Tube dangling out from my right nostril, I was in incontinence pads and a backless hospital gown, there was a saline drip going into one hand and a cannula in my other hand for other intravenous requirements and another cannula left by the ambulance men. My husband came back, thankfully with a clean pair of pyjamas. I was so worried about how he might see me now with a stoma and a plastic bag full of poo constantly attached to the outside of my body. I know a man who had a wife with crohns. She needed a total colectomy, but he didn't want her to have it because of how she would look. She didn't have it, and she died. It turns out I didn't have to worry about this at all. My husband didn't care about such trivial things. He just wanted me to be alive, and most of all, without pain. He even managed to lighten the mood by taking a picture of me on his phone in my hideous tube-wondrous state and then threatening to text it to his mates!
My consultant popped in to see me also. He had obviously only just got in to work for the day and had been asked to come straight to me. I could see him struggling to remember my case as he spoke. When we last met he had been suggesting surgery, and I had probably seemed a little reluctant. He said, from what he remembered, the portion of the gut from the rectum to the sigmoid was free of disease, so he thought it unlikely I would need a stoma, just a resection. He said he would get me prepped for surgery, by prescribing iv antibiotics, and keep me in on a low residue diet. He would make sure the surgical team knew to do all they could to keep up to the sigmoid.
This was great news. They weren't going to just send me home again, they were going to keep me in until they could get me into surgery - as an urgent case, but not an emergency case.
I was moved up to a private room, on a ward full of very old people, some with dementia, but I'll save that for my next post.
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