My Unexpected Hospital Stay

Part of being chronically ill is going to appointments and spending time in hospital. Saying that, I didn't expect to be there this week. Wednesday at 10pm, I felt very unwell, was having shaking fits, stomach cramps, incontinence and a fever. With the amount of conditions I have it's like a guessing game as to the cause. We have to go through a list of possibilities. Diabetic hypo, fibromyalgia flare, IBS, anxiety attack, asthma attack, complications of my liver cirrhosis, gastritis or dehydration and low potassium like what happened to me in February? Or is it something new?

It carried on through the night, until I was concerned because the shaking fits weren't allowing me to breathe properly. We called an ambulance, and when they got there after 90 minutes, I had improved quite a lot. They suspected an infection, but weren't too worried. They left and I managed to sleep. When I woke up at 8am on Thursday, my wife had gone to work (she didn't want to leave me, but I said I'd be fine - oops). I felt awful and headed to the toilet; the next thing I knew I woke up on my bathroom floor. It took a while to come round and get myself off the floor. I tried again, and again woke up on the bathroom floor. It was like deja vu. Anyway, I eventually managed to go to the loo, and get back to bed. I kept losing consciousness and was struggling to breathe again. I called an ambulance. The operator was great, very patient as I said one word at a time when I could. Next thing I remember is the paramedics standing in my bedroom. After examining me, they said they were taking me to hospital. My wife got back just as we were leaving. She went up to the hospital in the car so she could bring me some stuff I'd need and my wheelchair. When we got to the hospital we were told there were already 18 ambulances with patients inside waiting to go in, but because of my breathing difficulties, they were able to triage me and get me in to be examined by an A&E doctor within half an hour.

I spent the next 26 hours in the same room. I had a lot of tests done, blood tests, urine and stool samples, ECGs and xrays. Because they weren't sure what was wrong they weren't able to give me anything besides paracetamol and IV fluids - which they kept forgetting to give me. Once I finally got moved to a ward, I spoke to a lot of doctors and nurses, was given IV antibiotics and had more tests. They knew I had an infection, but they couldn't find it. Six hours later, they think they've found the infection, checked my lungs and heart, looked at my ribs because of my costochondritis and my head, to make sure I didn't damage anything when I kept collapsing. They said I had a bacterial infection which if I were a healthy person, would likely have gone undetected and cleared itself. Yay for chronic illness. I was able to come home with antibiotics, potassium and magnesium.

It's now Saturday afternoon, I'm at home lying in bed, with all my medication, lots to drink, a fan, ice packs and 2 very clingy dogs who hate it when I'm not here. Worried that this is just going to keep happening while I'm on the waiting list for gastroenterology to get my insides looked at because of other symptoms I've already had for 3 years. I'm sparing you the gory details.

That said, I am very thankful to the nurses and doctors who helped me. There were 2 or 3 others that need to find a different profession, because caring was not in their nature.