"Hello love, this is not an April Fool" is how I started the telephone call to the husband this morning.
"But I really don't feel very well, and I think I need an ambulance" is how it continued.
Can only imagine how the poor fella felt upon hearing these words. He was over an hour away in Kilkenny this morning, instead of being at the farm less than a mile away...but I felt so odd, so very ill, and I knew the quickest way to get an ambulance here was to let him deal with it.
We live in a rural part of Ireland...where your address is your townsland, not your property name. Properties around here don't generally have nice identifying names, like "The White Cottage" or similar, and a host of local houses, farms and dwellings would all share the same postal address. And roads don't have names or numbers either. We've been here for 7 years, but if chatting to a local, trying to describe where you live, all efforts draw a blank face, until you say its T** M****'s old cottage or next to J** E*****'s dairy parlour...and then the facial expression changes to one of total recognition. And I knew that time was running out for my mental capacities, and me trying to explain to the Emergency Dispatch operator where exactly to send the ambulance was going to be nigh on impossible. So I handed that responsibility to my husband so that I could concentrate on trying to remain upright, and trying to keep breathing...a feat which was getting more and more difficult to maintain by the second.
What was going on? Well, at the time I didn't have a clue. All I knew was that something was seriously wrong. It had come on suddenly, and was getting worse, very quickly!
That morning, as usual, I got up, set the coffee machine going, took the dogs out for a wee, poured a mug of coffee. Took a blood pressure pill, with a swallow of coffee. I'd been up a bit during the night with bad period pains, and could feel them just starting to niggle. Day 2 of my cycle,and if any day is going to be bad, typically it is day 2....so as I have done, on every other bad cycle day (thankfully few 7 far between) I decided to take a Difene, to get a head start on it, before the pain took hold and nothing would shift it. Difene shouldn't be taken on an empty stomach, but not feeling hungry, I drank a glass of milk with it instead. As I have done almost every other time I've taken it, or other meds that need to be taken with or after food.
I settled with my mug of coffee, to watch a bit of mindless television, do a bit of knitting (rock & roll!) and sort out in my head what I needed to do for the day ahead.
Then, woompf...my head felt hot, very hot, psycho hot...like it was going to explode. I swear, if I'd looked in a mirror at that very second I would not have been surprised to see my whole head raspberry red and glowing. Then the itching started...mad itching, everywhere, I just couldn't scratch fast enough, hard enough, or in enough places at the same time. It felt like my entire skin was crawling. Then my heart started racing, I had the sense of mind to check my pulse in my neck, and it came back at a whopping 130/min...yikes! I fumbled for my home blood pressure machine, and struggled to get it on my left arm...all the while the itching was unbearable, and my head was boiling. "ERROR", try again, "ERROR". Chest feels tight, struggling to get air in....so that's when I decided I needed to make a call. "Hello love, this is not an April Fool..."
I tried 3 more times to get the blood pressure machine to take a reading, but I just kept coming back with "ERROR".
Husband phones back, the ambulance is on its way.
So, my practical side kicks in, and I think of the things I need to do before they get here whilst I can still just about stand and move about. Legs are very wobbly, breathing is now really hard work and my head is spinning with mega-dizzy spells, but I get the dogs shut away. I find my hoody, and make sure my mobile phone is in my handbag. I put my handbag near the front door. I grab my meds box and stick it on the kitchen table. That way I can easily direct the paramedics to see what I have taken that morning. I am surprised looking back now, remembering how awful (and scared) I felt at the time, at how sensible, practical and organised I was, in getting stuff sorted and ready for their arrival. But by the time they got here (not sure how long, but less than 10 mins) I had given up. Front door was wide open, bedroom door was wide open, and I was lying on the bed, unable to stand up anymore, in total agony from severe abdominal pains which have come out of nowhere, and seemingly have come to join the *fun party* that the rest of my body is having at my expense. My head is feeling like a piping hot baked potato, chest so tight I can barely draw breath, my speech is slurred and finding words in my head is almost impossible and my pulse has now massively slowed down and is so feint I can hardly feel it. And, whilst going through all this, all I can think of is "I hope ***** isn't working today because the house is a mess!" (our landlord is a paramedic).
When they do arrive I see that another paramedic friend is working today instead, and the very first thing I manage to blurt out is "I'm so glad its you working and not *****, please don't tell him about the mess in the hallway." A girl has to get her priorities right! But that outburst takes away all my remaining energy, and I collapse back on the bed, and can only then manage to grunt and gurgle at them in answer to all the questions they're firing at me. I have stuff stuck on me, things poked in me, torches shined at me, hands pressing me, and feel their blood pressure cuff inflating again and again and again. Its not reading, so they take a 2nd blood pressure machine out of the ambulance and that takes two more efforts before it finally gives a reading....low, very, very low...obviously too low for my humble home machine to detect, and the paramedic's first machine couldn't read it either. They do more stuff to me, fire more questions at me, then I'm put in the ambulance.
Various sticky electrodes are stuck on me, and I'm plugged into the heart trace machine. The abdominal pain is becoming totally unbearable, being strapped flat on the ambulance trolley is not helping, I feel I want to curl up in a tight ball and moan loudly, instead they plug the happy gas mask on my face. My friend is wondering if I've tweaked my vagus nerve, causing the blood pressure to crash. But that only explains one symptom doesn't it. I'm feeling a little better, and almost able to hold a proper conversation. But the abdominal pains are coming in waves now, so I go quiet every now and then and ride the pain through as best I can.
We discuss last night's meal, in case food poisoning is another option. But I get the impression he's really scratching his head over this one.
The conversation keeps coming back to the Difene. Did I eat anything, have I taken it before, why did I take it, what as it prescribed for.
At one point I ask them to turn back (only half joking) because I've left my knitting on the table. Surprisingly they don't.
When we get to the hospital I feel fine. I really do feel fine. I joke that if they are heading back to my home town (where the local ambulance station is located) could they give me a lift. They are having none of it, and I'm taken into the A & E department. By this time my blood pressure is almost back to normal. My blood sugars are good (they always check this, I obviously look like I *should* be diabetic). My pulse is back to normal. Only the dizziness and abdominal pains remain. They are similar to period pains, but in slightly the wrong place.
The duty doctor tries to take bloods...I say tries...I really have no idea what he was doing. But by the time he'd finished there was blood all down my top, all down my arm, all over the bed, all over my thigh...and very little in the sample tube. He stuck a cannula in, so that if more was needed he didn't have to go digging. I swear I looked like car crash victim by the time he finished taking blood. I am SO thankful to have a wonderful GP who is seemingly a true artist when it comes to taking blood samples...no pain, not even a scratch, no marks, nothing. If I would give her 10/10 for her phlebotomy skills, I'd struggle to give the A &E doc 1/10...! I don't know quite how he did the cannula either, but all the while the cannula was in I couldn't bend that arm, and it was almost constant pain, felt like I had a knife in there, stuck at right angles. Perhaps it was intentional, to keep my mind off my other symptoms?
He paraded a line on fellow doctors past me, all asking the same questions and doing the same things to me. But it all kept coming back to the Difene.
Then the news filtered back from the labs that the first blood samples had haemolyzed...quelle surprise! And so he came at me with the test tubes again for more blood...and even with cannula in place, still managed to spill more blood all down me!
At this point the abdominal pains were all but gone, and I hadn't had a dizzy spell for a while. Getting fed up with his incompetence, I was ready to go home. But oh no, he was adamant that I needed to be admitted overnight, for observation. We had a bit of a row over it, and he dragged out a form for me to sign, acknowledging that I was leaving against medical advice. I said I didn't want to leave against medical advice, but I didn't want to take up a precious bed space when I was clearly feeling fine, so would much rather he discharged me.
The bloods came back fine. They also did a thyroid panel, standard procedure because I don't have a thyroid gland, but those results wouldn't be back for 2 days. But the immediate blood results were all grand. I repeated that I wanted to go home. He insisted I stay in overnight. Round and round we went.
I got sent to the Clinical Assessment ward. 3 More consultants came and asked me the same questions, poked me in the same places, and all muttered about Difene. One more consultant came in, read through my notes, murmured to himself. Then stated that whilst they would like me to stay in for observation, they were also happy for me to go home if I preferred, on the understanding that if any of the symptoms occurred again I was to come straight back. Yay! A compromise I was entirely happy with! They removed my sexy hospital ID bracelet, and a nurse, sent from the gods, finally removed the evil cannula...without spilling a single drop of blood, amazing! The final diagnosis was that although they couldn't say 100%, the mostly likely candidate was an anaphylactic reaction to the Difene. Mild in many ways (no throat swelling etc), serious in others (racing pulse, BP crash, shortness of breath), but if that was mild, I can only imagine how scary a full-on anaphylactic attack is...this morning I was truly terrified.
My husband rocks, and I apologise wholeheartedly for giving him the phone call from hell this morning. The remaining Difene tabs are going back to the chemist tomorrow, to be disposed of.
"But I really don't feel very well, and I think I need an ambulance" is how it continued.
Can only imagine how the poor fella felt upon hearing these words. He was over an hour away in Kilkenny this morning, instead of being at the farm less than a mile away...but I felt so odd, so very ill, and I knew the quickest way to get an ambulance here was to let him deal with it.
We live in a rural part of Ireland...where your address is your townsland, not your property name. Properties around here don't generally have nice identifying names, like "The White Cottage" or similar, and a host of local houses, farms and dwellings would all share the same postal address. And roads don't have names or numbers either. We've been here for 7 years, but if chatting to a local, trying to describe where you live, all efforts draw a blank face, until you say its T** M****'s old cottage or next to J** E*****'s dairy parlour...and then the facial expression changes to one of total recognition. And I knew that time was running out for my mental capacities, and me trying to explain to the Emergency Dispatch operator where exactly to send the ambulance was going to be nigh on impossible. So I handed that responsibility to my husband so that I could concentrate on trying to remain upright, and trying to keep breathing...a feat which was getting more and more difficult to maintain by the second.
What was going on? Well, at the time I didn't have a clue. All I knew was that something was seriously wrong. It had come on suddenly, and was getting worse, very quickly!
That morning, as usual, I got up, set the coffee machine going, took the dogs out for a wee, poured a mug of coffee. Took a blood pressure pill, with a swallow of coffee. I'd been up a bit during the night with bad period pains, and could feel them just starting to niggle. Day 2 of my cycle,and if any day is going to be bad, typically it is day 2....so as I have done, on every other bad cycle day (thankfully few 7 far between) I decided to take a Difene, to get a head start on it, before the pain took hold and nothing would shift it. Difene shouldn't be taken on an empty stomach, but not feeling hungry, I drank a glass of milk with it instead. As I have done almost every other time I've taken it, or other meds that need to be taken with or after food.
I settled with my mug of coffee, to watch a bit of mindless television, do a bit of knitting (rock & roll!) and sort out in my head what I needed to do for the day ahead.
Then, woompf...my head felt hot, very hot, psycho hot...like it was going to explode. I swear, if I'd looked in a mirror at that very second I would not have been surprised to see my whole head raspberry red and glowing. Then the itching started...mad itching, everywhere, I just couldn't scratch fast enough, hard enough, or in enough places at the same time. It felt like my entire skin was crawling. Then my heart started racing, I had the sense of mind to check my pulse in my neck, and it came back at a whopping 130/min...yikes! I fumbled for my home blood pressure machine, and struggled to get it on my left arm...all the while the itching was unbearable, and my head was boiling. "ERROR", try again, "ERROR". Chest feels tight, struggling to get air in....so that's when I decided I needed to make a call. "Hello love, this is not an April Fool..."
I tried 3 more times to get the blood pressure machine to take a reading, but I just kept coming back with "ERROR".
Husband phones back, the ambulance is on its way.
So, my practical side kicks in, and I think of the things I need to do before they get here whilst I can still just about stand and move about. Legs are very wobbly, breathing is now really hard work and my head is spinning with mega-dizzy spells, but I get the dogs shut away. I find my hoody, and make sure my mobile phone is in my handbag. I put my handbag near the front door. I grab my meds box and stick it on the kitchen table. That way I can easily direct the paramedics to see what I have taken that morning. I am surprised looking back now, remembering how awful (and scared) I felt at the time, at how sensible, practical and organised I was, in getting stuff sorted and ready for their arrival. But by the time they got here (not sure how long, but less than 10 mins) I had given up. Front door was wide open, bedroom door was wide open, and I was lying on the bed, unable to stand up anymore, in total agony from severe abdominal pains which have come out of nowhere, and seemingly have come to join the *fun party* that the rest of my body is having at my expense. My head is feeling like a piping hot baked potato, chest so tight I can barely draw breath, my speech is slurred and finding words in my head is almost impossible and my pulse has now massively slowed down and is so feint I can hardly feel it. And, whilst going through all this, all I can think of is "I hope ***** isn't working today because the house is a mess!" (our landlord is a paramedic).
When they do arrive I see that another paramedic friend is working today instead, and the very first thing I manage to blurt out is "I'm so glad its you working and not *****, please don't tell him about the mess in the hallway." A girl has to get her priorities right! But that outburst takes away all my remaining energy, and I collapse back on the bed, and can only then manage to grunt and gurgle at them in answer to all the questions they're firing at me. I have stuff stuck on me, things poked in me, torches shined at me, hands pressing me, and feel their blood pressure cuff inflating again and again and again. Its not reading, so they take a 2nd blood pressure machine out of the ambulance and that takes two more efforts before it finally gives a reading....low, very, very low...obviously too low for my humble home machine to detect, and the paramedic's first machine couldn't read it either. They do more stuff to me, fire more questions at me, then I'm put in the ambulance.
Various sticky electrodes are stuck on me, and I'm plugged into the heart trace machine. The abdominal pain is becoming totally unbearable, being strapped flat on the ambulance trolley is not helping, I feel I want to curl up in a tight ball and moan loudly, instead they plug the happy gas mask on my face. My friend is wondering if I've tweaked my vagus nerve, causing the blood pressure to crash. But that only explains one symptom doesn't it. I'm feeling a little better, and almost able to hold a proper conversation. But the abdominal pains are coming in waves now, so I go quiet every now and then and ride the pain through as best I can.
We discuss last night's meal, in case food poisoning is another option. But I get the impression he's really scratching his head over this one.
The conversation keeps coming back to the Difene. Did I eat anything, have I taken it before, why did I take it, what as it prescribed for.
At one point I ask them to turn back (only half joking) because I've left my knitting on the table. Surprisingly they don't.
When we get to the hospital I feel fine. I really do feel fine. I joke that if they are heading back to my home town (where the local ambulance station is located) could they give me a lift. They are having none of it, and I'm taken into the A & E department. By this time my blood pressure is almost back to normal. My blood sugars are good (they always check this, I obviously look like I *should* be diabetic). My pulse is back to normal. Only the dizziness and abdominal pains remain. They are similar to period pains, but in slightly the wrong place.
The duty doctor tries to take bloods...I say tries...I really have no idea what he was doing. But by the time he'd finished there was blood all down my top, all down my arm, all over the bed, all over my thigh...and very little in the sample tube. He stuck a cannula in, so that if more was needed he didn't have to go digging. I swear I looked like car crash victim by the time he finished taking blood. I am SO thankful to have a wonderful GP who is seemingly a true artist when it comes to taking blood samples...no pain, not even a scratch, no marks, nothing. If I would give her 10/10 for her phlebotomy skills, I'd struggle to give the A &E doc 1/10...! I don't know quite how he did the cannula either, but all the while the cannula was in I couldn't bend that arm, and it was almost constant pain, felt like I had a knife in there, stuck at right angles. Perhaps it was intentional, to keep my mind off my other symptoms?
He paraded a line on fellow doctors past me, all asking the same questions and doing the same things to me. But it all kept coming back to the Difene.
Then the news filtered back from the labs that the first blood samples had haemolyzed...quelle surprise! And so he came at me with the test tubes again for more blood...and even with cannula in place, still managed to spill more blood all down me!
At this point the abdominal pains were all but gone, and I hadn't had a dizzy spell for a while. Getting fed up with his incompetence, I was ready to go home. But oh no, he was adamant that I needed to be admitted overnight, for observation. We had a bit of a row over it, and he dragged out a form for me to sign, acknowledging that I was leaving against medical advice. I said I didn't want to leave against medical advice, but I didn't want to take up a precious bed space when I was clearly feeling fine, so would much rather he discharged me.
The bloods came back fine. They also did a thyroid panel, standard procedure because I don't have a thyroid gland, but those results wouldn't be back for 2 days. But the immediate blood results were all grand. I repeated that I wanted to go home. He insisted I stay in overnight. Round and round we went.
I got sent to the Clinical Assessment ward. 3 More consultants came and asked me the same questions, poked me in the same places, and all muttered about Difene. One more consultant came in, read through my notes, murmured to himself. Then stated that whilst they would like me to stay in for observation, they were also happy for me to go home if I preferred, on the understanding that if any of the symptoms occurred again I was to come straight back. Yay! A compromise I was entirely happy with! They removed my sexy hospital ID bracelet, and a nurse, sent from the gods, finally removed the evil cannula...without spilling a single drop of blood, amazing! The final diagnosis was that although they couldn't say 100%, the mostly likely candidate was an anaphylactic reaction to the Difene. Mild in many ways (no throat swelling etc), serious in others (racing pulse, BP crash, shortness of breath), but if that was mild, I can only imagine how scary a full-on anaphylactic attack is...this morning I was truly terrified.
My husband rocks, and I apologise wholeheartedly for giving him the phone call from hell this morning. The remaining Difene tabs are going back to the chemist tomorrow, to be disposed of.
