Well, things didn't really work out well last week.
The gastric bug I had seemed to be finally settling down come Thursday, but my bowels were still rather delicate. I weighed myself again and it looked like total loss was now approaching 12 kg. Hmmm.
Come Saturday morning, I decided enough was enough and made an appointment with the after hours doctor. Ruth S kindly took me down (by this stage I was pretty much totally whacked and devoid of energy).
As to be expected, doctor was running late, so finally got in 1/2 hour after scheduled time. Proceeded to give him the background and in a short time he said "there is only one place for you - hospital". He proceeded to ring Hutt and talked to one of the registrars, then gave me a letter to give them. In all honesty, I was too weakened to even put up a fight.
We came back home and packed a bag, then tootled off down to A&E. Getting from the car into A&E I almost collapsed I was so weak. Fortunately, they were expecting me and got me on a bed/trolley quickly and into one of the cubicles. They inserted a cannula, took some bloods then proceeded to start a drip. Eventually the doctor came to see me and agreed admission was the right thing, so went off to organise the paperwork. Seems plan of attack is to largely let this thing work itself through, but they were going to re-hydrate me.
For good measure, they took some chest x-rays and after probably three hours, I was on my way to a ward. Seems the hospital didn't want to risk whatever I had spreading, so they put me in an isolation room.
The isolation room is a negative pressure room - don't really understand what that means - but I had my own bathroom and wouldn't have to put up with the general noise of a normal ward. Downside - no curtains on the window - something to do with the negative pressure.
Anyhow, over the following days they continuously had drips in me - with the exception of a two hour block on Monday morning. Come Monday morning I was starting to feel better and the bowels were too. They had been reasonably quiet during daytime, but reactivated so to speak during the nights. Monday felt different though, there was a general firming that I hadn't felt for some time.
The Doctors decided they'd give me some drugs to bind me (at last) and would keep me in overnight to make sure there were no complications. Plan was I'd go home Tuesday. During Monday, Paul the dietician came for a visit and we agreed on some changes to my feeding plans for when I got home (all my fortisip and nutrison were hi fibre and we didn't want to subject the bowels to that too soon, so he'd provide some "normal" product) and also agreed to put me on a minced food diet. The first evidence of that would be dinner Monday night.
When dinner duly arrived, it was meat, mash and carrots. I can honestly say that was the first meal I've eaten for months. The meat was easy to digest, carrots were a bit crisp still and the mash worked fine. I pretty much cleared my dishes of meat & mash. Tuesday morning breakfast was porridge (bland) but with the addition of some sugar, it was palatable and I cleaned up a good 2/3 of my portion. People, I'm starting to eat again!!!
Tuesday morning comes and things are definitely on the up. Bowels behaved overnight - and I'm eating again.
Doctors give me clearance to come home and after waiting for the food from Paul, I'm eventually home late morning. Still feeling a bit weak, but 300 times better than I felt a week ago.
So there we go folks. Another little hiccup on the path to recovery, but it had it's little silver lining - I'm eating with more ease now and consuming reasonable volumes that should help eliminate the fortisip from my day.
One step closer to Jake getting a holiday.
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