Minor (?) Setback

On Tuesday, about 16:30,  when the rig tube balloon as being deflated and re-inflated I felt a major pain, but it passed very quickly.  A few minutes later the pain  kicked in again BIGTIME.  I was whimpering and squirming and flinching.  Bad Pain!  I got 5mg of Morphine injected in my Butt, and that gave me relief for a while.  Later on that afternoon/evening the pain happened again (twice).  Once I got a drip of Paracetamol, and about Midnight I got another shot of Morphine (5mg).

I recalled when Nick Burfitt had fitted the rig tube he spoke about the rare possibility that stomach acid could spill into the peritoneum.  This, he said, is extremely painful.  How right he was.

The pain did not reoccur after that (thank you God!), but I developed a real soreness in my abdomen and shoulders.  (For a while I thought the shoulder pain might be from the extreme flinching that I had been doing when I was suffering from the abdomen pain.)  Obviously everyone was concerned.  I had abdominal x-Rays, CT Scan and revisited Nick  in Vascular to check on the siting of the rig tube.  Rig siting seemed fine, and the scans revealed some air under the abdomen - the whole area feeling really weird! Blood tests are taken every morning Some cause for concern seemed to be that the crp markers were elevated. 

Simon Stewart came in on Wednesday and put me on Nil by Mouth (just as I decided  get positive again and try to eat something!) because he wanted to let the rig tube settle down again.

Obviously I was not going home - I was no ready to go home either.  In lots of discomfort - particularly on the shoulder joints.  A surgeon called Katy also visited me and she pointed out that it was referred pain from the diaphragm - same nerve apparently. I am familiar with this from sciatica - I had a pain in my leg, but the injury was in the lower back.  Luckily I could get comfortable by lying down on my back.  No shoulder pain then.  But I could not sit and type. Hence no Blog posts. 

I wanted to avoid stomach pumps and surgical intervention if at all possible. Luckily so did Katy.

Thursday I was allowed fluids and started to eat again.  CRP markers elevated more, though the last blood was from Thurday morning, and by evening I was definitely starting to feel better. Blood pressure was slightly elevated and temperature had climbed a little, but back down nice and low now. But I did say to Simon that I could not really tell what was going on in my abdomen - I felt burned, bloated, hungry and constipated.

Did I mention constipation?  Not only no eating or drinking, but the morphine too.  Thursday evening was my mission to deal with that.  Fluids, prune juice, laxatives, suppositories.  Mission accomplished!

Today I am feeling a lot better.