A Scoliosis Journey

What I Went Through (In Hospital)

NB: If you read this, please leave a comment so I know who actually reads my rambles. It's also nearly midnight and I know I won't finish this tonight, but I can make a start!

After getting back to the ward, I spent the majority of the day sleeping. It's incredible what morphine can do. I can never sleep during the day, but with a little help I was flat-out for most of the day!

The next day I found that the restrictions on how far I could sit up had been lifted and that made such a difference!

Actually I'm not motivated enough to do this right now. I'll carry on some other time.

*two days later*

Let's do this.

On the Tuesday night, I was in horrible pain. Morphine did nothing to ease it. The bay next to me was empty (and remained that way for the rest of my stay) and so they pulled the curtain back so I had more room. They called a doctor over, who I couldn't really understand, to see if she could help, but she did nothing to help apart from give more fluids through an IV. My mum, who was staying over in the parent accommodation, was called over at 3am.

So on the Wednesday, 14th June, I discovered what a long and painful recovery I had in front of me. First thing in the morning, after a yoghurt (don't ask how I remember that), the physios paid me a visit. It was the trainee, Jade (?), and another guy who I hadn't seen before. I took the oxygen mask off to sit up.

This time, it took a lot less time for the dizziness to calm down. I was glad of that. Once I was actually stable on the side of the bed, they checked my oxygen levels and found that they were dropping quickly. Hence the return of the oxygen mask. I then shuffled to a chair and sat there for a minute. There are two pictures of me from today - one from the side of the bed, with me attempting to smile with frozen face muscles, and the other on the chair with the mask looking like (at best) a zombie or (at worst) dead inside.

After I got back in bed, the surgeon came and asked me what my pain level was. It was not too bad, but I made a fatal error. He wanted me to score out of ten. Somehow I scored it out of three. So I said one. Consequently, the morphine pump was taken away and I did a slight nosedive.

The nurse for today was a brusque Polish lady with a thick accent that I had trouble interpreting. She appeared to have a sole mission: to pump me full of as many laxatives as possible. She gave me the dreaded prune juice, mixed with apple juice - vile. There's no other way to describe it.

So all of this meant my stomach was... turbulent. And with the turbulence came pain. As I wrote in an Instagram post the day after, "the pain was terrible and the liquid morphine and paracetamol didn't touch it". That pretty much sums it up. My stomach was cramping like crazy (although that may have been SOMETHING ELSE, which had been set off by the anaesthetic a week earlier and was still going). I promised myself that I would not make any whines or whimpers like another girl on my ward but I could see that afternoon why she did.

Thankfully on Wednesday, I had a better night. I think I had that nurse (who noticed that all my cannulas and tubes were catching on things, and put something over them to stop them) for part of Thursday too. She remained on her mission and even leveled it up. I was tormented with strawberry milkshakes, Movicol diluted in Tropicana and frozen to make slush, and more vile prune juice. They all had an obsession with me drinking enough. I was constantly being given water! To be fair, it was boiling hot.

I then tried to watch Coronation Street with my mum. The TV was on a table, which we assumed was portable. No. Unless I turned myself into a contortionist, I could only listen. This meant I was constantly asking "Is that David? Is he breaking up with the murderer's mum?" etc. Luckily we got it on YouTube the next day.

Thursday didn't start particularly well - according to my Instagram, it started "with a disapproving surgeon" because of my dehydration, "and a lot of waking up in pain". Then I got the long dressing off my back and after some Oramorph, or liquid morphine - a tasteless red substance with crushed up tablet in it - I bounced. I felt a lot better!

That day, I walked to the end of my pretty long ward and back, before sitting on the chair watching This Morning. It felt good to be mobile again! My oxygen levels were stabilising, so much so that my nurse for the day just put the mask by my face to "waft" the oxygen my way.

Now I come to think about it, I have completely lost track of what nurse I had when. I remember Lisa, the "wafting" nurse, who reminded me of my Chemistry teacher. There was also one who was suffering with the heat and Ramadan, and was close to collapsing and/or throwing up all night long. Then there was the ward sister, Katie, who loved me due to my jokey sarcasm ("Yeah, I'm doing great!!") I have no idea who I had when, though.

On Friday, I had a shower. Somehow I shuffled to the shower room and say there while being washed/drowned by my mum and another nurse. I was incredibly thin. I looked anorexic, according to my mum. Not my finest moment. On the plus side, I had nice clean hair!

The physio - just one this time - took me to the younger children's bit to be weighed and measured. He then showed us some gadgets to take home, like a bath board that went across the bath and I could sit on to shower, and a grabber for picking up things. I then sat up for 45 minutes.

Later that evening, I was taken in a wheelchair for a standing X-ray. Mum could not get a picture of it, and we had to wait three months to see it in the end! But that went OK and I was told that I would be going home the next day.

And I did, complete with laxatives, painkillers, physio stuff, cards and my balloon. It was a boiling hot day and by the time I was discharged, I had already had a shower.

It was a long and hot journey back but I was so glad to be home!