Tuesday 14th Nov
John:
At 6am I was sick and got up about 7:30am to move our bed from the main bedroom to third bedroom so our lovely sleigh bed could go into the main bedroom when the removal vans arrived. I wasn't functioning very well, cognitive ability was going - what should have taken a minute took 10. I tried to put the cat perch together after lunch - it took an hour and I didn't finish it. I've little or no recollection of the removal guys - Liz had to cope with all of that, I was zero help. I think I was literally sitting on a box then lying on a settee after they had gone.
After lunch, I called a new consultant who I had been referred to for help here in Scotland. He arranged an appointment for me that Thursday with a view to a colonoscopy to confirm the Crohn's then, as things were just getting worse, Liz suggested I call 111, who told me that as we were in GP surgery hours I should call them. So I called my new-to-be local GP surgery and they were brilliant. Despite not being registered they understood I needed to see someone fast and by 4:30pm I had a face to face appointment. Her view was that there were no normal sounds coming from the bowel area and she strongly suggested a hospital trip, she wrote a brief letter to help speed me into emergency assessment and off we went, picking up a small bag of odds and ends on the way.
Although we have a community hospital 'this side of the water' in Dunoon, they don't have the services she felt I needed out of hours, so we headed to Inverclyde Hospital - that's either a 2 hour drive up and round or a little less if you take the ferry over. As we boarded the ferry, I felt cold, clammy and nauseous. I got out the car and the remains of yesterday's food came back over the deck of the boat. Apologies all round, but they are used to a bit of sea sickness and truly an amazing bunch.
Liz dropped me off - she needed to get back home for work and at this stage we simply didn't know what we were dealing with, and we had 3 cats climbing the walls.
In the waiting room, probably about an hour, I was in agony in my stomach and very quickly in the assessment room I was on IV morphine. Chest x-rays and CT scans followed and then admission to 'H North' ward Room 8 by midnight. IV morphine was replaced with sub cutaneous morphine but not quickly enough - pain.
Liz:
The delivery trucks arrived at about 8am, before we were really ready as we needed to move the bed from the main bedroom to the spare so that furniture could be put in the correct places and not need moving round so much after the removal people had gone. They did a brilliant job, taking my directions for where to put everything, and they were all wrapped up by 10am. We had a mountain of work to do, but John was white as a sheet and struggling to move around. He helped me put together the dining table and move the bed, but after that he had to sit down, and eventually went to bed.
Mid-afternoon, if I'm honest, I was a bit exasperated at the lack of help and my back was starting to hurt from the lifting. I went in to see John and told him that lying there wasn't going to solve the problem, and that even if he could hold out until he saw the new consultant on Thursday it wasn't going to give him a solution as it was only the initial consultation. He needed to call 111.
We were due at the GP at 4.30pm and so while we waited I got my new home office set up ready for tomorrow so I could get back to work. Then we drove over to Kyles Medical Centre in Kames, about 10 miles from the house, to see the doctor. She was absolutely wonderful. We were with her for about half an hour, she did an examination, didn't make us feel rushed at all, and then made her recommendation to go straight to A&E at Inverclyde. She was worried about a perforated bowel, which runs the risk of sepsis, which is usually fatal if not treated in good time. That was all I needed to hear, and I drove as fast as the dark and the speed limits allowed to get John to hospital as soon as humanly possible. I felt terrible dropping and running, but I couldn't leave the cats for too long and there was little I could do at the hospital, and so, with John shooing me off, I headed for home, to worry.
Wednesday 15th November
John:
The next few days were a blur, Wednesday to Friday. I had loads of notes from my consultant on my phone and managed to write out a short summary of various GP visits, symptoms, medications, and effects of them in an order for folks to see. Talk of 'possible surgery' escalated to 'likely stoma' and Friday afternoon was surgery day. One thing was clear - the symptoms did not match the previous Crohn's diagnosis.
Liz:
I spent Wednesday morning working and I sent John a photo of my view from the home office. It was beautiful, with cloud resting in bands along the glen. John sent back his view, which was not a patch, but not bad for a hospital view!
In the afternoon I tried to sift through some of the stuff that needed organising so that we could get back to normal living before too long. John said not to go over until he knew more, and although I hated leaving him on his own, knowing there was no progress for him, I knew he was right - I couldn't add any value by doing another 3 hour round trip to Greenock. We had a quick chat and he was on obs and pain meds but no doctor visit today. It was incredibly frustrating, feeling like he wasn't receiving fast enough attention, but we knew they had to get information from England and assess the CT scan from A&E. The waiting was awful.
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