Chicken mayo sandwich and coffee

Last night was another bad one, spent alternately lying curled in the fetal position and thrashing around, desperate to find some position that didn’t hurt. Several times I thought about calling an ambulance, but each time I remembered what happened last time and decided it wasn’t worth stirring everything up only be sent home again a few hours later.

Instead I somehow, through a near superhuman effort, made it to the morning and phoned the GP surgery. Who promptly told me to go to A&E.

At a loss for what else to do about mum, I phoned the council’s social services team and got straight through to a wonderfully helpful person who arranged for mum to have three calls a day for up to a week. They will ensure mum is eating and taking her meds correctly, and feed Suki too.

That sorted, and our lovely next-door neighbours informed, I headed off to hospital to the usual hurry up and wait you get in such places. Is it bad of me that I found an afternoon of reading in a quiet room, attached to a drip, sans mum-related distractions, really rather pleasant?

Anyway, the outcome after lots of tests is that I have a gallbladder infection and a urinary infection. What I don’t have, thankfully, is any kind of blockage in my gallbladder.

The current plan, pending approval from the surgical team, is for me to stay here overnight while my reaction to the antibiotics and painkillers is monitored. Assuming all is well, I’ll go home tomorrow afternoon.

Sadly, because my gallbladder is infected, I can’t have it removed atm, as that carries too high a risk of spreading the infection inside my body, which sounds very unpleasant. The duty doctor thinks, however, that the pain I’ve been getting comes from the infection rather than the gallstones, and dosing me with antibiotics will keep things under control until I get to the top of the surgery waiting list.

She freely admitted, though, that she is a generalist and not a gastroenterology specialist, so the plan may yet change. She has clearly dealt with many carers, though, as she correctly said that the side benefit of a night in hospital would be that I get a night of respite, even if I have to spend it in a recliner chair because they’re short on free beds.

She also strongly encouraged me to eat something: calories are my friend atm, apparently. (A sentence heard far too rarely imo.) I asked for a sandwich and some fruit. The former request got “sure – what filling?” (of course it had to be chicken mayo, having been cleared to eat that if that was what I wanted). The latter request got a snort of laughter: this is a hospital – they don’t offer healthy things like fresh fruit!

Instead, the kindly housekeeper brought me one of the strawberry yoghurts you only seem to get in hospitals, on the basis it was at least fruit flavoured. And on that note, goodnight for now: I need to eat this yoghurt before I fall asleep from the effects of the very high-dose morphine they’ve currently got me on.

I’ll let you know if anything changes.