SUNDAY'S WITH MS & CATH and Other Unaswered Questions!

Just used to pain now it drives me mad but not as quick or as mad as it is driving Rab.
He is finding it really hard to accept that there isn't any God given or human right for that matter for anyone to not be in pain and you just have to put up with it the best you can.

If there was a way to take it away I'm sure they would. I don't know why Morphine doesn't really work for me it just doesn't. The last time Rab had Morphine was after surgery and he was in another world on just 5 mgs of the stuff.

Me doesn't make me sleepy, giggly, sick (thank goodness) When I had my appendix out at 10pm the night before my 21st birthday I woke up in absolute agony at 2am and started loudly demanding that they take the effing Morphine drip out and shove it up their arses and get me a bottle of Gas and Air my surgeon was great and he did agree to a little G&A which I found out after my etopic you are not supposed to do when you've had surgery something to do with the gas they blow your abdomen up with or something but I was creating such a fuss even took out the Canula myself that he just told the nurse as he was walking away (in disgust I think) "just bloody give her the stuff" Think I had it 20 mins tops and buzzed for the nurse, told her I really needed to go to the loo, she told me she'd just go get a commode by the time she got back with it I was already half way back from the loo! She wasn't pleased as I'd got up but I just told her "I'm 21 now I can do as I please!" I got two pills I'm thinking those would have been Dihydrocodine went to bed and woke up a ten feeling fine, well not fine obviously but got up had a shower, a couple more tablets and was chirper by time my surgeon came to talk to me which wasn't till about lunch time.
Some mad mare kept him up half the night! Same mad mare who's GP had warned her that she might have an inflamed appendix the on the Friday but didn't believe him and delayed calling him back (wow do you remember those days when you phoned up out of hours and it was your own GP that came out?) out until she had finished papering the livingroom of her new flat at 8pm on the Sunday, ready for her birthday on the Monday! Well I'd got nibbles in and everything! The surgeon wasn't having any of it and said I definitely could not go home and he didn't care what day it was, though he did say my friends could take me to the hospital canteen and shop for an hour at visiting. 2 oclock and I was racing to go, went down in the lifts with my mates who came with cards and fruit instead of the Bacardi and Wine they were supposed to be bringing at 7 to mine!

So we got down to the main corridor and this being pre MS and Wheelchair minded Cath the wheels got abandoned at the lift and all my friends turned left (direction of Canteen but Cath made a B line right and they caught up with her just as she lit up her first ciggy for 16 hours and slid down the wall at the Maternity exit! That one ciggy probably did what all this useless Morphine should be doing because it blew my head off! When we got back to the ward about at 3.45, well I needed a coffee to recover from the fag and then we had to spend another 20 mins trying to find the wheelchair which someone from the mens ward had nicked he'd opened the emergancy door the one that said Do Not Open and took the chair so he could sit and have his ciggy! the cheek!
Sister was so not amused when we finally did get back to the ward to find her doing her best Hattie Jaques impression! I had to have a wound check which was actually the first time I looked at it as I was bricking it and sh*t out of peeking in the shower because my mate who brought the grapes, when she had hers out her scar looked really, really horrific! I mean really it was a huge ziggy zaggy line with large dots either side of it. Her Appendix scar looked like Frankienstein's monster's neck! All I got though was this little 4 inch neat red line with about a centimetre of dissolving stiches poking out at one end. I was well chuffed, if I'd known he was that good I'd have tried and talked him into getting rid of the jelly belly! He was a really nice doctor, he had sat and just chatted with me for the hour before they had a theatre available as he knew I was absolutely terrified of hospitals and even more terrified of getting an anesthetic (sort of came out when he asked why I had left it so long to come in)
When he came round the next morning the first thing he asked me was what did I think of my Birthday present? meaning the scar. I'd told him all about my mates scar apparently it was in there somewhere in the jumbled rant of me knowing about hospital butchers and and how I knew I was going to die! He was nice enough to wave off my apologies and say it was the premed drugs but it wasn't it was all me because I used to get like that everytime I was admitted to hospital, Still am to a degree though the doctors and nurses don't get the same ranting woman I was back then but I don't eat hospital food ever, only drink my own bottled water and the only time they have got me to sleep in a hospital is when I'm anethitised or heavily sedated. Can't help it at least I have got over my first instinct when a doctor says they are sending me to hospital which is to run. Signed myself out AMA too many times to count, tried to do it the night of my Appendix which is probably the real reason that doctor was sitting with me till about thirty minutes before they wheeled me down.
NHS 24 and my GP both tried to get me go into hospital last week but there wouldn't have been much point as they don't have a 'pain' ward lots of other wards for the admissions manager to bang her head off a wall for 5 hours trying to find me a bed, poor woman while I sit taking up one of their acute admissions beds while having no reason for an admission other than The Drugs Don't Work, They know whats wrong with me, I probably know way more about what is wrong with me that some of the Doctors I have seen. There was this one lovely young doctor on the A&E ward they day they fired me through there in an ambulance for a 3rd time in one week to get my hip xrayed, I told him he couldn't really help and he agreed and then he listened, I'm not sure if it was in disgust or astonishment really but he wanted to hear it all the same for a whole 40 minutes after his shift had ended which knowing just how many hours he works in a week at his level of qualification and how much study he has to add to those hours that he wanted to listen to me for an hour was very humbling.
It's all right there in those 2/3 huge volumes my medical notes we are onto volume 3/4 now because of those multi volumes I have 4 different unit numbers which can be very frustrating for admin staff trying to get all my notes for a clinic or even to just trying and book me an appointment! Though we are on a roll this month as we have managed to get 3 appointments on 3 seperate days, instead of 3 seperate clinics all wanting me on the same day at the same time, oh it feels to be wanted!
One of the things that has been so frustrating these last few months is this inane need I have to organise, I have hundreds of files I need to sort through and organise as the last time there was anything remotely near organisation was last August! Everytime I am at the hospital I look at those files and questions pop into my head like where is the 'missing' mystery volume? Stands to reason it exists or existed because if the 3 volumes I always see at an appointment have somehow each generated their own unit number and I have 4 unit numbers there has to be another volume. Is it in Stirling perhaps? I know they ferry case notes between the two hospitals, Infact I was told once that I was going into Stirling Royal while at an appointment at Falkirk Royal but I'd have to make my own way through there and I asked if they wanted me to take my notes which back then were a modest two volumes and was told

"No no we will send them through by taxi."

"Oh right" says I

"well can I not go through with my notes then?"

"Oh sorry you can't it's these new Data Protection rules you see"

"Ah" says I thinking I was catching on "I see you send loads of peoples notes at the same time" makes sense I wouldn't want some stranger hitching a ride with my private confidential medical file. Thinks I

"No love it'll just be yours I'll just go get that sorted now!"
and off she trots leaving a very perplexed Cath with some wonderful new questions. The main one being how the hell was I going to get to Stirling on a Sunday and what in blazes was this data protection thingy that she was yammering on about? and Why did it say that some stranger (taxi driver) could travel with my private and confidential medical file but I couldn't?

My brother ran me when he got home from work and I arrived around five hours after my files had. Can't fault the NHS for organisation can you! lmao and you know I don't like unanswered questions. Never did get an answer to that second one! for all I know that Taxi driver could of been a woman or a man who wanted to be a woman and saw her chance. Bought herself a bikini a nice pair of pumps and matching sarong and is living it up large in Rio on hundreds of fake credit cards in my name! Every bit of information you could ever need to know to steal someones identity is somewhere in your NHS medical notes. Maybe that is where missing file number 4 is in Rio with Cath it could even explain why had problems getting credit in my own name until about 8 yrs ago!

Other questions in need of answers...


Do Doctors and Nurses know that those silly plastic folders were designed to hold 300 bits of paper tops?

and if they do

Why do they keep trying to cram 3000 sheets in them?

Are the folders expensive?

Do you want me to get you a plastic file box for my notes?

And finally

where do you get those supersized elastic bands you use to stop those 3000 bits of my data from parting company from those semi precious folders? they look really useful!


Oh no wait

The NHS does know that I could carry all that info around with me on an ipod doesn't it?


yup thats about it!
see this is what 58 hours without sleep makes Caths Brain do! LMAO

Cath x