3/25/2018 0 Comments My strange new friends......I made a few new friends recently, and as you can see from the pictures they are a bit ‘out there’….. Let me introduce you to them – they are Mr smiley, the soap dispenser; The Twins – who others think of as being hooks on the door; the Elephant; and finally Mr Door stopper – and yes, they became quite important to me as I spent a great deal of time looking at them when I was in the bathroom of ward H1 East, bed 9! You see, the thing is, I had a severe bout of food poisoning that saw me having to head off to hospital in an ambulance, be admitted, hooked up to fluids and heart monitors for almost a week, and have a couple of medical emergencies that saw my bed surrounded by every doctor and nurse on duty in my ward. It was quite full on. It all began on an ordinary Friday night. I had eaten a nice dinner at home and gone to bed early, feeling a little unwell, but intending to drive with Liam up to Brisbane early the next day to look at a car he was interested in buying. Around midnight I woke with severe stomach pain and began a few hours of constant trips to the bathroom before it settled down and I got some reasonable sleep. By morning I concluded I was having an episode of Ulcerative Colitis or Diverticulitis, which I suffer from regularly, and took my usual medication so that I could drive to Brisbane to help Liam with the car. It was the slowest trip to Brisbane ever with multiple bathroom stops and by the time we made our return journey I was feeling extremely unwell, despite the medication, but still thought it was just a typical flare up. I was longing to get home and sleep – in fact half way home I decided I needed Liam to drive so that I could sleep in the car, and in the end didn’t even make it home but stopped in Southport at one of the kid’s places so that I could. I hoped that I would wake feeling fine but that turned out to be quite wrong! When I woke a few hours later I found I couldn’t sit up. I couldn’t talk properly – though I could think okay – and I had no hope of walking anywhere. I tried to message my son, who was only out in the kitchen, to get him to help me but couldn’t type properly to explain myself and couldn’t even call out. I was feeling very frustrated and decided to try and text Erina, who was upstairs in her flat, with just the words – I need help. I spent ten minutes trying to text that to her before I hit send with words that resembled that. I knew that Erina would understand my garbled speech better than the boys who wouldn’t have as much insight to grasp what was happening. Erina arrived shortly and called an ambulance. By the time we got to hospital it was clear that I had a very high temperature (over 40) which was the most likely cause of my neurological problems, rather than something more sinister like a stroke, but in emergency the first concern was with meningitis or a brain disturbance. I was only there for a few hours, but it was quite busy with Cat scans, blood tests and x-rays trying to determine what was happening and then around midnight they decided to admit me to the medical assessment unit. By morning we had ruled out any kind of brain issue and finally the effects of the medication I had taken to control what I had thought was a UC flare up had ceased and the stomach pain and sickness came back in full force. The diagnosis then was viral gastro enteritis, and I was put in isolation. The hope was that it would resolve itself in a day or two and as I was severely dehydrated I was put on IV fluids. But things didn’t improve and my temperature remained very high. On Monday I was beginning to feel a little better and sat up in bed to sip the almond-milk chai latte Erina had brought in for me. I began to feel extraordinarily hot and light headed and Erina called the nurse, the next thing I knew was that the room was filled with doctors and nurses and equipment. Apparently, I had passed out, possibly having had a febrile convulsion. It was kind of weird really, I felt spacy but ok and everyone kept asking me questions about what happened and how I felt, and I wondered why they expected me to know anything! My temperature slowly began to come down, my blood pressure increased, I remained on fluids but still the stomach symptoms persisted. The next day I was transferred up to a ward and told I would need to remain in the hospital until I was more stable. I was pretty glad, I couldn’t imagine managing this level of gastro upset at home. I had been in the new room only a few minutes when I had another episode – I didn’t pass out this time, but had the extreme temperature rise, light-headedness and sudden massive drop in BP (80/40) and consequently, the sudden arrival of every available Dr and nurse crowding around me. It was early the next day that we finally knew what was happening – at least what had triggered everything at least, if not every detail – I had contracted campylobacter – a nasty strain of food poisoning. That had led to a fever which seemed to have caused everything else. The treatment – potent antibiotics - began immediately while they kept up the IV fluids and tried to stabilise my BP. At last I was on the road to recovery. My little bathroom pals remained present for a few more days while we waited for some signs of improvement and after 6 days I was allowed to leave hospital. The challenge was then on to keep the contents of my stomach in and my fluids sufficient. It has been a bit of a long journey – much longer than I would have thought. I didn’t get to come back to the boat immediately because of the BP issues, I was only allowed to leave hospital if I would have someone around continuously. But after another few days of resting, recuperating, trying to eat and another round of antibiotics, the symptoms began to ease and I was free to come home to the boat. I am still needing to take it slow – I have little appetite and even less energy but each day I do get a little stronger and it has now been 3 full days of being able to keep everything down. I have to return to the hospital shortly to let them take a closer look at my heart after the medical emergencies that were called, which will involve having to be monitored for a week, but at this point the thought is that I suffered Vasovagal episodes triggered by pain or illness. We expect this will be confirmed by the heart monitoring. Fun times right?!
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September 2017
Our life aboard Argos has been seriously challenged this year with the surprise departure of our skipper. As a writer, diesel mechanics and the complexities of many aspects of Argos’ on-going maintenance are way beyond me! We would like to see Argos continue to sail and eventually hope to use her to offer support, encouragement and a break to people who are struggling in their lives. Any on-going help towards maintaining Argos would be greatly appreciated and enable us to achieve this goal.
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