Adventures in A&E

I've been very poorly for 7 months.

The culprits, it turns out, are two enormous ovarian cysts, one of each side. It's not been a pleasant 7 months and I've written a lot about it. Poetry about the strange shadow of pain, about the mental toll, about my body becoming alien to me.

This here is a very different piece. A journal entry if you will, documenting the unbelievable 27 hours we spent in A&E back when it all began. The dark comedy of that brightly lit room, filled with sick and bleeding people.

Let's go back to the beginning. Prepare to laugh, because if you don't laugh, you'll cry.

PROLOGUE

Looking back I can see that I was not well for months, years before my body broke. I was struggling with digestive issues, bone breaking exhaustion, spells of light headedness, massive mood swings, anxiety and the kind of depression I'd only read about.

I assumed it was food intolerances, I assumed it was my mental health - I did CBT and counselling, I changed my diet, I changed my work schedule - I assumed it was because I was in my 30s now (what on earth, Elle...) and that I would just have to cope with it.

Yes, my brain had an incredible ability to normalise just about anything. Can anyone else relate?

I was a 33 year-old woman with such bad fatigue and joint pain that I couldn't walk my dog without needing to lie down for several hours. I had to choose between going for coffee with a friend and putting dishes in the dishwasher, because I didn't have the energy for both. I couldn't manage going to the supermarket anymore; walking up the stairs exhausted me; I slept over 10 hours a night and I was still tired. But that's totally fine, right? Stress, probably. I am neurodivergent definitely. Yeah. Everything is totally fine.

...

Welcome to Elle's account of A&E. Of a night shift doctor with shaking hands shoving a needle into my vein while crouched on the floor. Of pain so intense that I couldn't move. Of liquid morphine washing over me in a swooning wave of nothingness.

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PART ONE. YAMS'S FACE EXPLODES

This may seem irrelevant to a story all about me. But trust me. It's where it all began.

The date was Monday, August 26th. Bank holiday. I'd been struggling with 4 day work weeks at the spa, because of - you guessed it - crippling fatigue. Woke up on my day off and one side of Yams's face had blown up like he'd contracted mumps in one cheek. A half chipmunk.

A tooth abscess. We called 111 (the UK non-emergency line) and they sent asked us to go to the emergency department, so off we went. I bundled Yams in my car and we drove to Ysbyty Gwynedd hospital in Bangor.

A&E had a small waiting room, a rectangle, kind of unimpressive and at the time quite full of people, sitting in a morose, yet undramatic, fashion. Rows of red PVC chairs, a string of 3 or 4 in a row then an arm rest (this will be an important detail later). It had feverishly bright overhead lighting, a water filter machine that didn't work, a couple of vending machines and three toilets.

A wall of glass looked out over the ambulance car park, the reception desk ran along one wall, straight ahead were the three triage doors and then set back from these were the great double doors themselves. The doors that lead you to the land of plenty, the land of rescue, of medications and doctors. So we sat and waited for his name to be called through those blessed double doors.

We waited 6 hours. It was boring. Yams was in pain but he held up well, and we played crosswords and we didn't talk to anybody and nothing very dramatic happened.

We ended up having to drive to a Glan Clwyd hospital where they had a dental expert; where we waited another few hours, got given sandwiches (much appreciated, thank you) and Yams had his abscess sorted by a very competent doctor (I'll spare you the details). We left the house at 6pm and we got back the next morning at 7:15am, via a McDonalds that buckled the last of our stoicism by having switched to the breakfast menu at 5am. Nobody wants the breakfast menu, McDonalds. Nobody.

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PART TWO. RECOVERY DAY/ELLE GETS AN ILLNESS

We both slept most of that day. It had been an excruciating 12 hours, but disaster had been averted and Yams's face was saved.

I woke up on Wednesday and I felt unwell. I felt like I had flu. I felt like I'd been hit over the head with a mallet. Plus my belly was very unhappy, not helped by spending 12 hours sitting on thin chairs in a God awful fluorescent box.

By Thursday, I was genuinely concerned about my stomach. I snagged a cancellation at my GP, wobbled on in and it turned out my urine sample had an infection and I had a temperature. A feverish, infected doll. So the GP gave me antibiotics and I went home, with the weekend cleared of work, expecting to get over my illness once the UTI had been flung from my system.

Famous last words.

My fever raged on Friday. I had such bad chills that I thought I would shake apart and Yams had to wrestle me away from hot water bottles. He dabbed a cool wash cloth on my forehead and shoved the thermometer under my tongue every hour. Got through it though. The fever seemed to break.

PART THREE. PAIN.

Then came Saturday. August 31st. 8am and wham. Pain hit my abdomen. And not discomfort and bloating. Not the slight spangly pain I described to the GP. This was a twisting, consuming, immovable pain. Sudden and absolute, taking over my whole abdomen as it began to swell and swell. I was watching phases of pregnancy pass in the space of forty-five minutes. Within the hour, I looked 7 months pregnant and I could only get up by rolling onto my side and then hinging up onto my elbow.

We called 111 and they sent us to our local minor injuries unit. By this point I could barely sit up without Yams levering my shoulders up for me.

They took more urine samples but there was nothing wrong with them. They called A&E and spoke to the surgical team, bandying ideas around like a ruptured appendix or an ovarian cyst that had exploded. The thought of returning to A&E only 5 days after our last experience was horrifying but the minor injuries nurse pointed out that we were going in at the behest of the surgical doctors and we would be addressed directly by them as soon as they were free. So it shouldn't be as long as it was last time.

A pause to allow me to laugh and laugh and laugh.

Which I can do now.

Because apart from not being able to get up by myself I also couldn't laugh or sneeze or cough without pain, such unimaginable pain. Ha. The only way Yams knows how to make me feel better is to try and make me laugh and he couldn't even do that. He looked like a lost puppy. All he could do was lift and lower me, lift and lower me; drive me where we were going whilst suppressing all of his natural driving habits of fast, sharp and fun: and, of course, be my extraordinary mouthpiece. An extraordinary man.

So he lifted me up and lowered me into the car and we drove back to A&E.

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PART FOUR. BACK TO A&E

It hurt and hurt. It hurt to stand, it hurt to sit. I needed to lie down. The A&E waiting room was very full, not enough seats to lie down on especially with the idiotic arm rests every three chairs. But I couldn't sit, I felt as if I would black out. So Yams took me over to the far end, next to the children's games, and he levered me down onto the floor under the countless eyes of people. I put my head on his bag. And it began.

We thought it would be a couple of hours at most. But the surgical team got pulled into emergency surgery. They were saving lives and that was amazing, but the pain wouldn't stop.

It was just pain and lights burning my eyes and people everywhere. And although I was the only one on the floor and incited slight curiosity, there was already a sense of the unbelievable being normal. The sense that anything could happen in that waiting room and we would simply blink with bovine misery. Accept it. Move on.

We were seen by a triage nurse who asked what my pain was out of 10. I said a 9. She looked at me sceptically, not believing a word of it. She asked if I had had any painkillers. I said I'd only had paracetamol, but it hadn't worked. She said, let's start you with more paracetamol and we'll see how you go. Alright, thanks...

Back to the floor.

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PART FIVE. THE CHARACTERS OF A&E

It was different to the bank holiday. Yes, there was that sheep like endurance, to sit in a pack and await our saviours. But there was also ripples of personality this time. With Yams not in pain he was far more social. He would regularly step outside to get some air, always drawing people to him. I was a mild spectacle on the floor and he was asked about me.

We met a man with rainbow coloured lego earrings and phenomenally shaped eyebrows. He became our bestie throughout the horrific night and day that followed. He was COOL.

There was one woman who'd been headbutted by her boyfriend and thought that was totally fine. I wanted to point out that it really wasn't. She got me a blanket from reception, nice lady. She also started getting real friendly with a man who was astonishly high, and who would tell anyone who listened that he didn't know who had hit him in the side of the head with a bat but that his eye was now wonky.

I hope they have a thriving future. Any man who doesn't head butt you is a better boyfriend than one who does, right?

There was a girl who had taken an unknown drug and was tripping so very hard, in the worst possible place for it. Loud, crowded, bloody, brightly lit A&E. If only she'd told her boyfriend about the drug bit when he got home, he wouldn't have mistaken her manic convulsions for seizures and got her a taxi to the biggest bad trip of all time.

Then there was the drunk girl who arrived like a hurricane, shrieking (while laughing) that her toes had fallen off. Streaming blood behind her because she'd stubbed two of her toe nails almost entirely off. I told her she should tape them down and they'd sort themselves out. Lego earrings whispered that I may have convinced her to leave (not my sole intention, I swear) but then she got called. It seemed that if you were drunk and rowdy or accompanied by law enforcement, you were speeded through.

Because oh yeah, by the middle of the night, the police began turning up with young men they had arrested who needed medical attention. They would stand around in knots wearing stained bandages that dripped onto the floor.

The cleaner would periodically come by and mop up the blood. After a few hours it just became normal.

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PART SIX. SURGICAL TEAM.

Finally got seen by a surgical doctor, who had the stressed look of a deer trying to outrun a forest fire. Through the precious double doors, I waddled. Blood tests. He had to leave the room several times to get things he'd forgotten. There was the sense of an impending disaster. His hands shook so badly he could hardly get the needle in (I had a bruise for 3 months). I sat and watched. I felt sorry for him. I felt sorry for myself. I wanted to not feel anything anymore. I had a CT scan and Yams and I were sat in the corridor while I was given antibiotics.

A nurse came over and asked about my pain. Bear in mind that this was now 18 hours after the pain had first started. Also bear in mind the peculiar power of downplaying your own suffering. It may seem incredible that I wasn't begging them for pain relief every chance I got. But I didn't, I sat there and I endured it because that's what I thought I was supposed to do. I didn't know what to ask for, I didn't know how to voice my pain. As much a sheep as everyone else, my mind scattered to the four winds.

This nurse asked me about my pain and then he asked if I would like some liquid morphine. And I said gaspingly, wholeheartedly, tearfully, "yes please".

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PART SEVEN. SWEET SWEET MORPHINE.

Morphine was a swoony, dreamy, strange experience. There was pain and then twenty minutes later this static wave of fuzzy, gorgeous nothingness rolled over me and I was suspended in an ocean of soft white serenity. For the first time since 8am Saturday, I was relatively pain free and I could curl up in my uncomfortable chair and sleep.

Later, we were called through again to be told that I had no emergency surgical needs and all the CT had flagged was some mild inflammation in my small intestine. (It should be noted here that they also spotted a cyst on my left ovary, but it wasn't ruptured...so they didn't even tell me...)

The surgical team referred me to the medical team, which meant waiting from the beginning of the list again. Oof. We were already blind with exhaustion. All we could do was numbly agree and limp back to the waiting room.

I settled back on the floor, in veritable splendour this time because Yams had gone home to fetch me pillows and a camp mat. I slept off and on, not able to fully relax because we were both poised for my name. And because every time I closed my eyes the morphine made me see twisting fleshy images, gore and blood and screaming mouths in the blackness of my eyelids and my head span and nausea rocked me like a ship.

I asked for more morphine when the pain kicked me in the soul again because I'd take the nausea over the pain anyday and finally we were seen through to discuss options.

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PART EIGHT. THE MEDICAL TEAM

I can't remember this bit very well. It must have been the afternoon of Sunday by now. My mum started driving up so that Yams could go home and sleep. I was allowed to stay in the consultation room while I had another drip of tazocin (big, strong antibiotic) and they said it was either an infection or an inflammatory bowel disease.

An infection would be treated with antibiotics, IBD (Crohn's or colitis) with steroids and further treatment. The consultant was confused as to why I would have IBD when I was on immunosuppressants already, since IBD is an autoimmune disease. So they were going for antibiotics first. I was to have three of them (I think?) and then we would decide on the next steps.

My mum arrived and what a sight I must have been, with my swollen belly and my feral eyes, worn to the bone from pain. Yams very reluctantly left to get some sleep. They allowed me to stay in the consultation room until it was needed so that I could lie on the treatment couch. I covered my eyes with some paper towel and just lay there. The nurse brought me a Quorn chicken curry. I felt like a trapped animal. I was howling inside to get out.

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PART NINE. SHOULD I STAY OR SHOULD I GO.

The consultant was kind. A man in an impossible position. I needed to be admitted into hospital but he said, no, there were no beds available for me at that time. He was hesitant to let me go home but the only other option would be for me to wait in the waiting room until a bed became available. I've learned since that it is a logistical nightmare once a patient leaves hospital and becomes an "outpatient" of any kind. Once you're in, you should stay in.

However, he understood my savage need to sleep in my bed. That I could no longer lie on the floor. After 27 hours in A&E, I needed the cool darkness of my room, I needed my cats. I felt vampiric under those lights. A shadow loving creature forced out into the bright light.

So the kind, kind consultant let me go home and arranged calls for the next day. Admission then, admission soon. By then, I didn't care.

I asked about pain relief but it would take time to process a prescription so I abandoned that plan. Wholeheartedly, I abandoned it and waddled out into the night. Nothing felt better than those first sips of fresh air.

Mum started driving me home and immediately I felt sick. We didn't get too far before mum had to pull over, but instead of vomiting I burst into tears and I sobbed and sobbed and sobbed out the last 27 fluorescent hours of hell. In the whole 7 months, I've only cried like that one other time.

Home and bed. And the wonder of my bed....there are no words. I slept like a dead animal, pain and all.

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PART TEN. WHERE I'M AT NOW

I ended up being hospitalised twice. The story of the last 7 months would fill a book. Most of the people who treated me - doctors, nurses and healthcare assistants - were incredible humans: compassionate and caring, working in horrific conditions with not nearly enough resources.

I learned so many uncomfortable truths about our healthcare system while in hospital. I saw a lot of elderly people with no autonomy, who couldn't go to the bathroom without the help of an overworked human who had eyes near breaking point. I had to advocate for myself very loudly (an uncomfortable learning curve for me) because there were simply not enough staff and simply too many jobs, not enough beds and too many sick patients.

I noticed how most of the patients were elderly and sometimes a patient would be stuck in hospital because their care home didn't want them back and the hospital couldn't find another one that would take them. It seems there's a flaw with the social aid side of society, the care for the elderly side. But it's complex, isn't it? It's far above my pay grade.

Ultimately, the staff who cared for me have my endless gratitude and respect. I couldn't do what they do.

I made friends in hospital, I was hugged by other female patients when I found out I had ovarian cysts and thought I might lose my ovaries. (I'll be writing another piece specifically on my ovarian cyst journey)

But A&E was hell. It was hell. I never want to go back. It's not normal to think that an environment like that is normal.

I'm planning on writing to the hospital and asking them to change the lighting in the waiting room. Such a small change. But why not create a more loving space? A space of ambient light? Let people rest. Nobody there wanted to be blinded by strip bulbs all night. Nobody would. All it did was add to people's suffering.

On Monday, I'm going in for surgery to have my ovarian cysts removed and then I hope this journey is over. I've decided to believe that it will be over.

Cross your fingers and toes for me!