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Wednesday 12 January 2011

Hospital Drama

Ok so some of you, may have heard this story and you might have heard me talk about this a lot. So I am sorry if I annoy you. its just that I have been in a bit of an emotional mood recently, this is partly due to being a bit lonely in some way. Some of the stuff I am going to write about in this post may be a bit close to the bone yet again with honest things.

So basically this is the story of what happened to me in the tail end of 2002, I came really close to dieing on the opperation table at Gloucester Royal Infermarie (I am not sure if I spelt that word right or not!).

About two months after my 20th Birthday I fell really ill from Appendicitus, It felt like I was being stabbed in the stomach because the pain was seathing. I don't know if any of you out there have had appendicitis, if you have then you would probably understand what the pain is like!

what happened to me was a complete changing period in my life, I can remember the fear I had when my Mum had to drive me into hospital. Not only was I deep in agony but I also had blood poisoning at the same time. This was causing me to feel very shaky and my skin to go an off yellow colour.

I have never been a big fan of hospitals, I dont think anyone really is a fan to be honest. I especially got a really bad feeling where I could just sense something was going to go wrong.

This feeling wasn't helped by the fact that the doctor who was trying to get my blood sample took 7 times to get the right vein. I was already pretty queasy with needles, but this made things a lot worst, especially as my muscles tensioned.

I can remember saying to my Mum that I thought something was going to wrong, she just said 'Now now we cant have you like this, you are going to be fine' she said reassuringly. 'Will I be able to watch the fa cup game', I know this was of little consequence to what was about to happen, but I was a massive Forest Green Rovers fan and didn't want to miss the chance to see my team in the fa cup

But as it proved to be something did go wrong and almost fatally so. I was admittedly fearing the worst when the anaesthetist came round to see me before surgery.

All i can say is the surgery was a pretty bad botch up of an opperation, I think that there were several flaws in what they did, the most major one was that they misjudged the muscle relaxant I would need. I am a pretty strong guy, I know I dont flash my muscles around, but i am a lot stronger then you think.

So it gets to the point where they are lets say half way through the operation, where the anaesthetics start to wear off this meant that I had a sudden muscle spazzm and for me to become semi concious.

I remember seeing a light and a franrtic face staring at me with, a level of stress. You see they had also just found my appendix next to my liver. My muscle spasm had caused me to bight onto the air tube causing my lungs to flood with fluid. so i was effectively drowning on the operating table. Now you could probably imagine what this was doing to my already over powered liver.

what a way it would have been to die, at 20, not really having had much of a life.
So they plunged me into a coma like state to help ease my breathing and so they could put me into recovery, this lasted for 3 days.

I can remember waking up coughing up red roughage as my eyes were jolted into action. The bright lights shone light white halogens, causing scratching in my eyeballs. There were relieved looks on the face of five shaky looking figures that surrounded me. I think there might have been some form of comforting words coming in my direction as they pored over me. My brain froze me, a sterile thought passed on through this head, which was blocked with congestion.

“What time is the FA Cup game on?” I said, without realising I had been knocked unconscious for three days solid.
I screamed, “Show me the game on the TV!”
My parents’ flat lined honesty was met by a growing frustration.

“Show me the game on the TV,” I barked with a dogged sense that I was right.
At the time, I was a hardened fan of Forest Green Rovers who were a facing a South West derby in the FA cup against Exeter City. My appendicitis had conveniently decided to kick off that weekend, making me pale and shake like a dilated alcoholic. Because of the placement of my internal organs, my liver was at risk of being flooded out.

That, aided by the surgeon’s general incompetence, nearly forced me into an early grave. At the tender age of twenty it would be too early to snuff out life’s candle. How easy is it for fully trained anaesthetists to get it so horrifically wrong? Their ineptitude led to me biting on the air tube dangling down my throat. My lungs flooded with dripping fluid as my muscles spasmed faster than you can shout ‘Jumping Jack.’ All I could remember was a bright light and the sound of panicking surgeons pushing me back to sleep.

The sense of my awakening brought about a huge wall-like sigh of relief. My eyes met their smiling faces with a bemusement before an irritating noise kicked into my ears coming from the gas machine pumping out the air. A mechanical clanking started to sound like an eighties dodgy European hair metal band.
“Turn it off!” I screamed, pulling the gas mask from my face, “That Helloween is rubbish.”

My parents slammed the mask back on my face as my eyes began to drowse sleepily.
“I do not need that!” I screamed, rabidly plucking it off my face.
“Your breath is weak and you’re very ill,” spoke a stick thin man who was taking my observations.

My Mum was sat by my side, serving me up crushed ice as a form of nourishment as I was unable to eat anything. My muscle strength was something less than depleted as three days in a comatose state had left me feeling empty, like a rotting corpse ready to hit the hay. My life was floating when a sense of fear drifted over me as I was wheeled off. My parents walked either side along with my sister, who had made all the doctors blush because of her low cut tops. Having her appear over my bed was kind of refreshing, rejuvenating the link between us because there had been something missing for a while.

They wheeled me into the intensive care unit. A place where you feel death grow as the bleeps from the heart monitors signal another person’s dying breath. This had me lingering in thoughts of desperation as the day turned into night. I tried to sleep but a mixture of the paranoia of being on a hospital ward and vivid hallucinations from the hospital drugs tripping me out kept me wide awake, playing like a weird dream cross between a psychotic mass rave and a dodgy romance film. You know, like a cheap Patrick Swayze Ghost style rom com, with Kenny G providing the soundtrack with the sort of music that would send any right-minded person up the wall. This is the effect of five different types of penicillin and Morphine mixed together to make a Molotov of hallucinations. I kept on having weird visions of mud moulded animals and surreal structural shapes, with me as some form of leader, which was bizarre.

The following day there was worrying talk floating around of me possibly needing to have a tube inserted into my throat because I was struggling to breath. This really worried me in my frail position, but as day turned to night there was something in the air. The night staff decided to try the Patch Adams method out on me by laying on a night of entertainment. Now you can imagine the drugs mixed with the night’s goings-on had some resoundingly profound effects on me. Including one such bizarre nightmare involving two of the doctors who I swear were evil scientists. I thought that they were trying to turn me into a serial killer by using the giant gas mask strapped around my face to project visions. Starting off with gentle images gradually getting more and intense, something similar to the torture scene from A Clockwork Orange.

I didn’t know what they were doing, but, hey, it seemed to be working as there were weird messages telling me to calm down. Whilst taking in stronger breaths, I could feel a sense of victory peeling off. My miraculous recovery was nothing short of spectacular and I had managed to stun the surgeons who were fully prepared to push a tube down my throat, because I was not only smiling but I was sat up out of my bed.
This gave a feeling of power as I laughed in the surgeons’ faces.

“Pah hahahaha” I spluttered at their inexplicable glumness written all over their speechless faces. I had a new fight installed, a new determination not to be plagued by the bleeps from the heart monitors. Their hollowed sounds had been plaguing me like the locust on any crop, constantly pushing me down with the worry of being at death’s door.

That same day my gran phoned up the hospital to see how I was getting on, with which I shouted out loud and clearly that I was going to be out of this place tomorrow, of course I wasn't. It was this steely sense of determination that aided my recovery.

Now I looked up with a golden horizon, everything did not seem quite so grey in the world. it took me about a week for me to recover enough to be taken home. I had to re learn one or two things because my muscles had forgotten how to do certain things like, how to eat, because had been placed on Nil by mouth this meant all the vital nutrients I needed from food was piped into me.

I had to learn how to balance again, because my muscles from the waist down had been completely out of use for the past few days. so walking was a bit of an issue.

My mum and Dad came and saw me on regular occasions, my dad even cried because he was scared of loosing me 'your not supposed to die before me he said, and I was really scared we were going to lose you' he said in a very sensitive tone

This was probably the first time that my dad had really opened up to me, I smiled at him and reassured him everything was ok.

My sister came into see me a couple of times this pleased the male staff because she had a habit of wearing low cut tops and lets just say the female side of my family are quite well en-dowered.

I tell you the day I was finally released I was so relieved to be home!

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