It would seem that my body is inspired to write blogs at 4am and so it wakes me in various different ways for me to be able to do this. It is 4am on a Sunday morning and I am awake in the hospital because I have excruciating pain in my knees. It is coming to the point where everything seems to go wrong for me, 48 hours on oral medication seems to be the point that my body goes a bit haywire. The IBD team of consultants and people have stressed to me that they are in no rush to get me out of the door on Sunday when the typical 24 hours transition period is over as they last time we did that, I went backwards at 48 hours. So I was reassured.
Anyway, I woke up on Sunday morning at about 2am and I was aware of pain. I took a moment to check in with my body and realised it was not my tummy that had woken me up, that was absolutely fine. It was a weird pain in both of my knees! I got up and went to the toilet quickly, and then called for painkillers from the nurse. Having taken some paracetamol I tried everything that I could think of to get the pain to go away. I massaged my legs, I gently moved my legs, I tried keeping them still, I started walking around my room, I laid on my back and put my legs on the wall – nothing worked. The pain started to increase and I was really struggling. I called for the nurses again and I have to say at this point the ward did not cover themselves in glory, I was waiting around 2 and a half hours to get any other pain relief and during this time I was literally writhing around in pain, crying my eyes out. At about 5am I took some morphine and did manage to drop off for an hour.
I was so worried in this time that it was a side effect of the medication that I was taking and that we were going to have to come off it and start again. I was once again left crying down the phone to Jordan as he tried his best to comfort me from the other end of the phone. I have to say I felt so bad doing that to him as it isn’t nice to listen to anyone else in pain but I needed someone to talk to. I also spoke on facebook with my Dad who was as I was trying to work out what might be happening, we suggested everything from medication side effects to gout, truly no idea why my body seems to be hating itself so much at the minute!
I managed to fall asleep for about an hour before I was again woken up by the pain in my knees. It wasn’t quite as stabby stabby at first and so I thought I would quickly get up and have a wee just in case I was incapacitated again. As I came out of the bathroom I suddenly started to feel very hot and clammy and faint. The world felt like it was closing in on me, and my knee pain was ramping up again. I called for more painkillers and quickly sat down. At this point the HCA came in and did my blood pressure which low and behold was sitting very low at 90/53 – no wonder I was feeling faint!
I was asked to lie down for a bit as they bleeped the doctor. This time it was a different nurse on and she was absolutely lovely, she talked to me about the pain that I was feeling, asked what I had tried to make it better and really listened to me. I apologised a lot because I was swearing a lot and she laughed along with me telling me that as I was in pain I was allowed to swear. I had vowed that I would never be rude to staff and I didnt want her to think that I was swearing at her! She gave me the biggest dosee of morphine that I was allowed to take and we waited for the doctor.
The doctor checked my legs out, movement, range and all of that and if I am totally honest he was perplexed. The decision had been made that I would not take my morning medication until the doctor said OK in case this was a side effect. The doctor that saw me was not an IBD specialist and so he decided to go and ring the consultant. As the pain began to ease (thank you morphine) and I could see straight again there was once again the panic that I was going to need to be taken off the medication and try something else but it wasnt long before I was given my collection of tablets to take again.
While all of this was going on, I had to order my breakfast, eat my breakfast, order my lunch and have blood taken. This was all rather tricky when you were literally crying in pain however the food people were great, I have been having basically the same thing every day regardless and so they just ordered me that (exactly what I wanted) and the phlebotomist was also great. I told her that I was difficult to get blood out of and she just went about it really calmly, talking to me as she went, and being really clear and decisive in where she was going. It was from my hand which isnt the most comfortable but she was exactly what I needed while I was writhing around in pain. Nothing more difficult than needing to move and not being able to!
The doctors are still not sure why it happened but as a collective we have agreed that making sure I move regularly is probably a good idea as well as making sure I was hydrated enough as well. So I will now spend the day going on a small walk round the ward every hour and keeping my water bottle on me at all times. I am also going to keep topped up with Paracetamol just for now to try and keep on top of the pain. Due to the disturbances I probably only slept for a couple of hours so I am also now very tired and keep napping in the chair, like an old grandad…
Fingers crossed this is just a funny five minutes and I am on for discharge tomorrow, I am so close and yet seemingly so far.
DRAMA – it’s all happening on Guist Ward!
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