My Journey... every step of the way.: Hospital and New Piggies

For life's little ups and downs.

A rather quirky, funny and sometimes daunting look in to the life of someone who has a lot of health problems but does their best to keep positive. Punctuated by guinea pigs, anime, superheroes, transforming robots and cross stitching.

I started this blog to tell my story, about who I am and what I do. On top of the health problems and raising awareness for those, I also use my blog as a way to help promote other causes, particularly ones which affect the most vulnerable. I live with a number of different and complex health problems but I refuse to let anything get me down. I know how it feels to be discriminated against or thrown aside. This is me. This is my life. I live it and do what I want with it. Nature sets the limitations. We set the boundaries.

About Me:

A blog about life. I live with Type 1 Brittle Asthma, Bi-Polar Disorder, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder as well as Various Allergies, Neutropenia, Crohns Disease (my IBS was rediagnosed as Crohns), Osteo and Rheumatoid Arthritis, PCOS and Osteoporosis and Heredetary Spastic Paraplegia. I have recently also been diagnosed with Sleep Apnea (which makes me stop breathing in my sleep) I live with these conditions, but I refuse to let them keep me down and out. I still try and make the most of my days despite being so poorly and having to rely on my wheelchair, nebulisers, nearly 50 pills a day and 2l/min of oxygen and CPAP.

I'll flap my broken wings and erase it all someday... You'll see.

Thursday, 20 September 2018

Hospital and New Piggies

Last week was a tough one. Basically I gradually started to run out of steam and when that happens and my lungs just do what they do best and constrict, well it's pretty obvious where that ends. It'd been nearly 2 years since my last admission, maybe I was getting overconfident and I likely left it to the point where I couldn't set my symptoms straight. I woke up about half 8 that morning with all the muscles in my legs and back constantly spasming and trying to stretch out. If you use a lot of salbutamol it can cause your potassium levels to drop and the biggest symptom I get when this happens is that all my muscles to haywire, like I can't stretch them out so they hurt. I didn't want to wake Jace up so I went and flopped over the futon, chest was tight so I was on nebs too. I lay there for a while, even putting on some Simpsons to distract me. I really wasn't feeling good. Jace woke up and tried to get me to bed and we tried to get me to eat, by that point, I hadn't even tried to eat since Wednesday lunchtime. Didn't feel like I wanted to. I wasn't drinking either, nor was I "going" to the loo.

Then during another neb I had to get up and was violently sick. Throwing up bile isn't pleasant at the best of times and we knew then we were getting stuck. After the neb we realised we couldn't have done anything now and we pressed my lifeline button. Somewhere along the way, either by coughing or retching, my rib fractured and even breathing was making me cry out (which is something that I almost never do unless it's bad). My temperature was really high (I think we hit 39.5°C at one stage) and my oxygen levels were struggling, even on oxygen. I remember having a paramedic put a drip in to give me paracetamol but then it's kind of a blur of people coming in and out, apparently I was really calm or just didn't really know what was happening. When I got to MAU, the sister told me exactly what was going on. I was starting to develop sepsis which is why the doctors put me on IVs for pretty much everything. All I wanted though was to sleep.

I had a lot of doctors, nurses and ITU people come to see me. The A&E reg didn't think my asthma was the problem (no wheeze but I wasn't moving air either... ) then ended up being told that I was having a serious asthma attack and needed loads of Hydrocortisone, Magnesium, nebs and high flow oxygen. It's no shock that once bedtime came, all my meds were sorted (mix up...ugh...less said the better, when your pain meds aren't prescribed properly is the most frustrating thing), I just plopped. I was happy enough to sleep until about a nurse was worried as my blood pressure dropped. I felt better though, just very tired, being awake at 6:30 after getting to sleep around midnight. The problem with hospitals is that you can't sleep well, unless you're elderly or drugged up to the eyeballs. I think it's the openness of the situation. People are going in and out and you can hear conversations at the nurses station.

I find the whole thing awkward, you're sleeping in a room with people you don't know and are usually 3 times your age so there's little to talk about. I do try and make an effort with everyone because it makes it easier to cope with. I got talking to the relatives of the girl next to me, her story was sad but her mum was lovely and so funny as she told me about her journey. I won't discuss the girls story as its not my place, one thing that we do here at "My Journey" is to not discuss other people's physical or mental issues (or private lives, including personal info) without permission to do so.

One good thing that happened here was some new arrivals. I am on guinea pig groups on Facebook and got talking to a lady from a local guinea pig rescue, Puddleducks Guinea Pig Rescue runs a sanctuary for guinea pigs who need to find their "forever home" and I had been talking to a lady called Gemma about a group of 7 pigs that she had received and this week, we adopted these two little balls of white fluff. Marik is 2 years old, he's quite skittish but when he calms he loves cuddles! Bakura is 6 weeks old and he's insane! I found the little nutter trying to climb the side of the cage, I've never seen a piggie do that! Marik is very protective of him but it's good to see how much happier Yugi has been since.

I guess that's all for now, I'm a bit tired still so I'll probably blog again soon. So until then, please enjoy this picture!