strictures. The fluid in my stomach was what was making me feel sick. He told me that a Nurse was going to come and insert a tube up my nose and down my throat into my stomach, so that they could syringe out the excess fluid. This would make me feel more comfortable and stop me feeling sick. He then said that the Stoma nurses would be in in the morning to mark me up for surgery and talk to me about having a stoma. With that he left.
I was left for all of about two minutes to contemplate all this before two nurses came in with the tube for my nose. I will leave that for the next post ....
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