January… Sick and Tired, You’ve Been Hanging on Me.
I now know that I spent Christmas 2023 slowly dying. I was pretty much bedbound, couldn’t move very far, couldn’t stand up without feeling dizzy and the most terrifying part?! I couldn’t enjoy my Christmas dinner (heart-breaking). I kept attending my outpatient appointments in the Gastroenterology department, receiving fluids and blood and iron transfusions but no one had clocked that, in fact, my bowel had or was definitely on the way to perforating.
I guess you could say I saw the new year in with a bang, except this wasn’t the kind of bang with parties and fireworks and instead the kind of bang that saw my whole body hit the floor when I collapsed a few days into January, on my mother’s bedroom floor when attempting to go to the toilet. I came around eventually with my brother and mother crowded around me, my brother on the phone to the ambulance and my mam crying her eyes out in panic. I didn’t have a clue what was happening but there was no way I could move and my head was hurting a lot from the fall, due to this it took both my brothers and my wonderful sister-in-law to manoeuvre me off the floor and onto the bed where I stayed until the emergency services decided I was important enough to receive an ambulance, because there was absolutely no way on earth my family were going to manage to get me into a car or taxi to be taken to the hospital.
The next two weeks don’t exist in my brain. I have no memory of it. No recollection of what happened at all. As soon as I arrived at the hospital I must’ve passed out again and I wouldn’t wake up for another two weeks. It turns out I was more poorly than anyone had imagined I would be and the doctors had to take my mother and brother into the family room to inform them that I was really unwell and it was touch and go whether I would make it. The surgeons explained that I needed extensive surgery to fix what was going on in my stomach and without it I would die, but that I was also too unwell and weak to undergo the surgery so could also die on the operating table. My mam and brother both came to the decision that they had to take me for surgery and that I had to fight this and so, that is what I did.
They said their goodbyes and ‘I love you’ and set off to the family room to wait for six hours while I underwent my first surgery. Nobody knowing what would happen and if I would even survive.
Despite not being conscious or barely alive for this part of my story, I’ve heard a lot from my family about what happened during this time and I would like to send my love and thanks to my Auntie Kaye and Uncle Roger for heading straight to the hospital to be there for my mam and brother when they heard what had happened, you really helped keep my mam going during her darkest hours and for that I am forever grateful.
And of course, to my amazing brother for demanding that ambulance and ultimately saving my life.
More soon x
