Skip to main content

A little bit of drama (18.05.10)

I've been away from home for over a week now, and although I'm keen to get back, daily life is still a bit of a stuggle....

Today is Tuesday, and last Sunday night - a week ago last Sunday, that is - I was experiencing the worst belly pain I'd ever had.  Now, that is saying something, as I frequently have severe belly pain.  However, I try not to exaggerate the level of my pain, just in case it really could get worse, and this time it really had.  Adjectives such as "agonising" and "excruciating" came to mind, and as I was writhing in excruciating agony, not to mention the intense nausea accompanying it, I was exacerbating the pain in my hips, and messing up my back, just for good measure.

It's another measure of my new levels of pain and desperation that I actually asked friends for help.  I'm less rigidly independent than I was even just a year ago, but I have still stopped short of calling someone up to drop what they're doing to come and look after me (other than a parent, of course!), until now.

I have several friends that I knew would come and help me if they could, but it was 8am on Monday morning when I reached this point, and I balked at pulling someone away from work.  But I have a self-employed friend (everyone should make sure they have at least one self-employed friend), who, with his partner, have helped me out a lot in the past, and so he was the one to get the brief text message (I was too ill to speak): "Really sick. Can you help?"

So Steve came, assessed the situation (not pretty!), persuaded me to take a painkiller, and provided a bucket for when I vomited it up a few minutes later.  He called for a doctor to come and see me, chased him up, and helped me to pack a few things when the doc pronounced that I had a suspicious appendix and should be taken to hospital forthwith.

The three hot-looking ambolance men (one was very young though, a trainee, I think) made me comfy, and gave me one of those green whistle things for the pain (the doctor said I shouldn't have any other pain relief before going to hospital, so as not to mask my symptoms).  While I was being taken off to hospital, put into one of their gowns, put on a drip and asked the same questions over and over again (I need to get "I'm allergic to tetracycline and broccoli:" tattooed somewhere noticeable), Steve was taking care of Freddy and Dexter, collecting my things, shutting up my house and telling work colleagues that I wouldn't be in the office that day.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Understanding my physical challenges: An analogy

So, I've been trying to come up with a way to explain to a non-disabled person what it's like to face physical challenges at work, as a person with a disability. My current workplace is very physically demanding, even for me, a wheelchair user with long arms, full reach, abdominal muscle control and good balance. After 2.5 years of just getting on with it, despite the inaccessibility of large areas of my workplace, I'm at a point where I'm having to say, 'Enough. I can't do it any more.'. My employer is struggling to understand what's changed. Why is my workplace 'suddenly' inaccessible? What has changed with my health, to make my work so arduous for me now? Here's my analogy*: Imagine that you are looking for a job in the field you have just qualified for. A new employer says, if you move out to our location, we'll give you a permanent job. You just have to be able to carry 10kg. Cool, you think, I can do that. I'll uproot myself...
Post a Comment
Read more

Dear Cleaner, please don't wash my dishes.

(Warning: contains swearing. You'll see why, I hope.) Considering that I am constantly fighting with piles of dirty dishes in my little kitchen, you'd think that the first thing I'd want my cleaner to do is wash them. And I used to. But I quickly realised that although the dishes moved from the pile, through the soapy water in the sink and to the drainer, the vast majority of them didn't end up being clean. It turned out to be a great big waste of time - and a huge disappointment - and I had to wash the stupid things myself anyway. Mine aren't as pretty, but I do have a yellow bowl. So now I do them myself, eventually. When my cleaner comes, once a fortnight, I'll sit and do my dishes while he or she is doing the housework tasks I find difficult (rather than just annoying). I have also even been known to do a sink full of dishes in between cleaning visits, often in the middle of the night when I can't sleep, or when I have other pressing things to d...
5 comments
Read more

Frustration

I had a particularly bad setback yesterday, after a bit of a mixed week in terms of my diet.  I'd been shopping with Dexter in the early afternoon (after spending the previous day and a half in my PJs, too exhausted to function) and he whined and begged for pats from people the whole time (this is the same after any promo event we do which involves pats from the general public).  I was frustrated with him already when I got home, but still needed to go over to Coles.  I'd bought a food processor (yes, another one; the other one died after one use) and a water filter and went to drop them in and get a new bag before heading over. However, on our way out, rather than shutting the door for me, while I kept Fred inside, Dexter just bolted , absolutely bolted away down towards the ramp (afterwards I thought that there are probably baby possums in the trees, as it's springtime), and Fred followed him. I had to catch Dexter first, as he's the one that can get in the most t...
Post a Comment
Read more