Tales from a Hospital Bed

Tuesday afternoon (1^st of November) laying in my hospital bed trying to comprehend what has gone on over the past week.  My tonsils were removed on the 25^th October as part of investigating the suspected throat cancer – which is now confirmed.  Never again shall I be disregarding when someone tells me they have had or are planning to have their tonsils removed.

I had always taken a tonsillectomy as being a routine procedure where by you are in and out of hospital in a day or two, followed by a week of your parents or partner spoon feeding you your favorite flavor of Haggan Daz whilst reassuring you what a brave boy/girl you are.

Apparently not if you’re an adult, then the procedure is less straightforward and can result in some serious complications which we only learned about after the fact.

The operation itself went well and I was in and out the same day and the shopping bag full of pain killers, throat sprays and stomach protection tablets issued to me all helped to get me through the days that followed.  Despite the vast amounts of medication, swallowing has and still remains painful and Emma is constantly force feeding me as I need to keep my weight up ready for the course of treatment that will ensue.

Anyway Sunday 30^th October was when my recovery from the operation took a turn for the worst.  Emma had just gone up stairs to bed and I was carrying out the tedious task of invigorating the cushions on the sofa before joining her.

Now don’t get me started on that bloody sofa. Emma is highly sensitive when it comes to criticism in the sofa department probably because she paid a lot of her hard earned money for it.  The problem is that it has down filled cushions and so after every use you have to go through a major work out to poof the huge cushions back into some sort of shape.  Wow betide you if you fail to do this after sitting on them – the wrath of Emma is not something you would wish on your worst enemy.  It is a task I despise with a passion, so much so that the amount of television I watch has dramatically reduced since moving in with Emma – not necessarily a bad thing.

So there I am poofing away and I suddenly become aware of the sensation of warm blood filling my mouth and so I quickly retreat to the bathroom.  Emma played Florence Nightingale rubbing my back and continually asking me if I am alright whilst we waited for the paramedic to arrive.  If I didn’t have a constant flow of blood coming from my mouth I would have been tempted to say “yes, I’m absolutely fine darling , stick the kettle on, there’s a good girl and we can have tea and crumpets before bed”  I managed to refrain and answered each enquiry with “yes I'm fine darling”

In Emma’s estimation I lost about 5 or 6 cup fulls of blood leant over the sink. 

So an ambulance ride to the John Radcliffe hospital followed and I was admitted for observation as the bleeding had stopped by the time I arrived.

I was released the next day and got home at 6pm and by 9pm I was back at the hospital after a couple of minor bleeds, this time chauffeured by the unflappable wife.  As I’m sat there in A&E waiting to be seen, with my cardboard bowl on my lap, suddenly another vessel ruptures but this time it was deep at the back of the mouth where they had taken a number of biopsies from my tongue.  The bleed was producing similar volumes as the night before but was so far back in my mouth that the blood was going down my throat and I was forced to repeatedly regurgitate before I swallowed it.

I had little regard for my surroundings as I was bent over, head down trying to drag up the large volume of fluid that was sliding down my larynx, but Emma pointed out after the event that all eyes were on me as it would have appeared to the audience gathered in the busy A&E department that I was vomiting up the blood as if the bleed was from deep inside my stomach and Emma was in fact getting the pity stare from the assembled masses as the assumption was being made that I was an alcoholic whose long and severe history of alcohol abuse had finally caught up with him and his days were clearly numbered and Emma was only a matter of hours away from becoming a widow.

One of the benefits of this fairly impressive mess that I was making was that we immediately jumped the queue and got fast tracked through to the resuscitation room.  I must admit on seeing where they had taken us, I got slightly concerned that perhaps it was worse than I first thought, but after being hooked up to a drip, attached to some monitoring equipment and given some vial tasting mouth wash, the bleeding eased and I was admitted under “nil by mouth” on the basis that if I bled again within the next 12 hours then they would take me immediately to theatre.

Now I strongly believe you need to make the most of every opportunity that life presents you and therefore I quickly blamed the extreme effort that I had exerted in man handling the cushions as the reason for the initial bleed and have suggested that during my recovery and on-going treatment it is probably best if I leave the cushion poofing to Emma.  She is thinking about it.

UPDATE: On the second visit to hospital I was kept in for 2 nights before being released and have had no further complications. Happy Days J