Wednesday 23 January 2013

What A Night!!


I didn’t think I was going to update for a little while cos there wasn’t going to be much happening until our visit to the doctors at the end of the month to reassess Ady’s spot on his head. Well that has been brought forward a week and I will tell you why...

He has been moaning for about a week about a pain in his left side, travelling around to his shoulder blade. He has been coming to me with a tube of voltarol to rub on it although he moans that it isn’t doing much good, but anyway..
I must admit, I hadn’t taken much notice of it or his moans about it.
Now, the thing is, I haven’t been sleeping all that well the last week or so, cos Ady has been up and down and to and fro in the night, either having a wee, or waking me up asking for morphine cos the steroid injections in his ankles and wrists are wearing off already *sigh* (which is why I took not much notice of his side pain cos the feet and wrist pain was more pressing in a way). I know that he is in pain and sometimes keeps quiet about it, trying not to wake me, but the thing is, I hear every huff, puff and sigh. I immediately wake to see if he is OK.

Last night, there I was, all lovely and comfortable in bed, at that stage where you are just drifting off to sleep, when I was suddenly jolted awake with “Oh feck my old boots, this bloody hurts...jesus it is sooo painful”
I shot up and asked what on earth was the matter.
Ady was, by now, sitting on the side of the bed trying to rub his side. “I have got such a sharp stabbing pain in my side and it just wont go. It’s been brewing all evening and now it is much worse”
“Right” I said “I will go and get you some morphine” and off I went downstairs. Ady can’t do the morphine himself cos the lid is on too tight with one of those childproof caps on it that the girls can get off, and also he can’t do the whole syringe thing cos it is too fiddly for his fingers.
By the time I had got downstairs, I had woken right up and decided to make me a coffee. I then heard a slow creak of the stairs and hands sliding down the hand rail so I knew Ady was coming down too. He can’t hurry cos I had taken his bandages off earlier and so he had no support in his ankles so they are weak, wobbly and painful.
I gave him his morphine while I drank my coffee. I thought to myself “Blimey, this pain is a bit close to his heart, I wonder if he is having a heart attack”
Ady said that he had no pain in his jaw, no pain down his left arm and no crushing feeling in his chest. Just this pain on his left side radiating around to his shoulder blade.
So then I thought “Hmm, perhaps he is still having a heart attack and the symptom he is having is actually a symptom that isn’t well known”. So then I decided to google.
Well, google told me that he could either be having kidney stones, gall stones or a heart attack, so then I thought that perhaps I had better ring NHS direct and ask them what they think. Then I thought “Oh bloody hell, as soon as I tell them he has a sharp stabbing pain around his chest area, they are sure to send an ambulance. The girls are asleep in bed, it is one in the morning. I can’t wake them up cos they have school tomorrow and I can’t pack Ady off to the hospital on his own. He simply wouldn’t cope, and anyway, what if he dies in there on his own. He has told me that that is the last thing he wants”
While I was thinking all that, Ady had decided that he was going to sleep downstairs and that the pain had eased a bit and I must go to bed. He will be fine. He was mildly cross and irritable at this point. A bit fed up that it is one woe after another I think.

So, I did as I was told and went off to bed having decided not to ring NHS direct and hopefully, he will make it through the night and I will take him to the doctors in the morning. He was given strict instructions that if things got worse then he was to wake me up. Off I went upstairs to bed.
There I was, just drifting off to sleep again when I heard, c r e a k... g r o a n....shuffle, c r e a k ....g r o a n ..shuffle. Jesus, I thought he was sleeping downstairs and there he was coming upstairs. “What are you up to now” I said “Well, the pain has eased a little bit and I can’t settle downstairs so I will just lie here on top of the duvet so you aren’t worrying about me dying downstairs, I can die next to you”
“Lovely” I thought “Now I can’t cocoon myself in the duvet cos he is lying on top of it and I can’t even snatch it away from him like I usually do”
I laid there for a while wondering if I should ring NHS direct or what exactly I should do and should I be worried at all or perhaps I was worrying unduly. I wasn’t totally convinced he was having a heart attack but then again, I wouldn’t be surprised if he was.
The last thing I heard was the sound of Ady snoring. I drifted off to sleep too.
I was woken about 7am with Steph asking me to do her a letter for her dance teacher about wearing track bottoms for dance instead of leggings or something, so I got up, checked Ady was still breathing and went downstairs to sort the girls out for school. They were in a great mood and we had a pleasant half hour together. I thought it best not to ruin it for them and tell them about Ady in the night, so I kept quiet and they went off to school quite happily.

I made an appointment at the doctors for that morning and before long, Ady came hobbling downstairs “Morning darling, I made it through the night!”
“Excellent” I said “Let’s get you bandages done and get you off to the doctors”
Ady and I did wonder if our poor GP, who is still great, looks down his list of patients in the morning. Notices Adys name and thinks to himself “Bloody hell, not him again, what does he want THIS time” then decided that we wouldn’t blame the poor bloke if he did actually think that!
Dr K asked Ady lots of questions and checked his wee and ruled out kidney stones. He also ruled out anything else nasty and said that he , well, sort of, erm, has a pain and to take morphine if he needs it. Of course, should it get worse, go back and see him.
While we were there, he had a look at Ady’s spot on his head and thought it didn’t look quite so ulcerated around the edges as it did a few weeks ago, so he is now putting antibiotic cream on that and going back again in a month to see what it is up to.... we would much rather have an infected spot that a cancerous one any day!

So that’s it really, Ady went from having a heart attack to having to man up!

Oh and I have told Ady that when he stops worrying about what other people are saying and thinking about him and accepts the situation he finds himself in, realises his new limitations and stops fighting them, he has won half the battle and his guilt and anxiety levels will drop....I hope!!

Next, I will write about the DWP stopping our payments and the letter I got from the girls school...blooming nightmare lol


No comments:

Post a Comment