Roadblock

So, the Stoma nurses and my 'ostomate' (I was trying a pun with the word 'mate' there, which didn't work that well) Fiona had told me about blockages, those rare but unpleasant occurrences that blight the be-stoma-ed.

Anyway, Friday lunchtime, I daringly had some peas along with my lunch. About half an hour later I started to feel nauseous, then after half an hour in bed feeling sorry for myself, threw up - a lot. About six hours later I'd decided it was some kind of blockage, and we toddled into Chelsea and Westminster A&E for a late night Friday dash. Annoyingly I'd booked a table at a posh restaurant to have a kind of belated anniversary dinner with my boyfriend, so I was most cross about that, rather than any impending health problems.

Thankfully I always seem to get sped through any kind of A&E waiting room queues, so I was in there being poked and prodded really quite quickly. I got fluids and bloods were taken (never quite sure what they're actually checking in these). I had chest and abdomen x-rays, and had a doctor's finger poked in the stoma - quite an unusual experience. Mr Stoma seemed to slightly burst to life, and I was able to keep a glass of water down, so I was sent home, feeling about 80% better.

I zonked myself out with lots of sleeping pills that night but woke at about 5am with a great pain - no sickness this time, at least. Oh God. My first instinct was to try and go back to sleep - not that rational, perhaps, but I was quite chemically subdued at this stage - so I necked a few Tramacet and pressed 'snooze on', mentally. Waking at about 9 I didn't feel much better, so after umming and ah-ing a bit, we got a taxi back to hospital. Despite the lack of nausea this time I felt physically much worse, and the pain was quite excruciating - I can't think of a correlative in everyday life. I suppose it felt a bit like painful constipation I got once when I was about 9 years old.

Anyway, this time I had even more doctors come around and poke me, and in between begging them for painkillers, I could tell it was all getting a bit surgery-y - the surgeon was hanging around and they were about to put an NG tube in. Now - I'd had an NG tube in when I woke up from the colectomy, which was unpleasant enough, but I didn't realise quite how unpleasant putting one in could be when you were actually awake. While I wrestled with a chunky male nurse forcing the thing down first one nostril, then the other, I could feel myself dripping with sweat and making bleating noises, while vomiting up what looked like foamy bile. Lovely. Anyway, the surgeon came around and decided it had been put in wrongly, perhaps into the lung. I was practically crying with gratitude by the time he pulled it out, though he was threatening to re-insert straight away. At that stage I suddenly realised most of the pain in my belly had gone... The bag was also filling up at a prodigious rate, thank god. Anyway, at that point the surgeon decided that I had healed myself again - and thankfully the bag continued to fill. I was let out with some dire warnings about having to have an NG drain again, and to come back immediately should the same thing happen.

I'm sitting at home now pondering whether I'm getting another blockage - I've become incredibly paranoid, so whenever the bag has a slow patch I start panicking. I'm trying to tell myself it's just because I ate about ten marshmallows a couple of hours ago, and I've just been slowed down. Apparently it's probably some kind of adhesion left after the operation, which it causing it... But I'm going to just relax and enjoy a Sunday night Miss Marple. We'll see if I get another midnight dash to A&E or not...