Please note: The saga I am about to recount concerns ladyballs (the medical profession calls them “ovaries”, I believe). If ladybits, cursing, and the like offend you…gosh, I’d say never ever visit this site again. For the rest of you, I present: The Ladyball Saga
It started about five weeks ago, when I awoke in the middle of the night with a horrible pain in my lower left abdomen. I gave birth without pain killers (three failed epidurals) and 2nd degree tear AND cut, I know from pain, and this was a whopper. A short call to 111 (health non-dying-emergency number) and cab ride later, I’m at the hospital, trying not to vomit from the pain. A very busy doctor in a very busy A&E tells me after a few horrible hours lying on a slab that I’ve probably got a UTI.
Ladies, let’s have a short discussion here. If you’ve had a UTI, you know what a UTI feels like. This was not a UTI. Also, while I’m pro-NHS, these people screwed up big time. You don’t just guess without even a sonogram because you’re busy. You don’t just throw antibiotics at someone and hope for the best. You’re one of the largest and well-regarded health systems in the world, and while I know Jeremy Hunt (rhymes with…) is slicing you off at the knees financially and closing A&E’s left and right, it doesn’t give you carte blanche to treat and street. No. Bad. No. Stop it. *whacks with a rolled up newspaper*
A photo posted by Shea Wong (@sheawong) on
Mar 3, 2015 at 10:54am PST
I get home about 6 am, and luckily it was the kid’s nursery day, so he didn’t see what happened next. My husband was trying to get me comfortable on the couch when I tried to stand up and BAM THE WHOLE WORLD ENDED. Lightning bolts shot through me, it felt as though I was being squeezed in a vice, and everything sounded like screaming (because as I would find out later, I was screaming). 999 (Dying-emergency-number) called and EMTs arrived. EKG finds tachycardia, vitals are bad. Blues and Twos are sounded, off we go to the same A&E (because while I had a choice, I was told the same A&E would be better, because “they have you on record from last night”. Oh goodie). Lots of blood drawn, CT differential finds no heart damage but fluid on the spleen, infection somewhere, but no heart attack. Did anyone check my lower left abdomen? WHY NO THEY DID NOT.
Flash forward two weeks. I’m still in pain, antibiotics for “UTI” long since finished, and I call my GP. She listens to symptoms and for the first time actually thinks it might be my lady bits. I have private insurance as well as NHS so she makes a referral and I get an appointment for a private hospital visit that weekend.
A photo posted by Shea Wong (@sheawong) on
Mar 31, 2015 at 11:25am PDT
Explanation of NHS vs. private health care for the US people: Everyone here who has legal recourse to health care who’s been here 6 months or more. Even if you’re a tourist who gets hurt, you aren’t refused treatment, you’re just billed. But as everyone has healthcare, for non-massive-emergencies (paediatrics, cancer diagnosis), you can wait up to 18 weeks for treatment (it should be noted we’ve never waited that long, but that is the very end cap of waiting). However, if you have private insurance, you can pay for the privilege of seeing a private doctor on a truncated timeline. Many of the doctors are also NHS docs (for instance, my gyno is Monday-Friday NHS, but Saturday private), you just get to see them quicker. So you aren’t jumping the line for NHS services, you’re taking yourself out of the queue altogether and going with a different set of providers. Also, they have nicer lobbies and you get free candy, so that’s nice.
IMMA GUNNA EAT ALL YOUR LOBBY CANDY, DOC. IMMA GUNNA EAT IT ALLLLLLLLLLLLL.
A photo posted by Shea Wong (@sheawong) on
Mar 31, 2015 at 11:31am PDT
If medical equipment had fashion accessories, the trans vaginal wand would always wear a fedora. #Fact #realblogging #instathought #instaquote #thoughtoftheday #patientexperience #womenshealth
A photo posted by Shea Wong (@sheawong) on
Mar 24, 2015 at 6:00am PDT
Bloods and many scans are done (I’ll spare you all the delightful discussion of a 15 minute Roto-Rooter session with the 10” trans-vaginal wand to get the internal sonograms) and essentially a few weeks ago a big fat ovarian cyst burst and bled into what is called the pouch of Douglas, which is very very painful and in no way like a UTI, ffs. They can also see more cysts, and what looks like a long tubular cyst, which everyone in the sonogram suite makes odd noises about when they look at it on the monitor. A week later, follow up bloods and scans ordered, and what’s called a CA-125 test. CA-125 is a marker test for ovarian cancer. Ovarian cancer is one of the most pernicious and lethal cancers out there. And my score is abnormal.
Fuck.
I have a chronic illness of bipolar disorder, so I’m pretty pragmatic about life. You get sick, you get better, world keeps spinning, all that. But as so many in my family had various cancers, it’s…for the first time I get scared. Proper scared.
A photo posted by Shea Wong (@sheawong) on
Mar 31, 2015 at 12:48pm PDT
The second scan shows the same big fat long structure, and cyst, and fibroids on the uterus (et tu, uterus?), but there’s a bit of an issue. My private gyno team are all leaving on holidays as it’s Holy Week, so I’m told if anything changes (temp spike, vomiting, etc), to contact hospital.
A photo posted by Shea Wong (@sheawong) on
Apr 1, 2015 at 2:00pm PDT
LITERALLY THE NEXT DAY: Wake up weak, shaking, sick to stomach, can’t even keep dry toast down. (Sidebar: Why do people suggest dry toast for nausea? You might as well recommend very small rocks for me to swallow, because they will feel exactly the same when I vomit two seconds later. Next time I feel sick, I’m eating pudding – it may not help the stomach, but at least it’s nice and soft immediately coming back up). I call gyno’s office, and are told GO RIGHT NOW TO A&E. AND FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, NOT THE ORIGINAL ONE. So I haul myself to Chelsea A&E and after a few hours in the waiting room, get stabilized and told I can stay the night and have a scan in the morning, or go home and come back for the scan. I just want my own bed, so I go home, not realizing it’d be my last night in my own bed for nearly a week.
Next morning all of us (husband had to take off work to look after kid) go back to hospital, and scan is performed. The big long poofy thing in me ins’t a cyst, oh no – it’s one of my fallopian tubes, blown up like a gorram Macy’s Thanksgiving Day balloon and starting to wrap around everything. They tell me they’re getting me a bed NOW. I ask if I can go home to get some stuff. I’m told no. My husband and son run home to pack a bag, and I’m shuffled upstairs and immediately started on a number of antibiotics, all through a cannula (shunt) in my hand.
I would make the worst heroin addict, as I’m just a terrible stick, something that the nurse found out relatively quickly as she filled my arms with small holes trying to find a viable vein. A friggin’ child’s cannula later, my tiny veins were pumping with chemicals, and I’m stuck lying on a bed in a ward of six people, where I was easily the youngest by 20 years. One lady was in triple digits. Okay. Cool.
My husband comes back to drop off a bag, but can’t stay as visiting hours are only between 3-8, and it was only noon or so by this time, so I hug my kid (who is very very wary of the ward, and won’t touch my hand with the tubes coming out of it), and one-handedly unpack an emergency bag that he brought, and settle in. I’m on a number of drips that are replenished at various hours of the day and night, but quickly find a rhythm that allows me to “unplug” and at least go for a walk occasionally.
A photo posted by Shea Wong (@sheawong) on
Apr 2, 2015 at 8:11am PDT
The ward is nice enough, and the staff are absolutely lovely, but it’s hard to get comfortable. Creature comforts, even the sound of my child’s voice in the background, does so much to raise the spirits, and I find myself feeling like the girl at the party that didn’t get asked to dance as visiting hours arrive and I’m the only one without a family member or friend at their bed. I at least have my phone and can text husband and kid with photos to make sure he’s okay.
The nights are the worst. I can’t move because the IVs get tangled. I can’t relax because I’m scared, and all the doctors know so far is “the infection is bad, we have to get the infection down before we can do anything else”, so I have nothing but the darkness and the beeping of machines to keep the constant fear at bay.
There is a specific kind of recycled air in hospitals, especially wards, which reminds me of being on a long-haul flight. You know when you wake up from a nap on a flight, and your mouth tastes like you’ve been rimming Chewbacca for three hours straight? You make that gross-face-slo-mo-lip-smacking move, press the call button, and order a gin and tonic to kill the vileness. Not so here. The next morning not even three sessions of vigorous teeth brushing can remove the essence of wookie brown-eye from my mouth.
A photo posted by Shea Wong (@sheawong) on
Apr 3, 2015 at 8:56am PDT
It wasn’t all awfulness. When the kid would visit we’d play with his little cars, or cuddle. We made an Easter bonnet with a cardboard vomit bucket and stickers, and when the nurses weren’t looking I’d help him on the bed and he’d use the remote to make the bed go up and down, which he loved. The view of London was nice, a big vista of the Thames on the horizon, from St Pauls all the way to Battersea Power station. I spend lots of hours just staring out the window while the chemicals dripped in.
A photo posted by Shea Wong (@sheawong) on
Apr 4, 2015 at 6:20am PDT
This was not the first time I’d spent the night at this hospital. This mobile spans 7 stories inside the hospital, and the first time I saw it was when the kid was less than a week old, rushed here when he couldn’t wake up from a nap, not even the EMTs could revive him. I spent one of the worst nights of my life willing him to be okay as he slept in a specialised pod on the 3rd floor. This mobile was outside my window and was all I could see when I had to look away from my boy and wipe back tears.
I hate this stupid fucking mobile.
***
Every afternoon I see the doctors, and I play verbal poker with them.
“So, I’ll be gone today?”
“Well, we’ll have to look at the bloods, but if it all looks good, we’ll certainly try.”
Me later to the nurses…
“How did the bloods look?”
“Well…why don’t you get some rest.”
Fuck, I’m staying another night.
Pre-dawn at the hospital. So quiet.
A photo posted by Shea Wong (@sheawong) on
Apr 4, 2015 at 10:23pm PDT
After five days and four nights at Villa con Bedpan, I finally get more than just tepid “wells” at the idea of leaving, and I start packing my bags. I get a big bag of oral antibiotics to take throughout the day and night for the next two weeks, and then another scan will take place in about two weeks, and hopefully the fallopian tube will have shrunk and won’t have been shown to be hiding any cancer, and CA-125 will be tested again, and if worse comes to worse, they’ll do keyhole surgery to rip a bunch of stuff out.
What has stuck out at me of this whole situation is a stitch in time saves nine. If they’d have scanned me a month ago, a lot of pain, time, effort, and resources could have been saved. The other thing that stood out was that I have no idea what on earth is actually going on with my ladybits. I’m great at getting smears, and I’m not afraid to talk to my doctor about any issues, but pelvic diseases or illnesses are still really not spoken about. Ovarian cancer is the biggest gynaecological killer of UK women, and ovarian cancer overall is one of the most deadly cancers a body can deal with, but I don’t think I’d ever heard about its dangers till I had to use Dr. Google (which is never a good idea). I didn’t even know that PID (pelvic inflammatory disease) can also be caused by birth trauma where bacteria finds host in scar tissue, or in women who’ve had an IUD. And if me, the it’s-cool-to-talk-about-sex-and-tmi-stuff-because-it-saves-lives doesn’t know about it, what will happen to a young woman who’s afraid to speak out when she’s in pain?
SO. If you’ve made it through the (looks at word counter) cripes 2133 words so far, and you have any worries or twingles/twangs of pain, or just feel like something might be a bit ‘off’, GO TO YOUR DOCTOR. Get a smear, get a scan, talk to your family about your genetic history of cancers and disease, and if you see a pattern, ask to be tested for the BCAR1 gene which can indicate a predilection to breast and ovarian cancer, and for goodness’ sake, keep asking questions. I might have my reproductive options ended for me in two weeks without any personal imput, don’t let the same thing happen to you.
Some links you might want to check out:
Fact sheet on Pelvic Inflammatory Disease
CDC broadsheet on PID
Ovarian Cancer Action
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