peg and hernia

Hi Seeker, i expect the Drs and nurses are just being cautious at the moment , im afraid i have not experienced a hernia although i rely on my PEG for feeding. If i was you i would do what they say so you can escape from the ward Yes constant coughing is irritating for everyone so i would annoy me if i heard it on my ward. All the best for your recovery and hope you can come of the TPN and go home, take care.

                                                                           Chris 

Thanks I am not really in a normal ward but in an intensive care one. The TPN is a terrible machine it works non-stop for 24 hours and cant be stopped like a peg. So one has to carry it with you which also isnt easy for a patient. One really cant leave the room and have to do body functions in them. Otherwise my surgeon who is a very nice man took a risk with me by not cutting the bowel and saying that if it left the hernia where it was starved of blood it would improve and since I am still alive it has done. I am very thankful to him for saving my life like I am to all my doctors with whom I keep in contact. He afterwards mended the tear that the bowel shouldnt go there again it was a four hour operation I am told. I seem to have passed out before he started since I remember nothing. He reminded me what I said that I was given pain killer morphine and the terrible pain stopped and I said that i can now go home and dont need an operation. I cant remember a thing. 

Hi Seeker. What a horrid situation. Having been in hospital for something.....albeit minor...after I had cancer treatment , I know how important preserving your independence and dignity is. It's also important to take your own meds because, as you say, it takes an inordinate disrupted chain of command to get anything prescribed for you.

In addition,  nursing staff on a surgical ward tend to get very good at what they do but unfamiliar scenarios seem to throw a bit of a curve ball. They can't be good at everything.

I hope you get out of there soon and wish you a speedy recovery once you get out of their clutches

Take care

I should explain that I had strangulated hernia at the diaphragm which cant be seen or felt from the outside. This operation on a normal stomach takes one hour but my stomach because of my voicebox cancer has been made smaller and therefore took four hours. Thank you for your kind wishes and I dont expect to be here long.

 I must also say that the staff are all very good to me some cant do enough. The reason I think is because I never bother them or press the buzzer. Although they say that is what they are here for I am sure they prefer it like this. They say I am a model patient.

There seems to be now a full change of heart here. Persistence does work sometimes. It seems they are not used to people with a peg. I was given a full meal last night. I without teeth etc could not eat much, then I was given a full pureed meal but having eaten I couldnt eat anymore. I think the staff made some mistake by giving me a full meal and I anyway didnt eat much. But my stomach had at least some real work to do. I really think I am completely cured already. Both were very good meals and a real waste to be thrown away. The nurse told me she is not allowed to take it home so I told her to put it in  a chocolate box my daughter had given her!

seeker1 said:

It seems they are not used to people with a peg.

At least they are now and you'll be on your way home soon. Great!

Thing are now progressing even further. I have dietician friend on the staff since my cancer operation who helped me a lot then and we have been friends ever since. I wrote to her an email well more than one, that my operation was altogether different since as i previously explained they did not cut anything which they usually do then there may be problems and one has to go slow on starting again. In my case he only revived the bad part so once it has been revived i claimed it is as good as new or should i say as it was before. She agreed to put me to the test to see if i could use the peg at 100 but just in case she will make a 10 adjustment every hour if i pass she will recomment my exit. I am now up to 50 and i am sure i will pass the hundred easily. It is always good to have a friend on the staff they can do a lot for you where others dont bother.

I easily passed the 100ml mark and I was discharged Friday morning. The surgeons came to me and I thanked them for saving my life and I also told them that I could have been discharged days ago and my hosptial bed could have been used for someone who really needed it. This 10ml increase every hour could have been done days ago on the first day after my operation and I would have passed. It would have saved me an unnecessary line pick with miles of tubing to the heart being put in and now taken out for the TPN which was totally unnecessary and endless x-rays.
As soon as my hallucinations stopped and I could walk I should have left. I am lucky i have a friend on the staff who devised this test and got the surgeons to agree to it. I am sure in the future they will start using it. I did ask why they never ask about hallucinations, am i the only one who has them, they said no but they dont think it is important. I do and the best way to find out how one is progressing.

More about my hernia operation. On Wednesday at about 9 am I felt a huge pain in my stomach. My wife said I should take a painkiller and suppositories and hot water bottle. She then went on to hospital. I did all this and my pain was only increasing. At least I emptied my bowels which helped me later. I expected her back at twelve so I tried more painkillers lying down and since I cant talk apart from going to a neighbour there was nothing I could do. My wife came home I told her to phone my GP to come. They refused. So she phoned a private ambulance who said they had no one available and phone 999. She kept phoning the private ambulance until they had someone available and cancelled the 999. The private ambulance came which must now have been nearly 1.pm and instead of bundling me into it and speeding to the hospital he started asking questions. My wife begged him to stop asking and get on with it. After wasting a long time and my pain increasing he asked where I want to go. I said the local hospital since my pain is so great. He set off siren blaring blue lights flashing going on the wrong side of the road through red lights they like doing that, to get to the hospital about under half an hour instead of hurrying straight away. I shall have to write to them to complain. My wife says that the local hospital says another ten minutes would have been too late. They started giving me morphine the pain abated somewhat and I was there a few hours while they decided what to do. Like I wrote they had no idea what was wrong with me since nothing was visible or could be felt from outside. They decided it was not for them and sent me to a large hospital in an ambulance about an hour away. That is all I remember really myself. At the large hospital i was again morphinised until midnight. I think and maybe someone can tell me if it is correct that an anesthetic will not take away pain that is already there and to do an operation I have to keep still which I couldnt then so the only thing to do is to carry on giving morphine which they did till midnight. Then it seems the pain stopped and i was given anesthetic and my four hour operation. My wife tells me that she was told then that I had 80-20 chance. She took all my clothes and everything I had and went home by taxi. Things have a habit of getting lost in hospitals. On Friday my son came special from the continent to visit and be with my wife over the weekend. He brought me a lot of things I sent them all back except what I urgently needed since I was told I would be moving out of the intensive care ward and I was scared they would all get lost. As it happens I stayed there till Wednesday night. It was a mixed ward and opposite me was a lady who appeared to be in a coma not moving at all, all the time i was there. When i asked a nurse what was wrong with her I was told I am not allowed to ask or they to tell me that. Of course the doctors never spoke to her but they did to my neighbour always in a loud voice which I couldnt help hearing about her liver, so it seems that i am allowed to know as long as I dont ask and am not told directly! A nurse came to write down what she had brought with, a very lot of jewelry sounded like at least 20 cards, many I had never heard of and only missing the kitchen sink! She was writing pages and pages. This hospital is in a rich area. I as mentioned had brought nothing apart from this computer and little else. Thinking back when I woke from my operation I felt perfectly well and none the worse for my twelve hour morphine drink! Maybe I should write a list of what I needed as a patient in a hospital. One only finds this out once one is there.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/stories-56688582

About TPN at end.

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