Aurora, Aurora

Yesterday was a horrible horrible day. Just plain awful. I woke up in the morning with the most dreadful pain I've had thus far being here and big surprise (thank you effing painkiller hating Finland) I got nothing to help with the pain. I cried hysterically for two hours until I got a very tiny dose of oxycodone (not even enough to get half of the pain away) after which I was sent to a ear-nose-throat specialist. They found nothing new and sent me back to my ward.
I did get some new medications from them to help with the swelling and the infection, but pain? No nothing. I did manage to get paracetamol, which they love to give around here, thank the Lord above. IT IS THE MOST USELESS PAINKILLER EVER.

So, later, after again crying hysterically, I lost my IV, it started leaking. So they wanted to put a new one, but found no veins, so they decided I'd get a central line catheter. For that, they need to know how quickly my blood coagulates, so new blood samples. Again, no veins to be found. Had a panic attack.

They sent me to the catheter place, place the anaesthesiologist finally got some blood out and managed to answer the coagulation issue - and they gave me such enormous amounts of sedatives and strong painkillers (this white diazepine stuff and phentanyl) that I was in no pain whatsoever for the first time in weeks. I felt so bloody happy! When I was finally done with the catheter - which took about thrice as long as normal, since they put it in the wrong way first and had to correct it - I ate and drank so much I was actually full! I can't remember when I ate that much last! Seeing as I haven't been able to eat or drink for ages.

Now finally I'm getting oxycodone as pills during the day so I can eat and drink. They're not high doses, so I still feel the pain, but it's not nearly as bad as it was. And I'm getting both antivirals and antibiotics through the IV catheter, and the swelling has slightly subsided. So today seems to be a better day than yesterday. Yesterday was horrible.
But I managed to get some photos from outside, Aurora hospital is a relatively nice place, old but pretty on a little hill.

So hospital again

So I'm in the hospital again: nothing serious, no worries, just really painful and very mysterious.

You see my lymph nodes in my neck swell up and my throat is swollen and extremely painful - nobody knows why or how, just that Valavir (valaciclovir) takes it away. However, before that happens I can't eat or drink. So I need an IV.

Now I was able to push food down with the help of the painkillers, so hopefully I won't stay here too long. I get the antivirals plus paracetamol and Tramal. It's a mild opiate. It's way stronger than plain old paracetamol but calling it an opiate feels somewhat funny. At least with the low doses - I don't get side effects or anything and even the painkilling capacity is slightly laughable. But it's definitely an improvement to paracetamol!

Hopefully I'll get out soon, but till then, I'll write from here. Tomorrow my dad should come and bring my laptop so I won't have to write from my phone.

Also: how bad can veins get? Five (5) people tried to find a vein for blood samples and after about fifteen stabs they found one miserably slow one in my left foot! I am not a happy camper.

Hospitals and Printers

So today I had two appointments in Meilahti - one for the doctor at the Pain Clinic, and one for a stomach MRI. Now seeing the doctor was no problem, she's lovely and friendly and quite talkative, and I've also gotten rid of a lot of pain, so now I don't have to take that many painkillers and she was really happy about that.

The MRI however, not my favourites. First they want to stick a hose in your nose and down into your bowels. Helll no. So I drank the stuff they wanted to pour down that aforementioned hose. Anyway, no problem there, drank the stuff (mannitol to be exact) and got a few preparing sedatives, because I was getting really really nervous. Like I've said before, I have hospitalfobia and just get panicky when in hospitals.
I was quite calm up to the point where they had to stick an IV in me for the medicine that'll show up in the scans, and just (big surprise) couldn't find a single vein.
They hit a couple, but nothing that would work, and so they had to call an anaesthesiologist to put my IV in and good God did that take long. All the while me trying to swallow my panic attack, which at the end ended up coming inside the magnet tube (which for someone not suffering from claustrophobia shouldn't be a problem).

Anyway, I survived after a lot of  crying and hyperventilating, and we went and bought me a new printer with my dad afterwards. Now I have a nice Samsung coloured laser printer! It's the best we could find here and I'm so so happy to have it!

Day XV: Getting out of hospital

Well, not quite yet, I still have to wait till Saturday, but still. I'm really looking forward to it. I'm nervous about it too, because of the random pain spikes I get every now and again, and  the fact that I tend to get a panic attack because of them, but all that might change once I'm home - safe. I feel so safe at home that it's the only place where I usually feel completely relaxed.
I'm not really an anxious person, or well, in certain cases yes, but usually I'm really laidback and all this hospital business has removed all that from me.

I'm really really happy to get home again.

But first I have a day of only eating clear liquids and tomorrow and enteroscopy. They look through my intire intestinal tract. All of my bowls. Yay, sounds like fun doesn't it? Nah, I'm not too concerned, it's under anesthesia so I don't feel a thing, but do need to be slightly sedated beforehand, because I might just get a panic attack when they try to find a vein for the IV...

Oh, and the mouse on my laptop broke, and I turned off the touch pad ages ago, cause I hated it, and I find it way too arduous to try and get it on without a mouse so now my dad is going to bring me a mouse to hospital in the evening, so I can continue writing my essays. I still haven't finished the second one... And I need five essays now. Jeez Louise.

Today I'll get guests again, more than my dad that is, he is here every evening if he just can - we're really close. I've always been a daddy's girl, and I'm really lucky to have a dad that really cares about me and supports me in my decisions through my life, even though I'm already technically an adult. Plus I think he'd be really bored if he didn't have a chatterbox like me around!