Category: hospitals

Doctor Doctor

A few weeks ago I visited the doctor to get my allergy meds. Later in the afternoon I began to feel unwell and ended up in hospital with suspected appendicitis.

Yesterday I visited the doctor to have my post partum check up and guess what?
I ended up in the hospital a few hours later!

I am beginning to the think that going to see the family doctor is hazardous to my health!

There is nothing more frightening then waking up, taking a drink of water on your bedside table and having it dribble out of your mouth because all of a sudden half of your mouth doesn’t work anymore. I was terrified.
It was like the sandman came along whilst I slept and instead of sprinkling me with sleepy dust, he injected a load of anaesthetic into my face.

The next thing I know, I have 3 paramedics in my living room assessing me. All of my symptoms point towards a possible stroke.
Yes. A stroke!
Healthy 29 years olds don’t just have strokes! Well, not statistically anyway.

For the first time in my life I got to ride in an ambulance at a very quick speed with the blue lights going and siren wailing. To a hospital a fair way away. One that had a specialist stroke unit.

I was met by the consultant neurologist and the resus team. After a few minutes they realised I wasn’t in a very serious way and left the neurologist to manage the emergency.

He quickly ruled out a stroke (thank god!) and diagnosed me with Bell’s Palsy. Still scary, but at least I’m not going to die eh?

This was my face at 3am whilst in hospital.

20130524-151411.jpg

This was the same expressions 6 hours later.

20130524-151451.jpg

I’ve been told the symptoms peak within 48 hours and can take between 2 weeks and 6 months to resolve themselves, depending in the severity. So far I have 8 of the 13 symptoms listed by the NHS.
I’m hoping for the 2 weeks recovery, but with my string of luck recently, I better not hold my breath! God knows what would happen if I did that!!!

So far 2013 hasn’t been the most fantastic year for me. The only good thing so far is Emma!

I’m ready to be healthy body, so hop to it!!

A New First

Emma is 5 weeks old tomorrow. I can’t believe she is 5 weeks old already. It seems like only yesterday I was in the hospital waiting for her to be born.

In those 5 weeks I haven’t been away from her for more than a few hours. That was to go to the dentist and to the doctors. Until now.

Instead of being at home with my small human, I am sat in a hospital bed missing her.

I miss her face.
I miss her new smiles.
I miss her new gurgling.
I miss her cries.
I miss her smell.
I miss her so incredibly much.

This is hard. So hard.

I never ever expected to feel so lost or sad and it’s times like this that make me dread when I have to return to work at the end of the summer.

When you decide to have a baby, lots of things get forgotten, or rather you just don’t think about them.
I never thought for a moment “what happens if i get sick?”

Yet here I am. Not sick exactly. I don’t have anything infectious, or life threatening. Yet I’m sat in a hospital bed with suspected appendicitis and waiting to find out if I need to have surgery tomorrow.

It sucks in more ways than one.

I’m not too fussed about me (appendectomies are routine) but I am super fussed about Emma.

She’s is great hands with her daddy, but it’s also his first time with her alone through the night.

I miss them both terribly.

Being sick whilst being a Mom is hard.

PUSH!!!

Last night my cousin (see also best friend/sister from another mother) went into hospital. Hopefully in a few hours time a child will wrestle its way out of her nether regions into the world, all pink and crying, demanding to bed fed, clothed and cuddled.

I wish I was there. Mainly because I never got to meet my god-son (her 1st born) until he was 3 months old and my god-daughter, who knows when I’ll get to meet her. You see my cousin lives almost 6000 miles away from me. I live in London and she lives in Grand Cayman. The airfare is stupidly expensive.

Most of today we have been conversing on Facebook. She is currently on her own, as nothing is really happening, so everyone has gone to work as normal. The whole story about your second baby coming quicker than your first is apparently a lot of newborn liquidy poop. This baby is taking a long time. In fact I’m pretty sure she is hanging in there, arms and legs splayed against the sides of the womb screaming “I won’t come out! I won’t! You can’t make me!”

The last update I had was that she was in a lot of pain, only 2cm dilated and her waters still hadn’t broken. Her ObGyn is currently performing a caesarean and once he’s done that he will come back and break her waters (if they hadn’t gone by then).

She is bored. She also has NO pain relief.

If I was her, I would go mad (and be demanding the drugs). Thank god she has her husband’s laptop so that she can work on her Cafe World and her Farm in Farmville. Or watch clips on YouTube of crowning baby heads.

To keep her mind off the labour, myself and our mutual friend (2nd Fairy God-Mother) Kim have been trying to keep her occupied. We’ve come up with a few things.

1) Tell Jokes – jokes make you laugh and be happy, they can take your mind off the pain. Unless you don’t get them. Then you’ll just be in pain and confused.
2) Share the drugs. I don’t mean like “dude, pass the joint, dude” more like “want to have some gas and air *giggle*” With gas and air the possibilities are endless and could provide a lot of entertainment for the mother-to-be. Just don’t let the nurses or doctors catch you!
3) Giant Pilates Balls – these could be great fun. Play football. Or bowling. Or, if there are 2 balls, get some duct tape, tape yourselves to the balls and have a race down the corridor. However if the mother-to-be is going to sit on it, make sure you support her. I’d imagine having a small child wrestle its way out of your nether regions whilst nursing a fractured pelvis/spine is rather painful.
4) Interpretive Birth Dancing – pretend you’re a baby. Lie of the floor, wiggle around and pretend that you are travelling through the birth canal. One of you can be the mid-wife/nurse/stork.
5) Go on a treasure hunt. Do not however take someone else’s baby. That’s illegal and you will be arrested. Staplers and chairs are ok. Do a points system, the bigger the item, the more points you get. Remember, don’t take any babies.
6) Go the viewing gallery, look at all the new babies. Give them all nicknames and goals in life. Write it up on a tissue and deliver your ideas to the parents. Add them on Facebook so that you can check how their kids are doing with their goals in 18 years time.
Hopefully baby Isabella will make an appearance soon, or at least if she decides to take a lot longer (girls are fashionably late you know) then the ObGyn and Nurses provide some drugs.

Why I Love The Elderly.

There are two reasons as to why the 1st of September 1939 stands out for me.
The first is that it’s the day that WW2 kicked into action, with Germany invading Poland.
The second is that it is my Grandads birthday. Technically he is a war baby, although at the time of his birth it probably wasn’t apparent to his parents that WW2 had began.

I love my Grandad. He is awesome (if a bit crotchety now as he gets on in life) and when I was little he told me fantastic stories.
He told me that he was in the war and it was hot and dry and he used to fry eggs on the tanks for the soldiers because they (the tanks) got so hot. Turns out he was in the army, but as a chef. He never saw a tank much less fried an egg on one! Needless to say, the war was imaginary, something told to a little girl to keep her imagination alive. And demand more!
He also told me stories of his friends Merlin and Arthur. Stories of Merlin and his amazing magic and Arthur and his sword Excalibur. I told EVERYONE that my grandad knew Merlin and Arthur. To me it was amazing.
Everytime I saw my grandad I’d ask him to tell me the stories of his adventures.
To clarify (in Case it’s not clear, my grandad didn’t know Arthur or Merlin)

My grandad often played the My Little Pony and Sweet Valley Middle School board games with me. He ALWAYS let me win.
To me, my grandad was amazing. I still think he is.

Once I showed my friends a photo of my grandad when he was younger. He was holding my mother as a small baby, and my friends were adamant that he was Elvis. He looked like Elvis. He can even do a very good Elvis impression. He used to tell my friends and I, tales of him and his friend Elvis and that Elvis often used him as a body double.
His imagination was wild.

Over the last few years my grandad has been rather poorly. He has diabetes. He has prostate and secondary bone cancer (both under control). His balance isn’t great, he’s going deaf and losing his sight and he has severe arthritis and muscle problems. But he copes.

On Wednesday I called my Aunt and during the start of the conversation she asked me “have you heard about your grandad?”
As a general rule, most of the time, my family forget to tell me things. So I responded “no. What’s wrong with him?”
The reply? “he’s in the hospital.”
To be fair, that was the reply I was expecting. Most of the conversations that start with “have you heard about your grandad?” often end with “he’s in the hospital”
Last time he’d had a nasty fall.
So I said to my Aunt “what’s happened now?”
She told me. It was not pleasant (mind you, any reason for being in hospital isn’t pleasant!)
Basically my grandad has been in hospital since September 28th. Apparently having an infection that doesn’t clear up can lead to gangrene. He was due to have surgery today to have a toe amputated. It’s been postponed. So he gets to spend more time there. Lucky him.

My grandad is and always has been an outspoken man who takes no crap. He doesn’t care about whether his words will offend anyone. He calls it like it is. Much to the embarrassment of my grandmother (who is divorced from him). He has since remarried (a story for another day!)
This evening whilst sitting with him we were having a conversation about the facilities. The nurses are trying to convince him to use the urinal bottle. They gave him an in-depth explanation of how to use it (he’s old not stupid!) to which he replied “I know what I’ve got to do, however I can’t find my bloody dick. I’ve seen bigger whelks down at the seaside!” yep. I talk penis sizes with my grandad. Classy! I must say I did laugh though, classic look on the nurses face!

My grandad is awesome.

I hope I’m like him when I’m old (just not poorly!) so that I can talk out loud about vaginas and dicks and not bat an eyelid about who is listening.

Old people rock.