T’SHUVA

Thank you Carla for being such an amazing support to me through this episode. I’m so glad you’re my wife!

Thank you too Chantal for your unstinting support - the comfortable car ride, the humour and chocolate all made the nightmare bearable.

Thank you to my friends for all the lovely phone calls and encouragement - especially Denis, who knows the road that I taketh.

Well, I thought it was about time I gave you all an update.

Tuesday evening everything kicked off. I wasn’t feeling very well after our evening meal, so I went for a lie down and tried to have a nap. I was hoping the discomfort would pass off. But, oh no, it kicked in with a vengence. As Zoe was revising for her exams, I tried to keep it to myself - without much success. This lasted for about an hour as Carla became increasingly concerned for me.

Carla called the out-of-hours doctor and was advised to either take me to their surgery or get me into A&E. An ambulance was called. I did not want to move, the pain was unbelievable … I didn’t know what to do with myself. Carla also contacted our friend, Chantal for some support. Chantal dropped everyting and came over.

The girls eventually decided to drive me down to A&E as there wasn’t an ambulance available. When we arrived, there was a kerfuffle over the fact we hadn’t waited for an ambulance! I had the choice, wait in A&E in extreme pain, or call the out-of-ours doctor and ask them to fax through a referral for me to be admitted to the emergency surgical ward. We did the latter.

Once I was taken down to the surgical ward, still close to blacking out with the pain, there were no beds available. The staff were very apologetic. We could see it wasn’t their fault, they were trying to cope with limited resources - this is an indictment against the powers that be. A capital city without enough medical rescources and without enough ambulances available!

It was evident to everyone that I was in great pain. The staff decided to temporarily move someone out of a bed so they could administer a pain relief suppository and take blood samples. Within minutes I was on cloud nine and was sent back to the waiting room to await examination.

At around 2am they decided to keep me in for observation overnight and Carla and Chantal went off home. A doctor eventually saw me at 3am and I gave further samples for investigation. At 3.45am I was laying on my back in radiology having an x-ray.

The following morning, at around 8.30am, a consultant came to see me with their entourage. After a lot of questions and pokeing around, the verdict was that the kidney stone was now in my bladder. I was discharged with strict instructions to drink loads of water and take pain relief until I’d passed the stone.

So I’ve been waiting for it to pass. It’s now Friday and I’m still feeling uncomfortable - physically and at the thought of the pain of passing this stone…

Many of us like to live life to a mantra e.g. ‘keep the faith’. Mine is ‘Pass the stone.’