It was Friday night Gareth and I were walking round Tesco's in Chineham doing the weekly shop when all of a sudden the world started going dark, I almost knocked my teeth out on the handle of the shopping trolly as my legs gave way and the pain in my head that had been constant since Monday when the 'pop' happened became far far worse.
Of course the Doctors surgery was shut for the weekend by then so we had to call Hants Doc the out of hours service who insisted I got straight to Basingstoke Hospital (that's where Hants Doc were based) I wasn't there long when they put the wrist band on me and told me I wasn't leaving.
A bleed in my brain they suspected - off for a CT Scan straight away and a night in the Acute Care Ward.
When morning came they talked of 'shadows' in my head. They could be bleeds, strokes, possibly tumours or MS
Did you ever wonder how you could ever hope with everything inside you that it was 'only' MS ???
That weekend with everything in me I hoped that it was 'only MS' because that was the one that wasn't potentially fatal.
The next day they talked of MRI's and lumbar punctures - the possibility of Lyme disease while I lay curled up in the hospital bed with all the curtains drawn around me wearing wrap around sun glasses and listening to 50 shades of absolute turd as an audio book
Sunday morning came, I'm still sitting like a mole but the banging in my head is a little less severe than it had been. The curtains around my bed are now pulled back so I can people watch (through those ever so attractive wrap around shades).
Late morning the attempts to do a lumbar puncture start ......
- 5 attempts where they missed completely and on one rather spectacular 'miss' they hit the nerve for my right leg and it shot up in the air in an attempt to 'Eric Cantona' the head off the doctor who'd arsed up the first couple of attempts.
Then they give up and decide to send me up to theatre later to get it done where people have more experience at these things
It gets a bit fuzzy at this point by the time I'm taken to theatre it's probably 7-8pm my back feels like I've Gallen on one of those spiked balls on a chain you see in things like Game of Thrones and now I'm in theatre and I can't remember if they succeeded on attempt 3 or 4 I just remember sobbing and saying yes every time they asked was it 'okay if we try it again'
I think it was 9pm when they got me back to the ward - they'd said I could go home if I was okay 2 hours after the Lumbar puncture and I was damned well going home. I could take my own pain meds, lie in my own bed with the curtains closed and feel sorry for myself in comfort but the hell was I spending another night in the hospital. Gareth came and brought me home at 11pm.
It feels surreal reliving this by writing it down again ... like it happened to someone else and I guess in a way it was someone else - the other me - the one 'before MS'
I have changed - a lot, there's no denying that. Mostly for the better rather than worse I hope.
Life goes on - so I'll pick up my sword and go to war once more xx
