Are you bored?
I found it strange how the first question that many people asked me was ‘Do you get bored?’ Well only a ‘well’ person would think this, imagining themselves lying flat in normal life maybe after a bout of flu or something. However, for me, it was hour by hour finding some relief with pain meds, having blood pressure and temperature taken every two hours, bed rolls every 3 hours ( a process with 3 nurses on one side of me and 1 the other side and rolling me onto my side involving a horrific sensation of my back being left on the bed and me yelling obscenities, only to have my back checked for sores and then rolled back again). All these checks were 24/7 plus I was constantly being wheeled off for scans or x-rays and having bloods taken.
In between all of this I would drift in and out of morphine induced sleep and on the rare occasions when I was pain free AND awake, I would be on my phone updating on social media or messaging Martin with a list of demands! So as you can see…. Boredom wasn’t an issue!
I decided very early on to start keeping a gratitude diary challenging myself to write 3 positive things a day which I continued for my entire stay whilst in the N & N hospital. Here are my first few entries… which were extremely difficult to write upside down! It shows my mindset was going to be very determined from early on… and this did set me off in good stead for my amazing progress to follow I believe.
During these first few weeks, I hardly ate anything so weight was dropping off me and yet my stomach was growing larger and larger and becoming distended like pictures I’d seen of malnourished children from 3rdworld countries! I was being given dozens of laxatives and stool softeners as well as a concoction of other drugs, but the pain in my abdomen just increased. I was given anti-sickness meds when my body started to try and eliminate from the upper end!
I had a catheter in place and a very uncomfortable pad laid underneath me and it really didn’t register that when things were to finally happen my only option was for it to take place in the bed… since spinal patients are NOT allowed a bed pan! Yurrrgh. I held on for 3 long weeks, and when a good friend of mine visited and told me during a brief hospital stay and presented with the same predicament, she held off until she got back home and could go on a toilet. I soon realised I wasn’t going to have this luxury as I wasn’t going to be going home anytime soon!
By far the worse part of my entire experience was yet to come…..
