On the first morning of my stay, I overheard the nurses talking about me when doing the handover. ‘She didn’t complain about pain last night but she did this morning’ Well I just said ‘could I have a paracetamol please’ but ok… And the reason I didn’t ‘complain’ last night because I was naughty and…
Category: In the ward
The longest night
By day the ward is a living, jovial, caring, nurturing, happy space. By night it turns into an unforgiving beast. By day the nurses are your compatriots, your friends. They sort things out for you, they bring pain relief, they bring smiles, laughs. By night they feel like overlords, snatching you unceremoniously from precious sleep…
Being back in hospital…
When I was at home over the last few days before coming in, with this ever swelling face, I was stressed about how I ‘should’ be, or the things I ‘should’ be doing. I’ve got an event to get to but I’m not feeling well enough. Am I going to be well enough to go…
And you may find yourself… back in hospital. And you may ask yourself, well… How did I get here?
So… I spent yesterday in A&E which was fun. Didn’t think that was still part of my life but maybe it always will be… We’ll see. I’ve talked before about how they’ve severed my trigeminal nerve, which tells my right eye to stop crying. Well occasionally it gets a bit weepy too. Fun. But it…
The final bits…
With the trachy out, it was time to start breathing through my mouth. My nose was entirely blocked so there was no chance of it helping me out. My mouth got so dry. Night time was the worst. I already wasn’t sleeping much, but now my mouth and throat were dry and burning. And I…
Little adventures
On day 13 of my hospital stay, Kat the Physio said I was allowed to go for a little adventure, so I actually got to leave the ward and we went up to Level 16 and looked out at the view. UCLH has a tall tower, and is situated pretty in the middle of London,…
Trachy tales
While a lot of the point of this post is really to say ‘Kat the Physio is amazing’, because I definitely haven’t given her enough time yet, I feel I also need to talk a little bit more about the Tracheostomy. The concept is great. Hole in the neck to breathe through, so no matter…
Struggles and some gory details…
At this point I was waking up every morning not able to open my eyes, as well as being cold, wet and covered in blood. It was pretty grim. I couldn’t breathe through my nose or close my mouth. I had blood and yellow discharge streaming out of my nose, and blood and saliva running…
The second trip to the ward in 3 days…
When I was transferred to the ward for the second time in 3 days, I was back in a shared ward. Thankfully this time there was no one wailing all night like there had been the time before (I remember writing to my nurse saying ‘just give her sleeping tablets and give me sleeping tablets…
A few of the amazing nurses on my first trip to ICU
The first thing was to work out a way to communicate with people. How else would I make friends? The first notebook Dad got for me said on the front ‘Be your own kind of beautiful’. Seemed fitting, since I would definitely be challenging the normal ideas of ‘beautiful’ for some time (someone did just…
