Janus 12

 I have other hospital stories to share, but this last week has put all that out of my mind. 

 Last Thursday the District stoma nurse came to visit, and declared me doing well. From then on I had nothing but trouble.  

Having said that stomas were easy and not the dreaded thing one reads about, I feel in the cause of honesty to say that easy was not the word that sprang to mind from Thursday to  the following Monday.  It is difficult to have two problems at the same time, and each specialist thinks their problem takes priority.  My stoma bag and my wound dressing both want the same space, and up till then, they managed somehow to keep clear of each other. 

I won’t go through each and every episode, and there were 13 of them, but will give the grizzly details about the last one, which happened at 6 a.m. on Monday morning.  My daughter was staying over, and said to call her if I needed help. When I woke to go to the bathroom I got out of bed and immediately, the contents of the bag poured out - on my pajames, on the sheets, on the carpet.  And the worst thing was that the effluent had managed somehow to get under the bandage for the wound, and the entire thing was the same awful colour as my waste product. 

My daughter came to help, but we both knew that nobody medical was going to come at this time of the morning, so we had to be brave, and try to cope.  She is not a nurse, but we did have the district nurses’ products in a box in the room.  So having got rid of the bad stoma bag, and cleaned up that area a bit, we took off the dressing. The entire wound which has like a depression in it, was filled with the effluent. How couldn’t it get infected?  So we used dry wipes wet with water to clean it out. It didn’t hurt at all.  I was busy trying to contain the flow of the stoma with other wipes, while it was cleaned as thoroughly as we could get it, and then we put one of the long narrow dressings on, followed by the bigger ones which had sticky edges.  And then we replaced the bad stoma with another one, hoping that this time it would do its job. 

When the nurse finally came about 9.30, she praised my daughters’ efforts and said  she thought it would not have been infected, as it was closed sufficiently.  And with the new bandage and another new stoma, we started out for our next problem of the day.

I think I mentioned way back when,  that the original CT scan had showed something unknown in one of my breasts.  This was the second appointment that they had made for it to be investigated. The first came when I was in the hospital.  My daughter drove me to this one which is on the opposite end of the  city. Our good luck was that the car park machine wasn’t working and we had a free park, and luckily we found a space as someone was just pulling out as we arrived. 

Our original appointment had been for 10.45 but it was now 11.30 but they had said to come in anyway.  But of course I was the last of the clinic people to be seen. The consultant saw me first, and took a history and then palpated.  To be honest I didn’t think there was any problem, and expected him to send me off and say it was nothing. But he concentrated on one spot for so long that I feared that there might really be something there. Then I had a mammogram, and following that, a scan.  This was now about 1.30. The doctor who was doing the scan told me that the mammogram had showed a definite lump, and she was going to do 3 biopsies, guided by the scan. She gave me a local anaesthetic and said I shouldn’t feel much pain. 

The anaesthetic worked for cutting the skin and the needles (according to my daughter very big needles) went in  but when she went in for the kill, and took  the first biopsy, which was about 1 cm cubed, came out, the pain was enormous. Worse than any pain from the first surgery or the colonoscopy - because at least then when I made an unhappy noise, they increased the dose of my pain killer. And the second and third were equally awful. Then she put in a metal marker, which she said would show where to operate, or it they didn’t need to, would be with me for the rest of my life. That hurt too, but not as much.  The nurse and the doctor were surprised at the amount of pain, but I can say very firmly that I wasn’t making up one syllable of my noise. (Not a scream,  more like a very unhappy moan.) 

Then I had to have another mammogram to make sure the marker was in the right place. 

I did say that it was torture, but I stopped at calling the doctor a torturer, and even managed a small insincere thank you. 

But our day was not over. My daughter had arranged a meeting with the original hospital stoma nurse to see what we were doing wrong.  So far that day, the bag had not leaked, but I had a complete set of extra clothes with me.  It would have been rather fun to leak over the biopsy doctor.

Carolyn had been very helpful to me in the hospital and she was again. She said straight away that the stoma bags were not working because of a crease in my skin which made a channel for the effluent, which was sufficiently alkaline to dissolve the glue.  So I now have a large supply of bigger bags, no doubt much more expensive than the original ones. And I haven’t had a problem since.  

Sorry to gross you out with these details, but I do find it all rather interesting. We will get the results of the biopsies next Monday, which might influence the timing and sort of chemo that I am offered.