(Sept 28, 2012)
Never let it be said that I don’t learn from my mistakes… but let it be known that Sods Law overrides learning from your mistakes.
I’m still suffering the ‘pains formerly known as gall bladder pains’ plus other random abdominal various pains which may or not be related to the ‘pains formerly known as gall bladder pains’… yanno the ones that got worse and more insistant since that last GP told me it can’t be gall bladder have some Fybogel in case its IBS.
Anyway…. I feel a little like the population of Naples at the moment… long overdue an eruption. The ‘swelling inside of me formerly known as the gall bladder’ has been rock hard since the last one just over two weeks ago.
Hard in a way that made Annie jump away saying something like ‘oooch that shouldn’t be there’ when I got her to feel it the other day.
After supper last night I started getting my ‘sort of contractions’… heres where the learning curve comes in… the last couple of times this has happened I’ve said things like ‘I’ll see how it goes’ or the even sillier ‘I’ll take a load of anti spasmodics and pain relief and hopefully sleep it off’…. this approach has lead to screamingly wordless agony and an inability to move let alone get to A&E… the switch from ‘hmmm i can cope with this’ to ‘ohmygodithinkimgoingtodieandicantmoveandithurtsSOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOmuch’ is quite a sudden one.
So lying on the sofa breathing through my contractions (i knew those child birth classes would come in useful at some point -they’d be otherwise wasted as i had two C-sections)…I hazarded to Jane that, as it hurt even with drugs inside me, it might be wise to go to A&E. She thought so too…especially as I was at a stage where I could drive myself and ring her when I got there to tell her I hadn’t swerved off the road in agony.
So I went to A&E…contractions coming every five minutes or so.
I waited (as you do).
The contractions lessened…. they took my pulse/blood/blood pressure/wee…and i started to feel a bit fraudulent for being there…. still… no worse than most of the healthy looking people who frequent A&E at half eleven on a Thursday night.
A nice Portugese doctor eventually took me into a cubicle… I explained that sometimes these episodes turned nasty very fast…. and it might be my gall bladder…. and I’m terrified of being at home again when it happens.
But as it hadn’t turned into screaming agony there was nothing really he could do other than send me home feeling slightly like a deranged bag woman who just wanted a bed for the night.
Actually thats probably what I did want… a safe bed with a doctor near by so I could sleep.
And no he couldn’t give me any pain relief that would last right through the night.
But he did give my abdomen a professional feel just to make me feel better…. he didn’t… he couldn’t feel any swelling although he could ‘feel my pain’.
At this point I’m afraid I cried.
‘are you sad?’ he asked.
‘no’ I replied ‘I’m bloody terrified.
So me and my ticking internal time bomb went home…. I considered sleeping in the car park… but the cost seemed prohibitive.
When I got home I laid on the floor and made Jane feel my abdomen…. ‘bloody hell’ she said ‘whats that big lump?’
Sods Law of course says the ‘pains formerly known as gall bladder’ didn’t develop into a major attack… they remained just enough to merely rob me of any attempt to turn over in bed… or sleep comfortably.
Still…. only 10 days til I get to see the consultant.
