Wednesday, January 9, 2013

Hospital Visit - The Bon Secours

Soooooo. I'm in hospital. But not for treatment, It's for tests.
Because of the second seizure, it's now a problem. It's still looking like hypoglycaemia but I'm getting a once over by the cardiologist, diabetes specialist and the neurologist.
Does this visit count as being in hospital seen as I'm not getting treatment? Well I'm not counting it as a visit.
Day 1
When I walked into sign the papers and put the band on my wrist, I realised what I was doing. I know I was going for treatment but I was still so annoyed and angry about having to still be seen as a "sick person". I was walked into my room, with 2 other people. One never got out of his PJs and it as 3 o clock (for that reason, as soon as I got up and had breakfast, I was changed and ready to do whatever).
My roommate is starting to become annoying. He's a nice person but his habits are awful. He lets rip and burps for no reason at all. Really loudly! He also commentates on Deal Or No Deal..."no deal.....NO DEAL. Didn't I fucking tell you!!!" and comments on the newspaper. Randomly throughout the day he will start talking to himself. I thought he was trying to have a conversation with me so once I answered back to him and got no response. Lesson learned!
My first night here was fairly short. Got to sleep at 2am and was woken at 6am for some random urine test and finger prick? An hour and a half later I was woken again but this time for my breakfast....I was fasting. The nurse came around for my actual blood test soon after.

Day 2
As I was writing this, I was moved room to an isolation room! Oh yeaaa! No more random comments. The reason behind this is I had MRSA a few years ago. To be extra precautions they moved me. I probably should have been in a room by myself from the start because of CF. a sign hung outside the door with guidelines on entering the room. To be honest, those MRSA outfits to protect the visitors/nurses aren't worth anything. It's a plastic bib and gloves. That's worthless.
I settled down into my own ensuite room with a huge plasma on d wall. It was more like a hotel room then a hospital room. I think this calmed my anger down a bit. I was more interested on trying to tell the specialists I don't have epilepsy and that I have hypoglycaemia.
I got visits from the Cardiologist, Neurologist, Endocrinologist, Diabetic Nurse, and my own CF Prof. Busy day. I didn't really do much on that day. The Endo Dr was fairly certain after looking at my glucose levels I carried out myself for the last 3 week that I was hypoglycaemia. However, the neurologist was thinking it was Eplipesy, and the Cardiac specialist figured I didn't have anything wrong with my heart, and either did I.
For some reason CF wasn't down in my charts. Only a few nurses knew and another few thought I had diabetes? They wondered why was I taking Nebs and so many meds. Haha.

Day 3
What is with people wanting Urine and blood samples from me at 6 in the morning. 7:30 comes around and someone takes blood from my arm. Another nurse comes in and gives me an injection into my bum. "A little scratch" she says. It was the 2nd worst injection ever. First goes to Yellow Fever vaccine!! The "little scratch" was to check how my endocrine was going to act against a hormone they put into me. 30 minutes later another nurse walks in and takes more blood out of my arm to see how the injection works.
So today was my day I was going on a treadmill. I figures I'd be going for a nice run on it and they just ,easier how I get on. How wrong was I. They did want to see how I got on, but with a max heart rate test. Strapped up, first level a walk, second level a run, 3rd level going fairly fast, 4th
Level is topped talking, 5th level, I was nearly running at a 90 degree angle with how fast they increased the incline. I lasted 20 minutes and my max HR is 187 beats per minute. The fact I haven't really trained since I had my seizure in November and again on Christmas Day, I was happy enough with how I got on. It was so hard doing it.
I got back to my hotel room!!! Lay on the bed and nearly needed to hook myself into the O2 beside my bed. Bloody heck. I had 30 minutes to get into the shower before they out a 24 hour heart monitor onto me. I never want to wear another one of those again! It's safe to say I slept well that night.
Mostly I just played FIFA on the Xbox all day, and watched documentaries. What's cool is that on my iPad I have Sky Go which means I can watch loads of channels that weren't on my TV in my room.

Day4
I got out nice and early. I have to say, I didn't mind it in hospital, apart from not being allowed run. I think the novelty might wear off after those few days. It was more of a relaxing few days, and plus I wasn't on treatment so it was all good.


So since leaving the hospital I went back running. First day back - 35minutes. Got around 5 miles done. My sugars have been acting up a little bit. I found that if I eat loads, with the idea of keeping my sugars up, doesn't work. I have to eat small meals often...very often. After one of my runs I had a banana, a Scandishake and some tea brack. Got home 30 mins later and had a full sized low GI dinner with porridge and blueberries after. 90 minutes after that it was 2.9!!! It made no sense at first but if I eat loads, my body produces more insulin to tackle what I just ate. So with a big high, comes a big low. I just have to think about when and what I eat. It's annoying, but it will come to a stage where it will become second nature for me. Kinda like taking enzymes before I eat.

This morning I had 3 slices of whole meal toast with jam and a yogurt with tea. It's not huge but about an hour 45mins later it was 2.2! Unreal. I was sitting on the toilet and started feeling dizzy. At this stage I was thinking like I was Elvis! I thought what I had for breakfast would have lasted me more then what it did. Surprisingly, it didn't.

For those of you who missed it. Here's Orla on TV3 this morning talking about Kalydeco and how it changes lives!
http://www.tv3.ie/3player/show/155/57975/0/The-Morning-Show

2 comments:

  1. A lot of people have said this kind of sugar pattern can be the stage before developing full cf related diabetes...

    I have often had the same problem in that the more I eat the lower my sugars go (unless im on steroids, then they just soar lol).

    any idea when you'll get all the results?

    ReplyDelete
  2. I got the results. It's Hypoglycemia. Weh!!!!

    ReplyDelete