HOSPITAL EXPERIENCE!!

So it has been one crazy month. One day shadowing a doctor in a hospital to the next day being rushed into hospital myself!

I am not an ill person at all and if I think back there has never been a point in my life where I have been extremely poorly. However with what started as just a sore throat has completely changed my whole year.

I was taken to the doctors with a sore throat one day and diagnosed with Acute Tonsillitis and then 3 days later I am lying on an examination table with drips connected here there and everywhere!

Now I’m not having a go at the NHS at all and I’m completely aware that there are just too many ill people and not enough hospital beds! But spending 40 something hours on a doctors examination table is not nice. To be honest I didn’t know if I was coming or going, my temperature was 40 degrees and I couldn’t eat or drink. The ear, nose and throat doctor said that they had never seen tonsils as big as mine there was no gap at the back of my throat. I couldn’t even talk!

After 2 days I was finally put into a little ward and kept there for a night. I was on such high steroids and painkillers that I was actually able to eat without feeling pain which ended up giving me a false sense of being better. I was released from hospital and as soon as the steroids stopped working I was rushed back for another 3 days of drips and blood tests and uncomfortable beds!

It has been a very eye opening experience and definitely made me realise how hard doctors and nurses work. It has given me a true insight into the world of medicine and made me want to be a doctor more than anything as they sure worked some miracles on me.

One of the worst things about the whole experience was the needles! I was never scared of needles until a few years ago when a nurse failed to take my bloods multiple times and now I am terrified. It became apparent that I just have bad veins! So this time I was sat there holding onto my dads hand crying my eyes out while a nurse tried not once or twice but 5 times to put a cannula into my vein in order to give me medication (since I couldn’t swallow anything.) I can’t really remember it but I know she called me a “vampire without the red lips” as the colour just completely escaped my body. I was the same colour as my white t-shirt!!

Once I was on my drip it was just a case of waiting in the uncomfortable chair until I was better to return home and control it there. I was then diagnosed with Glandular Fever which was the reason for the Tonsillitis being so bad. This was a bit of a shock as I realised what a long recovery process I had ahead of me.

Coming home from hospital was amazing and my 3 incredible friends had filled my room with bright balloons and I had a bouquet of flowers from the boyfriend. It was so lovely to see how people think about you and the amount of get well soon cards I’ve had is crazy!

It is so so so hard recovering from this. The only thing I can do in order to get better is stay in bed. This is my 4th week of being stuck in bed with nothing to do now. Most of the day I am sleeping. I am constantly exhausted and one trip to the shop the other day and I suffered for days. Being such a busy person normally it is so hard to just lie here having no energy what so ever. I am normally busy every single day out doing something and when I’m not out then doing school work or playing the piano etc.

I have been very lucky to have such amazing and supportive friends and family and my boyfriend has been here every single day taking naps with me and watching endless movies. He must be so bored but it is all he can do and he hates seeing my like this. I am so pale and feel completely lifeless. He is so good to me. I don’t know how he comes over every day knowing all he will be doing is lying here quietly with me. He says he doesn’t think he’s helping but he doesn’t realise how much he is doing just waiting out the illness with me- there is no way I could have done this alone.

It is almost like there is a fog over my brain. For example the other day I attempted to get out some school work as I have missed so much school but I just resorted to tears as my brain couldn’t cope and it just seemed like a jumble of words.

That is when I realised that I am never going to be able to catch up on all of the school work that I have missed. I am in my A Levels now and having missed 4 weeks of school, which works out at almost 100 lessons I have missed. There is no way I can catch up with that considering the workload. So all down to this illness I am now having to take an extra year to complete my A Levels. I will now only be doing 2 subjects when I return to school and then next year go back to 4 and take a 3rd year to complete exams. This is not how I wanted to start my working life and I definitely didn’t want to be going to university a year late. But I am such a stress head that I would be unable to complete the year now having missed so much vital information just a few months before all of the big exams. It is the best way forward in my situation just such a shame since I work so hard for school and I finally had a goal set that I wanted to work towards medicine and it all seems to have been stalled.

Everyone is getting annoyed at me because I keep asking to go out and to do things because I’m so fed up of being stuck in bed but I really can’t!! I’m currently trying to convince everyone that I am well enough to spend the weekend at my boyfriends house just laying on the sofa all weekend so I am in a different environment!! I will have to wait and see. For the time being it is back to sleep and time fore some more rest!

Anyways, I’m off.

Beth xx