The best-laid plans...

 The best-laid plans...


It is often said that the best-laid plans go awry, and in my case, it seemed that my plan for a come back to regular blogging had a little hiccup and so on the first scheduled Wednesday at 9:48pm UK time I find myself writing today's post.  


But I can assure you that there is a pretty decent explanation as to why the writing is a little late.


I actually had another post almost complete for you all last Thursday and was planning to have it finished Friday ready for today, but that plan definitely went very awry.


On Friday 4th September 2020, I woke up with costochondritis pain yet again and prepared to have a day of taking painkillers, which trust me, got taken, to try and control it, but there was something very different about this pain, the main difference being that there was a pain in another part of my body, more specifically my lower right abdomen.



This was immedietly where we (i.e. me, my mum and my dad) focused our attention to because this was most likely what set off the pain in my chest.


You see if one little thing goes wrong in my body, the inflammation in my chest doesn't like to miss out on the action and decides it likes to act up as well, but this time around the chest needed to become the understudy and the abdomen pain needed to be centre stage (musicals have been helping me through my recovery, in case you can't tell...).


We called the NHS non-emergency number 111 and after going over my symptoms we got me straight up to the emergency walk-in centre at the hospital.


Within an hour I had been examined, sent up to the surgical assessment unit and had blood taken. Luckily despite the current pandemic, my mother was allowed to stay with me in the waiting room on account of having an anxiety disorder which really came out to play but let's be honest, in the middle of a hospital doubled over in pain is that too much of a surprise?


After 3 hours of waiting for the blood results to come back, we finally got some news!!! 


That the blood work showed no inflammation of my appendix!!!


Well, what on earth was causing my pan then? What can we do to find out? 


The decision was made for me to stay on the ward overnight so that I could be given some very strong pain killers during the night and have an ultrasound first thing in the morning.


So at around 11pm on Friday night, my mum had brought me an overnight bag from home and I was given a bed on a ward with two snorers and one sleep talker so that with the pain (although the painkillers via cannula definitely took the edge off) meant that sleep was not really had.


Saturday morning came around, I had just had my first ever overnight stay in hospital and I was sent off to have an ultrasound with me and the doctors thinking that we'll finally find out why I'm in pain. And guess what?!


Nothing, it showed nothing...


The only option left was for the doctors to take a look in there, so within 24 hours I started having an in my lower right abdomen, ended up at the hospital,  had blood tests, had a COVID-19 test (which is awfully horrid by the way if you haven't had to have one), ended up staying in the hospital for the first time in my life, having an ultrasound for the first time in my life and being told I needed investigative surgery. 


My, what an adventure!


I had already been nil-by-mouth from being sent to the ward on Friday but now I was being given fluids via intravenous because we didn't know when I would get to eat and drink again. Please bear in mind it was only around 11 am on Saturday so my mind wasn't fully ready for the day yet. And yes, it does take my brain a while to get ready for the day...


Then I waited...and I waited...and I waited...


By now it was 8 pm on Saturday and the longer I was waiting the worse my pain was getting. I completely understand that there were others that needed surgery before me and that the hospital cannot control emergencies coming in, but the not knowing what's going on wasn't doing anything to lessen the anxiety in my brain and not being allowed to take my medication wasn't helping either, so I did what any sensible person would do...

    I went to sleep and tried to forget what was happening to me right now.


I was awoken two hours later by the night team being told that I was moving wards. I was half asleep but I was told the next morning by the team on my new ward that because my COVID-19 test came back negative I was able to go onto a general surgery ward to spend the rest of my time waiting for my surgery.


I would call this the highlight of the weekend as I was in fact moved to my own personal room with a private bathroom and a TV. But no TV remote so every time I wanted to change the channel I had to get up which was easier said than done, but rubbish daytime TV was the perfect motivator for getting up out of bed to find something better to watch. 


Saturday night's sleep was far better from there, minus the being woken up to check my vitals, and I was (kinda) ready for the next day.


Sunday morning was a bit of a letdown with my phone just breaking outright, a "system boot-up failure" to be precise so now if I wanted to contact anyone, I had to give a message to the nurse to then phone my parents with, and that loss of immediate communication with my parents seemed to be the breaking point for my anxiety and there may or may not have been a 10-minute crying session. Thank goodness for the private room!


So I was now looking forward to a day without my phone, no clock in the room so no idea what time it was, no TV remote, intravenous fluids, no food, no water and no idea if my surgery would happen today!


Fast forward to 9:25 pm (thank you to the nurses that would come in often and tell me what time it was!) and after giving up hope for surgery that day I was suddenly having my blood sugar tested to before being taken to theatre. 


I would like you all to bear in mind that at that this pint it had been 84 hours since any food or water had entered my mouth so it's shouldn't have been a surprise (yet it somehow was to one nurse) that my blood sugar was a little lower than they liked for surgery. But 5 minutes of emergency intravenous glucose later it was high enough and at 9:40 pm I was being wheeled to theatre. 


At some point during Sunday as well the decision was made to just remove my appendix to save the possibility of having to have another surgery in the future. 


After this, I'm afraid I really don't remember anything until around 7 am the next morning when the doctors came in and explained what exactly had been happening inside my body, and well it couldn't have been anything simple, could it?


Long story short, my appendix had to be taken to labs to be looked at to find out what was wrong with it, but all it took was cutting it in half to find out. As soon as it was cut in half, the inside of my appendix was black and pus-filled. Somehow an abscess had started to grow very quickly in my appendix and had gotten very large, I mean, it was estimated to be only a few days away from bursting. I was also informed at this time that the reason it wasn't seen on the ultrasound was because ultrasounds only tend to see the appendix 50% of the time, so it's never a sure way of diagnosing appendicitis. 


But wait! There's more!


The appendix had then started to push down into my fallopian tube and created a 2cm kink in the tube, and my body had already released an egg so my egg got stuck in the tube and was around 2 days away from becoming a cyst so that, plus the appendix abscess was what was causing a whole lot of pain. 


I was then fed some horrible hospital food which was actually the topic of discussion for my 10,000 word BSc (Hons) dissertation and maybe one day I'll write a rant...I mean to post all about it. 


I was then discharged at 8 pm on Monday night and I was finally reunited with my parents and went home to sleep off the rest of my general anaesthetic.


We'll never know why this happened and for once we were grateful for my costochondritis. I'm now just around 3 days post-op and have been told that because of all my other conditions that recovery could take a little longer than other patients so I should start to feel a little more normal in 2-3 weeks. But for now, my wonderful mother is having to help me get around everywhere as well as standing up and sitting down.


I'm also still in pain in the lower right abdomen but that's my body getting used to no appendix and my tube getting back into position, and the pain in the left side is from the very obvious keyhole surgery I had so right now, I'm taking one day at a time.


I do have a plan to post this week's original post next week, and hopefully, that best-laid plan won't go awry,


but until then,


be happy, be healthy, from Abbie x

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