WARNING – GRAPHIC CONTENT BELOW
And so I was home. For all of 24 hours. And it was not so glorious I have to say.
I came home with an anxious Jordan and an excited Archie and I was sore. I was moving very tentatively and found myself on the sofa ready for a break when all I had done was walk from the car to the house (not that long a walk). As Jordan went to do some shopping (and then managed to crash his car in the snow, a story for another time perhaps), I stayed in and realised that this wasnt going to be the great homecoming that I had hoped for. I was sore, scared and not sure what to do with myself.
We made it through the evening, with me eating a teeny tiny amount of chicken for dinner and we went to bed, propped up with a million pillows. I dutifully set an alarm for halfway through the night to empty my bag (as I had been told to do) and went about trying to sleep.
This was not going to be easy. I was in a lot of pain and felt like I had a permanent stitch (like you get from running) in both my sides. I couldnt sleep on my side and it all just felt wrong.
But oh my did it get even worse.
I can’t actually remember the whole night but Jordan was having to help me out of bed and for the first time, we managed ok, he pulled me up, and I got myself to the toilet, where I started to feel VERY weird. As I called for him to come and help, I literally passed out while sitting (fully clothed at this point) on the toilet. He had to catch me so I didnt fall and hurt myself. This was the sign of things to come. Throughout the night, I passed out another 2 times and had to crawl to the bathroom because I just couldnt get myself up to standing. Jordan was having to help me out of bed each time as I was too weak to do it myself. EVEN WORSE in my highly dazed and confused state I managed to empty my relatively full (and very liquidy output) bag all over the bathroom floor (and my legs) meaning that Jordan (and it is a miracle that we are still together after this) had to clean up the stoma output and then help me clean up myself. In my wisdom at this point I thought “Lets put the bag for higher levels of output on as that will be easier to empty and I will have to do it less frequently.” All this meant was that I took my bag off, tried to put the other one on, stoma started going while I was trying to do this and I ruined the higher output bag and ended up yet again covered in stoma output. I was feeling rough and despondent, was this what my whole recovery was going to be like?!
It was absolutely horrendous and I dont think either of us really got any sleep.
So that morning, I stayed in bed as Jordan bought my breakfast and lunch and I debated what to do. This just didnt feel normal and the pain was quite a lot. I hadn’t been discharged with any pain medication either, which didnt really help me out very much. I set about calling a number of people.
I called the GP and they were great, prescribing me Codeine (meaning if needed we could step up to Morphine) and Jordan went to get the Codeine for me. Then I called the Stoma Nurse team at the Norfolk and Norwich to see if they could offer any advice and this is where it all started moving from.
Harriett, the Stoma Nurse, was very helpful and said that this didnt really seem right. So she called the surgical on call team at the hospital who eventually called me back. They listened to what I had to say and decided it was probably best that I come back into the hospital for them to be able to run some more blood tests and check what was going on with me.
And so I did just that, returned to the Norfolk and Norwich AEC ward. At this point I wasn’t really able to talk because it hurt to take in that much breath, moving was painful, and my incision from surgery had started to leak yellow fluid…