I’ve had an interesting month. The New Year started well, but very soon I began to feel unwell with symptoms that seemed to suggest a bladder infection. I suffered with that for a few days until the pains suddenly got worse and I needed to go to hospital for a 6 a.m appointment at urgent care. I had a scan in a talking donut-shaped tube (did anyone else realise that those machines give you instructions? Me neither). Feedback from the donut tube informed me that it was a kidney stone, which explained why neither paracetamol nor antibiotics had been working. Luckily the stone wasn’t that big so, after a 7 hour wait in hospital, they sent me home with instructions to drink as much water as possible to flush the stone out, and to keep moving.
The hospital was very busy and I was put into my own room with double doors that opened onto a corridor. This meant that I spent the next seven hours watching patients being wheeled across in stretchers and wheelchairs. I heard alarms, yells, and people groaning in pain. Someone shouted to a nurse ‘what are you doing to me?!’ Alarms and buzzers kept going off. I saw about eight or nine different members of staff. At one point all the lights flickered and I thought we were about to have a powercut. Somehow it was hectic and boring at the same time. Early on, a nurse came in to give me a shot of morphine. It worked instantly, before she’d even finished injecting the whole syringe. I’ve never experienced a more effective painkiller.
Once I was home, I started getting symptoms of a heavy cold (possibly coronavirus). I was feverish, coughing, faint and very uncomfortable. I couldn’t eat. I had the joy of getting my period on top of the cold/covid and kidney stone pains, so the next couple of weeks were spent mostly in bed feeling quite miserable.
I’m feeling a lot better than I was, but still not back to normal yet. I have an appointment to see ‘The Stone Team’ for a follow-up and I find the very idea of a dedicated Stone Team hilarious.
This is my first blog for nearly 10 months and it’s mostly just venting about the rubbish January I’ve had. I’ve also been sad because we’ve lost a few neighbours to the virus this year and I was hoping we were collectively emerging from the crisis, but it seems that we still aren’t out of the woods.