Welcome to new members and belated Xmas and New Year wishes to older members

I had big plans for single parents over the Christmas holidays that didn’t eventuate. Tickets  sit on my table for wonderful events that have passed, new members joined the site only to be ignored while e-mails and comments received no reply.  Other events needing to be added were never mentioned online either.

I feel just awful to have let so many down and disheartened that opportunities to get to know others were missed. I guess all I can do is apologise and make up for it in this new year of 2010.    Oh, I guess there is one more thing I can do.  Explain what happened and ask for readers and members to be understanding………….Hmm, Ok, here goes …….

At the beginning of December  I was rushed to North Shore Hospital via ambulance in excruciating pain. It was a terrible trip feeling every bump in the road but the ambulance stopped to try and provide some pain relief while they are not allowed to carry strong pain killers.

I vaguely remember the beginning part of my time in  A&E (accident and emergency) and part of the end of the  day. I must have had an x-ray or ultrasound because I remember being in a room and put asleep for a minor type of surgery. I remember being in a patients bed on the surgery ward afterwards, being hooked up to a morphine drip, moving from a room of 4 patients to my own single room, another minor type of surgery and my sons visiting. Oh, I remember the nurse I had.  She was great!

I remember the following morning when I was taken from the surgery ward to intensive care.  I remember a male nurse leaning over me to hook up an oxygen mask saying ‘welcome princess’, and a team of doctors with one saying, “You have a team of 20 and we will work things out together” as well as “You need to breathe through this oxygen mask till 2pm”.

From that moment I breathed through an oxygen mask that had air rushing at me as if I was a dog with it’s head out the window. At 2pm I was taken for a CT (cat scan). I remember the nurse who was taking care of me saying, “I have to keep her breathing above 93%” and hearing whispers from other nurses saying, “The time I took a patient like this … blah, blah, blah”. I assumed (not always the best thing to do) these nurses were saying I shouldn’t be taken away from the mask for the test, so I worked hard to breathe on my own.

About 8 doctors and nurses accompanied me to the scanner in a hurry, moved me from one bed to another and hooked me up for the intravenous dye. All the while they just kept asking, “Are you alright” and saying, “You’re doing well.” Once back in intensive care I was put back on the same oxygen mask while they looked over the scan results to make their plans.

All of a sudden I wanted off the mask saying, “You said I would only have to be on this till 2pm”. That is when things got interesting. I think I wanted a quick fix for I was feeling much better without the pain (morpine helps) but they had other ideas and one of them was to put me on life support. They had already contacted my girlfriends and told them to get my children in ASAP as I may not have ever spoken to them again.  You can imagine I was distressed by now and being naive as I was to medical treatment and with this being my first time in hospital, I was not able to let that happen (life support). Firmly one specialist told me that out of 100′s of cases people lasted half a day up to 4 days but all ended up on life support and that I had damaged my pancreas so severly there was very little left……

You see, I had gall stones and was on a list to have my gall bladder removed some time 2010.  But they were moving stones and one got stuck in the pancrea duct at 5cm in size.  It caused the pancrea enzymes that break down food and turn it into glucose to attack my pancreas.  This was a life threatening situation and every moment my body was doing something as a reaction with so many of those things meaning possible death. For instance,  the enzymes can enter the bloodstream and destroy other organs such as the kidneys and heart or  the body’s immune system breaks down and any infection would be deadly.  In fact, an infection can come from the body itself reacting.

………Two nurses were comforting me by now with one rubbing my arm explaining I had no choice and that this was what I needed to do. (life support) I couldn’t comprehend and the distress was affecting my level of wellbeing so  they allowed me a break off the oxygen mask I was on and replaced it with an easier mask.  I spent the whole time in intensive care back and forth between those 2 masks.

That night was bad for me because one nurse wanted me to lay on my side which caused pain that lasted for days and another wouldn’t allow me to see the oxygen machine so I couldn’t work on my breathing. She said it was only for them to monitor and moved it out of reach from me. I decided from that moment I was going to have to fight the nurses if I was going to have a chance and so it was for seven long days and nights as I was hooked up to more drips, a tube for food, dehydrated, hallucinating and being soooo, sooo  sick.  It was a nightmare for all involved.

After the seven days the specialist who told me I couldn’t do it came to me chuckling asking if I remembered fighting with him (I didn’t) and told me I had made it. I was no longer at death’s door and was moved back to the surgical ward where I spent the remainder of my weeks in hospital. It was hard and the nurses wanted me back in intensive care for the first few days but I just kept on breathing to the best of my ability and tried to keep the pain at bay.

I won’t go on and on and on about my recovery journey even though I am a very,  lucky girl (as one doctor put it) and have an amazing tale.  It was long and it was hard but I am out of hospital and looking forward to a wonderful year spent with good company.

Well, … that’s my explanation for being unable to welcome new members, answer e-mails, send out tickets and say, “Merry Xmas and Happy New Year’ to older members from December till now.  I am very sorry and hope this year can be a enventful year full of wonderful things for all of us together. I am so looking forward to it.