GOING INTO HOSPITAL AS A DAY PATIENT – PART 2

day patient

Here I am on the Monday, back in hospital at 9 am as I was told to get there early.

All the nurses are busy running around attending to other patients and I was told to sit down and that ‘my nurse’ will be with me shortly.  Before long it was 10 am and I was told it was now time to see if they can put the cannula drip in for the iron IV.

Now let me tell you a bit about me, my veins are very very very very difficult to find.  Hence, going into hospital for me is never a pleasant experience.  

So, ‘my nurse’ tries twice to get into my veins with no joy; he goes away to call someone else, who also tries twice to no avail and then another nurse is called who tries twice and gets lucky on the second attempt.  By this time, I wanted to scream the place down and also wanted to get out of there as fast as I could but I remained calm on the outside and asked God to help me through this torture.  

I had a nurse tell me that I should have taken a shot of alcohol before coming into hospital, as it would help find my veins; a joke I am sure but was not laughing or finding anything at this time funny as it was now about 11.30 am.  It has taken 1.30 hrs to find my veins!  

The iron IV was finally put in at 11.45 am and it went on till after 5 pm.  I was given some IV premeds against any infections and these made me fill drowsy.  I don’t know what your experience has been with being given iron IV but as it was going into my body, it felt like frozen water was being poured inside of me.  At a point in time, I was very cold and shivering.  I asked if they had a fan heater and with the answer being no, I settled for a blanket to cover me and keep me warm.  The basement where the haematology department is situated is cold in itself, so that did not help matters.

I got home after 6 pm, luckily, home is not too far from hospital.  I was not well, I felt cold and had some slight joint pains.  I took some Paracetamol and Ibuprofen for a couple of days.  On the third day, the joints pains had moved to my back and rib cages, I then had to start taking Codeine.  On the fourth day, I felt I might end up in hospital as the pains were worse than Thursday.  Thankfully, I had some Morphine at home, took it for two days.  The pain started to ease off from the day I started taking Morphine, Phew!  What a week, it all started with just going in to get some iron IV on Monday.

What about you?  What experience of your day hospital visit would you like to share?