Typical.

Those crap sats resulted in me getting admitted.

I felt absolutely awful, three days of sats refusing to budge above 92/93 was taking it's toll, I was confused and my headache was getting ridiculous. In hindsight I probably shouldn't have been driving a few hours before we decided to phone up the hospital, who told me to go to A&E, through to EAU and take it from there.

I got there and my sats decided to stay at 95(!) A couple of hours later when they next did my obs, they dropped to 90 and along came the oxygen, which killed my headache pretty fast, so I was right in thinking it was the sats giving me a headache. It's sort of a shit victory - yay I was right... but being right involved needing O2.

Anywayyy, as it was EAU it meant nothing short of every test under the sun. So xrays, ECG, blood takes, blood gases, constant sats, BP and temp etc etc. I was properly nervous about the blood gas, especially when the Dr went 'Don't worry, I'm good at them!!' (It sparked a sort of over confident feeling, as if he was trying to convince himself as well as me) but it barely hurt, so I guess he really is good at them! He was a cool dr, he was young and we talked loads; it's always nice to have chatty drs rather than the type who are all quiet and moody.

I spent about 16-17 hours on EAU in total, I was meant to be moved to ward 52, which is the respiratory ward with a CF unit, but there were no beds at all, so I was moved to a cubicle on EAU until Thursday afternoon when I finally got to my ward. There were still no beds on the CF bit (there's only about 6 CF beds on the unit I think) so I got the crappest room of all, which was the only one available and is clearly used for either people they hate, or as a last resort - its round the corner from the nurses station and for some fucking ridiculous reason there is a buzzer and light on the wall outside the room that goes off every. single. fucking. time anyone on the ward presses their buzzer. It's such a design fail as it really should be in the nurses station instead of round the corner practically in the patients room. I pissed off a nurse for complaining about it too. It's not my fault that of all the things I can/can't hear, that is bloody loud and I certainly can hear it!

So yeah, crap room, not a CF room so I had none of the luxuries as I did last time - no tv, no fridge, no opening windows...!! Obviously they have those crap pay tvs put they're not worth it. There is actually a cinema in the hospital, and the woman who works there came around and asked if I'd like to go to the cinema. I was a bit confused with that one and I said there wasn't much point if it wasn't subtitled b/c of my hearing, so she left instead. I kept thinking how I should have gone regardless, it would have gotten me out of the sodding room! I was only on O2 until I was moved to ward 52, when the physio came up to see me and my sats hovered around 95 (dropping to 93 when she wasn't looking, I have a coughing fit and they shoot up to 97, make up your mind!!!) so she took the O2 off me and I was fine without it, but they STILL wouldn't let me leave, wanting to check my sats overnight too.

I'm not entirely sure anyone actually did check my sats that night though. The nurse came in around 5pm and tried to give me my fluclox that I have at night, so I corrected her and she said I'd be given it at 10pm instead. I had some veryyyyyy nice visitors who cheered me up (and ate half my haribos) and then the nurse came around at 8.30 and said visiting time was over, boooo :( No one actually came in and gave me any meds or did my obs or anything as far as I remember that night. Last time a nurse had been in my room was the 5pm fluclox confusion. SO! 10pm rolls around, and no one comes by. I had my meds with me anyway, and I'm not a child so I'm assuming I'm allowed to self medicate with my night meds. However, it was really bloody irritating that no one came around as I needed saline, syringes and needles etc so I could give myself my IVs (I already had the IVs themselves as I'd brought my ready made ones from home). At 11.30pm it was getting stupid, I thought maybe they were doing their night rounds and would get to me and my crap cubicle last.

Obviously not.

I went to the nurses station and they practically blamed me for not getting them sooner. Excuse me for doing your fucking job for you!!! Ivs done and all that jazz, I eventually fell asleep and woke up at 4.30 am with a hell of a coughing fit that really, REALLY hurt, I couldn't tell if it was exhaustion from how much I was coughing, my ribs hurting or my lungs, but something really hurt. No one had been in my room (and I was fully ignored all night as far as I'm aware) as my light was still on (they always switch it off if you fall asleep with it on). A very pissed off me was woken up at the crack of 6.30 to do my own morning IVs. So I spent the entire morning waiting for the dr who basically told me right away I could leave, yayyyy!!

Not doing that again, that's for sure! The bright side is that they let me have the food off the CF menu rather than the shitty normal menu, and it's actually edible! There's a load of choice and they've definitely improved it. I can't help but imagine the other patients staring wistfully at the nice food (and randomly, pretty trays! Haha, instead of a crap beige tray, I got a rainbow stripey one, how nice!) whilst they keep a nervous eye on their own food which is meant to be 'beef casserole' and looks nothing like it.

I think the moral of this story is, try not to catch a cold, which goes to your chest, causing a bitch of a chest infection, resulting in needing 3 weeks of IVs far sooner than you would have preferred, and fucking up your sats royally so you have to spend three days in hospital, half of which were tethered to the wall on O2, before you can finally go home and enjoy decent tv, internet (priorities...) company and endless decent cups of tea :)

Also, Gem is awesome :D

My war wounds

Pretty late. Pretty bored. Pretty sick of the O2 already...

 My barcode :D

I did enjoy that tray... Food wasn't bad either!