Be loud, be clear

This week is all about raising awareness about bowel cancer. Reading other peoples blog posts on this made me wonder how long I have been living with this without knowing. This post is going to look back over the last few years and point out some of what I believe were indicators which I ignored, or put down to other things. Let's go back almost 2 years to when I gave birth to Imogen. Something wasn't right in my nether regions. I can vividly remember going to my 6 week postnatal check and telling the doctor I felt that everytme I opened my bowels it felt like I was passing a hedgehog. That is the best way to describe some of the pain I was in. Sometimes it would take a long time to come and the pain would be quite long lasting. One time on the way to Somerset to visit my family I went to the toilet at Fleet and was still in pain when we left the A303 and joined the A358. For those of you whose geography is not to good, that's about 2 hours of pain. Not excruciating, unbearable pain, but the kind of niggling pain that you are aware of. Going back to the 6 week postnatal check, the GP had a look (not something I enjoy,but something I have experienced a lot over the last 2 years) and diagnosed simple piles. The solution - lactulose. This is supposed to work by softening your stools making them easier to pass. It did, but there was still pain. So I went back to the GP. Saw a different GP this time. I remember him being impressed with Imogen's sucking blister as she was about 10-12 weeks old. He was also impressed I was still breast feeding. But that is a whole other story. He had a look (see not even 6 months in and 2 people have had a look!!). He diagnosed a rectal tear and pescribed a rectal ointment which gave me incredible headaches about 25 minutes after applying, not good when you have a not yet 2 year old and maybe 3 month old baby. The rectal appointment worked, but I had to use it for about 6 weeks so kept on going back for repeat prescriptions. Now I am wondering whether the intermittant bleeding might have been an early warning sign. To be frank here this probe has been around for the last two years and in the end I tarted to just accept that I would get a bit constipated, pass some very painful stools and then things would clear up. Over the remainder of 2010 things settled then flared up and the settled down again. Towards the end of 2010 or the start of 2011 I spoke to my little sister, who was training to be a nurse about that fact that sometimes I would be constipated in the morning, but have unbelievably loose bowels in the evening. At the time she saidnothing. Since then she has said that it did raise some red flags for her, but she was dealing with her own issues at the time. Following our car crash in February, I started too notice a few other health problems. 1. I was loosing weight. Not massive weight dropping off me but enough that some of my clothes were starting to get lose. Several people commented on it. I assumed it was down to the fact that I was walking a lot and eating healthily with 2 toddlers to encourage to eat. 2. I was getting dizy spells. Sometimes when I stood up too quickly which is common if your blood pssure is low. However these were not exclusive events. Sometimes I would almost black out when hanging the washing out, or standingat the hob. Another thing that was not ideal with 2 young children. 3. Stomach and bowel problem were getting worse. Not only was I having constipation and loose stools in the same day at least one every couple of weeks, but the stomach pains that went with them were immense. I would be doubled over Iain. A couple of people have asked how I knew they weren't period pains.lets leave it with as a woman you know. 4. Finally the breathlessness. Pushing a pushchair with two toddlers is hard enough work, but I remember taking the children to Wakehurst and being absolutely exhausted so much so that they fell asleep in the car and whe we got home I fell asleep in the car too. Towards the end of May things came to a head on camp with Anthony's scout troop. I was camping with two toddlers at the tool of a massive hill and had horrendous diarrhoea and vommitting. But still I put off going to the GP. Eventually after another 6 weeks I finally managed to get a child free day and a doctors appointment on the same day. The outstanding diagnosis - low blood pressure and come back for blood tests next week. I never made it to those blood tests, by then I had been admitted to hospital and was causing a lot of medical professionals a headache. So, in hindsight, what would I have done? It seems such a easy thing to say but I would have badgered my GP. I would have gone every month and made a fuss about the pain I was in, the discomfort I was experiencing and I would not have taken no for an answer. If I knew the what I know now about bowel cancer and complications I would have lived at my GP surgery until I got investigations and knew why things were so bad. What do I want you to do? If there is anything worrying you about your bowel habits please go to the GP. Yes it might be cancer, but it moght not and if it is you want it caught it early so you don't go through the uncertainty that it have over the last 6 months.

Another eventful weekend

Things are never quiet in my life. Just once I'd llke a nice restful weekend, where I can look after my kids and not rely on others. Ut not this one it would seem. Two points here.... 1. This post will be graphic, squeamish people may not want to read it 2. It is written from my hospital bed using my fancy new iPad! Things kicked off on Friday with more stomach cramps. These were different to the summers cramps and were more all over. Oh great I though, nice after weeks of loose motions courtesy of chemo now comes the blockages!! Phone call to the gp, emergency appointment and a prescription for suppositories and movicol followed with instructions that things should be moving over the weekend. So we went home and started operation 'get Ruth's bowels moving'. Suppositories went in & then came straight back out again, almost like there was some sort of force field preventing them working. I took the movicol, and although it tasted unpleasant it had no noticeable effect. That evening things went from bad to worse. Ate about three mouthfuls of tea before I bought it back up. That started to worry me. The gp had asked if I had been vommiting, and I started to wonder whether this was more than just a bit of constipation. I took another dose of movicol and thought that would be that. How wrong I was. Almost immediately it came back up. This pattern continued all night, I must have vomited about 6 or 8 times & I still hadn't been to the toilet, despite sitting on it for what felt like hours. I resolved over night to go to a&e in the morning because I knew this wasn't right. So he next morning we drove up to Redhill and found out what a magic word chemo is. No waiting around for me, straight to assessment. I explained about the vomitting and feeling blocked up, so they sent me for some X-rays to have a look at want was going on. This doctor didn't seem to concerned about the vommiting, which worried me as I was mow concerned about this. He decided to give me and enema and wait and see if it worked. They also gave me an IV drip and some senna, then sent me home with more senna, movicol and some painkillers and instructions to come back if things hadn't moved by Monday. Thanks at this point go to the lovely Sophie, who came all the way to East Surrey to collect me and took me home. I tried to have some tea, then sent Tony out to get the prescription. After a Strictly Come Dancing fix and a Merlin perv I bit the bullet and took some more movicol & the senna and vomited he movicol straight back up, and then spent the night vomitting what looked and smelt like senna tablets. Sunday was a repeat of Saturday, back to Redhill, back to assessment, back on fluids, back to x ray. They seemed to take the vomiting a lot more seriously and I got moved into surgical assessment unit. The consultant I saw said that they were concerned about a blockage caused by my summer adventures & scar tissue, so by were arranging a ct scan and I would need to have an NG tube and a catheter to monitor my outputs. Having an NG tube is a very unpleasant experience. There was a lot of vomitting and choking having a tube inserted through your nose and down the back of your throat. Watching what comes out is an interesting experience! There followed another ct scan, with a difference this time, the contrast leaked into my vein and so there was some pain and swelling in the back of my hand. The ct scan showed an obstruction in my small bowel linked to my scar tissue which needs clearing. So it looked like I was in for the long haul again. Finally at midnight I got moved onto the ward and things became explosive and remained explosive all night! So now I am sitting here in my hospital bed, with the NG tube disconnected, and am on free fluids, which I think means jelly, jelly, jelly!!

The Entourage and a Dr on a Power trip July 19th

If I thought Tuesday was going to be a quite day in hospital I was wrong. 


I had assumed that as I would not have been seen by the consultant until Wednesday if I had still been an outpatient the same would have applied as an inpatient.


I was wrong. 


They must start work really early in hospital because the entourage came around to see me quite early. It must have been between 10 and 11. I think I might have to explain 'the entourage'. It usually consisted of between 3 and 5 people maybe even more and was normally at least one consultant, although on Tuesday morning it was both consultants, & 2 or more others who I have since found out are the 'registrars', 'senior house officers' & 'house officers'. All of whom are really Dr's at different levels. There would normally be one of the staff nurses from the ward who would be in there as well. 


So 'the entourage' arrived and made some polite small talk about how was I feeling etc. Then they landed their bombshell. Just like that. The biopsy results were inconclusive, there might have been some traces of cancer (except they didn't say it like that & it is only now that I realise that they were trying to prepare me that it probably was) and because the results were inconclusive they wanted to operate as soon as possible, ideally Thursday or Friday.


I hate this bit of hospital. Visiting hours are all in the afternoon or evening, so someone can come and drop a bombshell like this on you and then you have to deal with it on your own and have to try and translate it and remember all the crucial bits to discuss with your family later when actually what you, or more accurately I, wanted to do when my family came in was forget where I was, play with my kids who had done nothing to deserve this and spend an hour to an hour and a half being mummy rather than a cancer patient. 


I spent the rest of the morning and time to visiting time watching the builders outside and generally just relaxing and trying to come to terms with what had happened earlier.


Mum bought the kids in and we explained about Mummy having a baddy in her tummy and that the dr's were going to have to snip it out of mummy but then she would be all better. Then they found some of my scraps of wool and the blue floor and had great fun pretending to go fishing and crabbing from the bed and the chairs. Lots of fish were caught and released, never say that I am not teaching my children good marine stewardship!!


Later once mum and the kids had gone and tea had been eaten - More sandwiches, Tony came in and bought some of the things I had forgotten to pack like my ipod charger and other things. 


I realised later on that the laxative I had been given the day before had still not worked and I was starting to be in quite a lot of pain from both the tumor and the blockage. I resolved to be brave and ask the staff nurse for something.


This is when I encountered the 'Dr on a Power Trip'


I explained the situation to the staff nurse and asked if there was anything I was able to take because of how uncomfortable I was. She explained that she would have to call the on call Dr and get them to prescribe something. She came back about 10 minutes later and said that the Dr had refused to prescribe anything because I should have asked my consultant that morning. How ridiculous is that. How was I supposed to know at 10am that I would be this blocked up and uncomfortable by 10pm? She was very understanding and went back and tried again. The response was the same. Tough, she should have done something about it this morning. If I had a crystal ball I would have. Lets face it, after childbirth you have very little dignity left but this was an uncomfortable situation at the best of times. In the end we (the staff nurse & I) decided that if I wasn't able to have something to relieve the pain and help unblock we would control the pain, so I got some more oromorph. But it worked and I slept.