Being woken at 2am for a blood pressure check is not my idea of fun but apparently it was necessary. It came back as 106/64 - I was in good shape but my blood oxygen was 93% so I lost the points gained for the low blood pressure.
I was awake and ready for the next test at 6am and my first round of IV. I was told the doctor was making his rounds and he would call in soon. He appeared almost straight away and through my bleary haze I gathered that he had decided on a plan of action but wanted his senior (colleague? consultant? registrar?) to review it. Meanwhile I was on instructions of nil by mouth as I was expected to head out for surgery later that morning.
The senior ? arrived and explained that he wanted to avoid surgery and planned to continue with the IV and see how I progressed ... OVER THE WEEKEND!!! I must have looked like a goldfish at that point as he repeated himself a couple of times and for good measure I asked him to repeat it again. I was going nowhere and my whole week was in tatters, but at least I could order breakfast. It seems the NHS don't do "Full English" so I was left with cornflakes with full fat milk (oh think of the arteries!), toast and a strong cup of coffee - yum!
Bed 5 went home and was replaced with a little bald man who spent the majority of his visit smiling. He wasn't bothered about being in hospital as it gave him the chance to listen to his music. We also had to listen to it as well (all easy listening) as his little digital radio bleated out classics (from the 70s mainly) and although it wasn't to my tastes, it made the day pass quickly until my wife turned up with my laptop - yay!
Bed 6 was moved to another ward and replaced with a very chatty man. He was suffering from an infection which made it difficult to pass water. He had been due to go on holiday in Wales for a week (despite the weather) but had been having to make frequent trips to the toilet. Suddenly they stopped and he hadn't been able to pass water for over 24 hours - ouch!
After a catheter was fitted he made good progress but the doctors were considering the same procedure my son and nephew had when they were only 5 - the big C. Mr chatty seemed relieved (no pun intended) but was nervous. He disappeared to another ward shortly afterwards. It was a shame as we had quite a few chats about football and rugby and he was very interested in refereeing (we talked about Stuart Atwell's dismissal of Gary Cahill at length!!!) as well as the two Manchester clubs being put out of the Champion's League at the Group Stage. I had watched Manchester City's game against Bayern Munich through the marvels of SKY GO! on my iPhone!
M arrived to fill chaty man's bed and arrived looking sullen but that was because he had a massive abscess in his mouth. It had already been treated with antibiotics by the hospital who referred him to his dentist, but it was so bad he couldn't open his mouth to allow a proper inspection. By this time the abscess had gotten so bad, he couldn't even drink his pint of cider on a night out, so he came back to hospital and was admitted. M was dressed as a stereotypical Goth but with one exception - he was wearing a full blown Sith robe from Star Wars!!! We had a few good conversations about Star Wars before he disappeared on day three but that's still to come.
Bed 8 had a visitor on day two who was his wife. From listening to her talking to the nurses it seemed that her husband had taken early retirement in his early 50s and had become a house husband. Like many men (myself included), he became a little absent minded when left with a list of tasks to be completed before she came home. Some get done, some get left and some get forgotten. It seems that this poor man had begun forgetting more and more until he was diagnosed in her words with "dementia" and she had been obliged to place him in care. It was also evident that he wasn't that old after all but his condition had deteriorated rapidly. It was absolutely heart breaking. he was moved out to another ward and replaced with Mr Angry.
Mr Angry had collapsed at work. He was receiving ongoing treatment for a kidney stone and had been allowed to keep his own supplies of morphine at home to treat his pain (seemed a little strange to me considering the addictive qualities of morphine). He had also had a heart attack 3 years before and was on a long list of drugs in an attempt to avoid a re occurrence but watching and listening to him, he needed to slow down a little.
He was angry because he was coming up for a contract renewal and thought that if he was operated upon he was looking at an 8 week recuperation period which would mean losing the contract. He made a number of calls to get an up to date position on the negotiations and made some other calls to his family. Now I don't eavesdrop as a rule but this man was so angry he sounded like an advert for an old Dom Joly TV programme (HELLO ... YES, I'M IN HOSPITAL ... WHAT? NO IT'S RUBBISH...), but the funny thing was that when he phoned his wife and office he was a shouty Yorkshireman and when he phoned his son and father he became a more softly spoken but still shouty Scotsman. It made me laugh out loud on a couple of occasions!
In the end he was persuaded to agree to surgery but it was a much different procedure and was likely to have a very short recovery period, so he was shipped out and replaced by a very quiet man, Mr MA. Mr MA had been involved in a disturbance, but unlike the man he shared his name with (one of the greatest heavyweight boxers in history), Mr MA had come off worse, especially when his assailant (love that word) had struck him on the arm with a glass bottle which shattered leaving Mr MA with a badly lacerated arm. It caused him a lot of pain and he spent most of his time with us grimacing while sitting in a chair (too painful to lie down). Mr MA disappeared on Day three after his parents visited with fresh clothes (not blood stained) and he was moved out for surgery.
After my wife and son visited (he bought me a "Get Well Soon" balloon in the hospital shop) and told me all about his Nativity play, I settled in for an evening of writing. I had 25 practical exam papers to complete for the candidates for the course. I had kept all my observation notes and their answers to the Penal offences Test in my laptop bag and spent the next 4 hours writing up their names and marks.
Now I had to figure out how to get them back to the course. I managed to get a strong enough connection through my iPhone to be able to send the other course material to my replacement as course leader, but still had the issue of transferring the papers. Then I remembered JDB, my RA Secretary worked in this very hospital. As I fell asleep around 2am, I hatched a plan...
Showing posts with label IV. Show all posts
Showing posts with label IV. Show all posts
Saturday, 10 December 2011
The patient is treated - day one
So the plans for the week were in danger of being completely wiped out...
Wednesday I was continuing to do the preparations for the 2nd day of the latest Basic Course for New Referees at WRCFA HQ, including writing up the marks awarded for the candidates efforts on the practical exercises from the first day (last Sunday).
Thursday I was attending my son's school Nativity play where he was part of the "musicians" group playing a number of instruments (mostly percussion!) and singing.
Friday I was looking forward to watching my newly upgraded SKY TV channels, having conceded defeat to a nice little Welsh telephone salesman who phoned when I was busy doing something else and allowed him to persuade me that the £5.12 per month introductory offer for SKY HD+ was just too good to pass.
Saturday I was going to Harewood House Country House and Bird Gardens to see Santa, hug a Husky (!) and stroke a penguin with my wife and son. It seemed a better prospect than the last Santa trip where we went to the National Coal Mining Museum, travelling 800m underground to see Santa in a tiny grotto. It was beautiful but I just wasn't that comfortable being so far underground (claustrophobia is not my thing).
Sunday I was helping deliver the second day of practical training for 25 new referee candidates, hopefully not in freezing rain and wind (as it was last week).
Instead I was awaiting the allocation of a bed so that I could have antibiotics administered through an IV. I had a problem though. My phone had run out of charge, work were expecting me back in (although they were aware of the referral to the hospital) and my wife didn't know where I was. Also my car was in the car park and I had a lot of the materials needed for the course on Sunday in it.
I already had a cannula fitted to my arm in preparation for my IV but managed to persuade the nurse to allow me to take my car home. I got home, explained all to my wife (who took it very well) and packed an overnight bag (little did I know it would become a 3 night stay ... at least!). My wife took me back to hospital and I soon found myself propped up in bed in a smallish room, having antibiotics administered by IV every 4-5 hours, supported by regular checks on my blood pressure, blood oxygen levels and respiratory rates.
The surgical assessment unit (my location) is intended for short term stays, often only a couple of hours while the patient is assessed for their suitability for surgery before being moved to a specialist ward for pre-op preparation and then surgery. Ward 37 was my new home, appropriately named Gate 37 as the hospital was styled more as an airport than a hospital and certainly had a lot of development work done since my daughter was born here 18 years ago.
The room I was in contained 4 beds. Bed 5 was occupied by a man dressed in sports apparel (England cricket team I think) who had apparently tried to separate his two dogs who were fighting (an Akita and a Rottweiler) and they had bitten him instead. He'd been stitched up and being treated with antibiotics. Bed 6 contained a young man with a Mohican haircut who was a part time cage fighter. He had a badly infected hand which he had to keep soaking in a jug of fluid containing iodine which made his hand turn yellow!
He spent most of the evening asleep and I wondered if he had been given some strong painkillers which were making him sleepy as his hand was the size of one of Mickey Mouse's. I was in bed 7. Bed 8 had an elderly gentleman who was suffering from dementia but needed surgery for some undisclosed condition. He didn't take kindly to the regular checks on his condition and spent much of his time arguing with the staff. What a merry band we were!
I fell asleep as the last of the first bag of IV fluid drained into my arm around 12:20 am on Thursday. I was going home in the morning ... wrong!
Wednesday I was continuing to do the preparations for the 2nd day of the latest Basic Course for New Referees at WRCFA HQ, including writing up the marks awarded for the candidates efforts on the practical exercises from the first day (last Sunday).
Thursday I was attending my son's school Nativity play where he was part of the "musicians" group playing a number of instruments (mostly percussion!) and singing.
Friday I was looking forward to watching my newly upgraded SKY TV channels, having conceded defeat to a nice little Welsh telephone salesman who phoned when I was busy doing something else and allowed him to persuade me that the £5.12 per month introductory offer for SKY HD+ was just too good to pass.
Saturday I was going to Harewood House Country House and Bird Gardens to see Santa, hug a Husky (!) and stroke a penguin with my wife and son. It seemed a better prospect than the last Santa trip where we went to the National Coal Mining Museum, travelling 800m underground to see Santa in a tiny grotto. It was beautiful but I just wasn't that comfortable being so far underground (claustrophobia is not my thing).
Sunday I was helping deliver the second day of practical training for 25 new referee candidates, hopefully not in freezing rain and wind (as it was last week).
Instead I was awaiting the allocation of a bed so that I could have antibiotics administered through an IV. I had a problem though. My phone had run out of charge, work were expecting me back in (although they were aware of the referral to the hospital) and my wife didn't know where I was. Also my car was in the car park and I had a lot of the materials needed for the course on Sunday in it.
I already had a cannula fitted to my arm in preparation for my IV but managed to persuade the nurse to allow me to take my car home. I got home, explained all to my wife (who took it very well) and packed an overnight bag (little did I know it would become a 3 night stay ... at least!). My wife took me back to hospital and I soon found myself propped up in bed in a smallish room, having antibiotics administered by IV every 4-5 hours, supported by regular checks on my blood pressure, blood oxygen levels and respiratory rates.
The surgical assessment unit (my location) is intended for short term stays, often only a couple of hours while the patient is assessed for their suitability for surgery before being moved to a specialist ward for pre-op preparation and then surgery. Ward 37 was my new home, appropriately named Gate 37 as the hospital was styled more as an airport than a hospital and certainly had a lot of development work done since my daughter was born here 18 years ago.
The room I was in contained 4 beds. Bed 5 was occupied by a man dressed in sports apparel (England cricket team I think) who had apparently tried to separate his two dogs who were fighting (an Akita and a Rottweiler) and they had bitten him instead. He'd been stitched up and being treated with antibiotics. Bed 6 contained a young man with a Mohican haircut who was a part time cage fighter. He had a badly infected hand which he had to keep soaking in a jug of fluid containing iodine which made his hand turn yellow!
He spent most of the evening asleep and I wondered if he had been given some strong painkillers which were making him sleepy as his hand was the size of one of Mickey Mouse's. I was in bed 7. Bed 8 had an elderly gentleman who was suffering from dementia but needed surgery for some undisclosed condition. He didn't take kindly to the regular checks on his condition and spent much of his time arguing with the staff. What a merry band we were!
I fell asleep as the last of the first bag of IV fluid drained into my arm around 12:20 am on Thursday. I was going home in the morning ... wrong!
The patient is diagnosed
Apart from colds and the occasional cough I don't do "ill".
I got a major surprise on Wednesday of this week when I woke up to find that I couldn't straighten my left arm. I appeared to have acquired a lump the size (and colour) of a small lemon on my left elbow and it was sore. Sore is an understatement. Sore is when you bump your head on a cupboard door. Sore is when stub your toe. Sore is when you graze your knee.
Sore is not how you would describe the sense of agony you experience when you hit your thumb (hard!) with a hammer nor when you stand on an upturned electrical plug in the dark nor when you break a glass while washing up and realise that the washing up water is turning bright red. Imagine all of those sensations combined and multiplied at least threefold (plus sticking your arm on a recently used hotplate for good measure) and that's how it felt when I turned over in bed, brushing my elbow against the pillow. My shouts (I don't tend to do screaming) could be heard 3 doors away!
Like most men I used to be reluctant to visit my GP but since they diagnosed my heart condition 3 years ago and consigned me to a life of taking a small tablet every day, I have quite grown to like the man and wife team who always seem to be on duty at my local medical centre. It was Mrs L who looked at my arm on Wednesday morning and was on the verge of sending me away with a prescription for antibiotics when she changed her mind. She was concerned that the infection and swelling could be masking a more serious condition. But I'm getting ahead of myself ...
Now it's time for some words of advice ... if you ever bump your elbow, notice that the skin is dried and cracked, don't ever try to pick the skin away. If you do insist on doing that and it breaks open and begins to ooze pus, please don't think that washing it, keeping it clean and taking care not to bump it again, will address the situation. That's exactly what I did and just a week or so later I found myself referred to the local National Health Service (NHS) Hospital Trust with a suspected case of septic arthritis.
So back to Wednesday ... I made my way to the hospital which was in a different town from where I live but still only a 15 minute drive and went to Accident & Emergency where my doctor's fax referring me for examination had arrived shortly before I did. After around 40 minutes I was taken through for initial assessment by a nurse. The pre-treatment assessment of patients was immortalised in the tv series M*A*S*H as soldiers were assessed in triage and this is just what it felt like. I was being prioritised.
Quite rightly the fat bald man wearing a fleece bearing the logo FA Referee was lower priority than the middle aged lady with the suspected broken ankle, the elderly lady in the wheelchair who had been brought in from a care home and the sister of a player I refereed a couple of times a few seasons ago. She had been brought in because of a large blood clot in her leg and her brother was only too glad to break up his boredom of waiting for her treatment by chatting to me about local football!
After another hour or so, I was examined by Dr AM who was concerned about my elbow but was also very interested in my cardio-myopathy. He referred me for an x-ray to check if there was anything inside the elbow which might have caused the infection and to an orthopaedic specialist to confirm my course of treatment. My x-rays were completed by a very young looking student radiographer who must have done a good job as they revealed two foreign bodies inside my arm and then I met the orthopaedic specialist.
Dr H was also very interested in my cardio-myopathy but took a long time over examining my elbow, before advising I needed some antibiotics. I had visions of being given a huge injection before being packed off home with boxes of brightly coloured tablets but it was not to be. I was to become a guest of the NHS on Ward 37 - the surgical assessment ward! It seemed that the initial treatment plan was to be a massive overload of two antibiotics (flucloxicillin and benzylpenicillin) delivered by intravenous (IV) drip to get the infection under control and then this might have to be followed up with surgery. Not what I had planned this week ...
I got a major surprise on Wednesday of this week when I woke up to find that I couldn't straighten my left arm. I appeared to have acquired a lump the size (and colour) of a small lemon on my left elbow and it was sore. Sore is an understatement. Sore is when you bump your head on a cupboard door. Sore is when stub your toe. Sore is when you graze your knee.
Sore is not how you would describe the sense of agony you experience when you hit your thumb (hard!) with a hammer nor when you stand on an upturned electrical plug in the dark nor when you break a glass while washing up and realise that the washing up water is turning bright red. Imagine all of those sensations combined and multiplied at least threefold (plus sticking your arm on a recently used hotplate for good measure) and that's how it felt when I turned over in bed, brushing my elbow against the pillow. My shouts (I don't tend to do screaming) could be heard 3 doors away!
Like most men I used to be reluctant to visit my GP but since they diagnosed my heart condition 3 years ago and consigned me to a life of taking a small tablet every day, I have quite grown to like the man and wife team who always seem to be on duty at my local medical centre. It was Mrs L who looked at my arm on Wednesday morning and was on the verge of sending me away with a prescription for antibiotics when she changed her mind. She was concerned that the infection and swelling could be masking a more serious condition. But I'm getting ahead of myself ...
Now it's time for some words of advice ... if you ever bump your elbow, notice that the skin is dried and cracked, don't ever try to pick the skin away. If you do insist on doing that and it breaks open and begins to ooze pus, please don't think that washing it, keeping it clean and taking care not to bump it again, will address the situation. That's exactly what I did and just a week or so later I found myself referred to the local National Health Service (NHS) Hospital Trust with a suspected case of septic arthritis.
So back to Wednesday ... I made my way to the hospital which was in a different town from where I live but still only a 15 minute drive and went to Accident & Emergency where my doctor's fax referring me for examination had arrived shortly before I did. After around 40 minutes I was taken through for initial assessment by a nurse. The pre-treatment assessment of patients was immortalised in the tv series M*A*S*H as soldiers were assessed in triage and this is just what it felt like. I was being prioritised.
Quite rightly the fat bald man wearing a fleece bearing the logo FA Referee was lower priority than the middle aged lady with the suspected broken ankle, the elderly lady in the wheelchair who had been brought in from a care home and the sister of a player I refereed a couple of times a few seasons ago. She had been brought in because of a large blood clot in her leg and her brother was only too glad to break up his boredom of waiting for her treatment by chatting to me about local football!
After another hour or so, I was examined by Dr AM who was concerned about my elbow but was also very interested in my cardio-myopathy. He referred me for an x-ray to check if there was anything inside the elbow which might have caused the infection and to an orthopaedic specialist to confirm my course of treatment. My x-rays were completed by a very young looking student radiographer who must have done a good job as they revealed two foreign bodies inside my arm and then I met the orthopaedic specialist.
Dr H was also very interested in my cardio-myopathy but took a long time over examining my elbow, before advising I needed some antibiotics. I had visions of being given a huge injection before being packed off home with boxes of brightly coloured tablets but it was not to be. I was to become a guest of the NHS on Ward 37 - the surgical assessment ward! It seemed that the initial treatment plan was to be a massive overload of two antibiotics (flucloxicillin and benzylpenicillin) delivered by intravenous (IV) drip to get the infection under control and then this might have to be followed up with surgery. Not what I had planned this week ...
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