Illness update

Went to sleep, woke up in a situation I have a chronic illness (ulcerative colitis) for years I have just managed with it, I bloat I’m uncomfortable. I have toilet bowls full of blood. It affects my mood. But really what’s happening now to me it’s largely a result of my poor mental health and not having been able to exercise the self-care I’ve needed to.

People do not see not really and I am good at performing my way through and appearing like I am better than I really am. What has happened is that I have not fully appreciated the level of illness that I have, I have kept going I have felt like I’ve got too much better point and in many respect I have but then I have not had the extra capacity to do with a flareup of my physical condition.

I kept going from since before Christmas, I was positive About the start to a new year having done so much. I was due to go back to work a phased return two half  days. Nothing too stressful to begin with it would seem, just some phone calls really. I then hit the threshold, like what seems to be a small wave on the horizon which turns out to be a tsunami.

In the middle of the week I called 111 feeling that it might be pointless anyway, but I just needed to do something. That was an ordeal with them running through a script. The initial call concluded they would send an ambulance out to me to take me to A&E which I really did not want to do, but I decided to put faith in this. They then called me back and because I didn’t sound short of breath on the phone decided that I could make my own way to A&E.

I got myself an Uber it was difficult at that point, but not has it ended up being. I had to go into the normal waiting room of course and there’s a whole story around this but basically sit about six hours including some aggressive men challenging people in the waiting room to a fight. I eventually got to see a doctor after about five hours maybe but then other people had been waiting there a lot longer. I think there was someone have been 12 hours. I saw the doctor well she called my name I got up out of my seat to go to her. She had already started walking off and then I realised I couldn’t walk properly. People in the waiting room were holding their arms out not trying to help me, but as if to stop me from falling on them. I managed to make it into the doctors room and the doctor must’ve noticed the fact I was unsteady on my feet. I lay on the bed she had to go off and do something else for awhile. The door was slightly a jar and it was a bit cold but I was grateful to be out of the waiting room. The doctor did two things, the first was to come back with a box of pills. She told me they were steroids. I don’t think she informed me that they were the immuno suppressant drugs. It felt like she was just going to give me the pills and see me on my way. So I asked her what the side-effects are. The first thing she said was well, they could make me psychotic. So I got my psychotic drugs and then she did something useful which was to call the inflammatory bowel disease team at the hospital but it seems they had already gone home and so she left a message on their voicemail. As a result of this, I started to get some contact with that team which is what I’d really needed anyway. I had previously a few days earlier been referred to gastroenterology and then informed the waiting list is about 21 weeks on average which sounds not too bad for some waiting list but I was need of more urgent attention.

I walked out of the doctors room in the hospital, staggering, walking around the walls and furniture in case I fell. I went back into the waiting room and there I crouched on the floor in front of all the seats there may have been one seat amongst everybody, but I didn’t have the energy or inclination, so I just crouched in front of her body. I went to get out my phone to call an Uber wondering how I would get to the Uber. I then realised that a nurse had left the cannula in my arm. Everyone was watching me I looked at this cannula and I had a  tug at it wondering if I could pull it out myself. I looked up at the people in the waiting room. I think there might have been a noise and people looked shocked. One person said to me not to try and pull it out myself. There was some ambulance crew nearby and I called out to ask if anyone knows how to get this  cannula out of my arm. The ambulance crew walked away. I was not noticed. Even though I was very visible. So I had to get up and go to reception where they told me to knock on a couple of doors back where I had been. I did this and there was a nurse walking in at the same time so I asked her about the cannula. The nurse then hid me suspiciously and questioned if I had been discharged. I didn’t know if I had been officially discharged she asked me had I been told I could go and I said not specifically know. So I sat in a chair while they checked and discovered I had been discharged then removed the cannula.

After that, I got my Uber went back to the same spot I was in before. The Uber turned up but couldn’t get near the entrance. So I had to walk down the road around the ambulances and I saw the look on some ambulance drivers face. I managed to get into the Uber and I was driven home and managed to get up the stairs to my bed feeling worse than I had been when I had gone into A&E.