So the day is now 20th April 2010, imagine my horror as I woke up after my mind tripping out to find I couldn't speak or move. I found myself with a gaping hole in my abdomen the size of a dinner plate, a feeding tube up my nose and a tracheostomy in my throat. OK I should have been thankful that I was alive, but to be trapped in your body not able to move or speak, especially when you're still suffering with diarrhea, I started to think maybe it would have been better if I wasn't.
The next paragraph is an extract I found on another blog - Melodies pancreatic tale which just about sums it up.
"Lying there in my sterile hospital bed, complete with wheels on the bottom and with metal bars on the sides, I could no longer disregard the pressing demands of my relentlessly contracting and expanding bowels. The term “evacuation” once conjured images of large masses fleeing fires or hurricanes or nuclear disasters, blocking exits and major roadways. No longer. Now, images of the most messy and unavoidable consequences of human life have come to replace them. Images of excretion, humiliation and death."
Any dignity I had left in me certainly died at the point where they tried to insert an anal catheter bearing in mind I couldn't speak to tell them if they had got the right hole or not!
Thankfully my mum came later that day with a pen and paper so I could finally " scream " that the nurses weren't doing such a great job and to get the damn thing out of me!
The tracheostomy caused its own problems as well, I had fluid on my lungs so had to have them suctioned out every couple of hours because I couldn't cough. One day whilst my sister in law was visiting she had to jump in and suction me because I was choking and there were no nurses around. (She was working as a community nurse type thing at the time so thankfully knew what to do with the equipment)
Two weeks later I was told I was fit to be moved off Intensive Care and onto a regular ward yet 2 days later I was back in surgery having my abdomen washed out again due to more pus build up.
A couple of days later I was deemed fit to have my tracheostomy removed, horrible experience, they initially tried to put what can only be described as a bottle cap over the opening. I started to panic and felt like I was suffocating, so was hooked back up again. An auxiliary nurse saw what was happening and just suggested taping my hole up. She spoke calmly to me and relaxed me and it worked. I was breathing on my own again. Next came the "test" a drink of blackcurrant juice to see if I could swallow correctly. They use blackcurrant because they can easily detect it if they have to use suction on your lungs!
There are probably a whole load of horror stories that happened in the 5/6 weeks I was on intensive care but I think I've blocked them out of my mind - no doubt my family will come to remind me when/if they read this.
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