MISDIAGNOSED: Book One

Chapter Six - Chance Of Hope

Prepare yourself, this one is crazy.

Can you believe that months down the line, we still had problems to deal with when it comes to something as simple as communicating with doctors? We went at 9am for the blood tests and had to wait days for it but at that point, there was too much happening. Winter time was here and my body was not heating up by itself AT ALL. It was the strangest thing that I had ever dealt with because it felt so unnatural but there was not much I could do about it. Imagine trying to stay warm when your body won’t heat up by itself and your country has a lovely waste of time called ‘Loadshedding.’ What people overseas might not know is that South Africa, if not the entirety of Africa, has this way of shutting off the electricity in certain areas for 2 to 4 hours at a time, maybe 3 times a day and called it ‘Loadshedding.’ So basically, navigating heat in wintertime when there is no electricity. It was so bad that I would wake up at midnight feeling ice cold and had to lay in the bath with extremely hot water so I could shock my body into heating itself up again. My mother would help me make fires as well to make the house feel a lot warmer. When the power was on, I would use whatever I could to keep me warm. Knowing that my body would not heat up and that it got worse at night made me fear the night time. That made me even more upset when dealing with the doctors when trying to book a bed at hospital. We tried booking for two days and they said they booked a room for me. My mother and I went to the hospital an hour early and luckily we did that because if we went later, we would have been screwed. The reason for that being that the BP doctor and other doctor there who said they would call and book for us, never did. So the beds were full but luckily they found somewhere for me. A room for four people and I was so mad. I can be a great people person when I want to be but when I’m not feeling my best and just desperately want to be feeling better, I am best not to be forced to interact with strangers. The new Surgeon and the other doctor that we spoke to at the hospital were much better than all of the others that we had dealt with until this moment. He genuinely wanted to know what was going on and how they could make things as easy as possible for me without making a mess of things. They said to me that they are going to give me some blood and iron in an IV. Then they wanted to do some tests like a gastroscopy, a colonoscopy. This meant that they wanted to give me some laxatives to clear out my colon so that I would be ready for the procedures the next day. I remember being so nervous and the feeling of having an IV in your arm is never fun. It makes you feel so uncomfortable and just want to rip it out after it has been in there for too long. My mother was on her way to the hospital after getting some things sorted at home and I remember feeling so cold. There was a fan in the room that could either blow out cold air or hot air and it was on the hot setting because this was during the coldest time of the year. Then after about 4pm or so, the machine broke and started blowing out extremely cold air. This is where things went from bad to worse immediately. My body started freezing from the inside and I was shaking. All of the people who are very close to me, know that I can be quite stubborn so when it came to telling someone I was in pain or waiting for it to go away, I chose option two. Waited until about 5pm and I was struggling to breathe because of how much pain I was in. My body was aching, my stomach was having spasms, my heart was beating very rapidly, etc and I was so sure that it would have gone away by then but it was just getting colder and colder. My mother arrived at 5pm and she was very upset that I had not called a nurse but there was a reason why I was trying to wait it out. The service from the nurses we had dealt with at this hospital has always been putrid. The times that I had been rushed to the E.R (Trauma Unit), we had horrible service and when I was in the hospital beds as well. I have nothing against nurses at all and have the most respect for what they do. It was just never a good experience at this hospital but unfortunately the new doctor we wanted to see, worked at this hospital. Let me explain what happened at the trauma unit if I had not explained it before. We arrived at 8pm. I had been having spasms since 1pm, waited it out for an hour then finally took pain tablets. Then around 3pm, I started to feel extremely nauseous and the threw up all the food I had eaten and the tablets that I had taken. Then around 4 or 5pm, I told my mother that it was not getting better, and I couldn’t take it anymore. We actually left for the hospital around 6 or 7pm and we were not helped in the Emergency room until 8pm for information and the normal urine test thing. Then we sat there until 9pm when they finally let us go into a room. Maybe about 10pm or so is when they helped me, and I only felt somewhat better an hour or two after that. We pressed the button for help but the nurse came in and left, next one came in and left, etc. All of them promising to bring me an IV and help with the pain. This is all why I was determined to wait and see if my pain would subside by itself and my mother was upset because I could barely speak at that point. We called the nurse but we only had help about 45 minutes later. I pressed the button, but nobody came. My mother had to stand in the hallway and literally ask around where a nurse would be that could please help us because I had pressed the help button several times. It was the absolute worst and eventually after they helped me, I felt somewhat better. You are probably thinking: “If you were getting cold, why not just put on a jacket or a blanket?” It is not as simple as it sounds. My body WOULD NOT heat up by itself so I could put twenty jackets on but my spasms would just continue. I tried putting on more blankets and then my body started sweating. Then I tried to take them off to cool down but because my back was wet due to the sweating, my body felt even colder. I tried drying my back and trying to warm up, and the process just went in circles until the pain medication started working. This is all happening whilst I had an IV in my arm to get blood and iron. Crazy, I know. Then the entire night was spent running to the bathroom due to laxatives. Picture trying to rush to the bathroom when you have a needle in your arm, and its attached to the most 1980’s style, rusted, irritating pole that has the wheels of a dysfunctional trolley at the grocery store. Yes. It was THAT useless. Then in the morning, I was getting ready to go for my procedure and an old family friend was in the room. She and her husband brought her daughter as she was also scheduled for procedures that day. It was a miracle sent by God himself that they were there because of what happened next. I was still wearing my own clothes and they needed me to be in a hospital gown for the procedures. So, I had to change out of that clothes with an IV in my arm. Yay. I had a thick pants on, long sleeve top with a short sleeve over it, socks, and all of that had to be taken off. In all of that craziness, I got back onto the bed and they changed the empty iron bag to another because the doctor wanted to make sure that I got a bit more before going home. Then I remember this ripping, tearing, searing pain coming from my left arm where the IV was in. It was the most intensifying pain I had ever felt and that is a lot coming from me. Luckily, the old family friend used to be a nurse for over 20 years and I asked her something that I can remember to this day. “Is it supposed to hurt?” That was all I could say because I was completely shocked. She came over and told me that it is not supposed to hurt and I thought I was going crazy after all the madness I had experienced the day before. She checked and as we both looked down, my vein had gone purple. It was purple, swollen, and felt so bad that I wanted to rip the needle out myself. It just felt like it was an uninvited guest and had to get  the hell out as far as I was concerned. She then told me that what was happening is not normal and the nurse has to take the needle out because it has shifted into my skin tissue. It is NOT for the weak, let me tell you. Then she went and called a nurse which took long as usual. She then took the needle out but incorrectly, so the needle was out but the front part of it was not so my vein was still open. Blood spilled on the bed, etc and I just thought… what the heck? I literally came here because I needed blood and you let me lose a lot of it just hours later? What made it worse was that even after all that was over, I still had to receive the rest of the iron in the IV so they had to put it in my right arm. All of this before 12 O’clock the afternoon when my procedure was scheduled. So when I was waiting to be taken to my procedure, the person that was supposed to get me in a wheelchair to get me there was taking very long. This can give you an idea of how long he took… Once we got to the elevator, the doctor and his assistant, who was going to be performing my procedures was on his way from the elevator with a bed to fetch me because that is how long the man was taking to bring me to the specific room I needed to be in. Once the procedure was done, I felt no pain from the camera or anything and was resting in the hospital bed again. Then they spoke to us afterwards and said that they had not found anything but they wanted me to rest and take in all of the blood and iron that I received. Then after a few months, I would have to come back for a blood test to check if my body was healthy and if we had to do more tests. However, thanks to the BP we had (Basic practitioner) or GP (General Practitioner), may he rest in peace, our medical aid funds were empty. Due to the extreme amounts of tablets being prescribed but he never notified the medical aid so they charged us more without realising that it was prescribed that way. Then for all of the tests and being rushed to the E.R and so much more.