The hospital was a drag: Long term admissions …

Hey! Hey!

You join me at the start of Week 2 on Ward 126, and in the company of a new insight patient, but more on that later!

If you are new here, hey! I’m Lucy! A 20 something year old currently living life on the edge as a neurological medical mystery! Whilst I definitely had must greater plans for my 20s, I don’t seem to be able to change the cards I’ve been dealt! Having said that, if some good can come from me yapping about my experiences then I’d say that’s a win!

Still on the ward …

Despite having completed a whole 7 days on the ward, we were still waiting for the results of my spinal MRI scan. Thankfully, my neurologist graced me with his presence (he was not on call this week) on the Tuesday to tell me that the MRI scan had shown indicators of a CSF Leak, so the CT myelogram would have to be repeated.

He also didn’t miss his opportunity to point out (remind me) that this was the exact outcome he had foretold. Who doesn’t love an overconfident, self-aware main character?

Caught up in the moment of validating his brilliance, what he failed to highlight was that scheduling a CT myelogram could take a while. Therefore, I had unknowingly signed myself up for at least another week of lying in a hospital bed whilst the outside world soaked up a heatwave.

Now a nice combination of painkillers and anti-sickness medication, all I could do was wait. Even though the spinal and head pain remained horrendous when I sat upright, the boredom was even worse.

The power of friendship …

Furthermore, I had also not seen my best friend since 2023 thanks to my residency on the ward. Therefore, in true best friend style, she came to visit armed with enough snacks to feed the whole ward and a rather large passionfruit mocktail.

Having been forced to cancel every planned brunch of 2024 so far, she decided to instead bring the brunch to me. It goes without saying we were the gossip of the ward within the first 5 minutes of her arrival. After reassuring (and massively disappointing) my favourite members of staff that it was definitely alcohol free, all offers of joining were surprisingly declined!

The positive impact of this visit is almost undescribable. Realistically, since the beginning of January 2024, I had hardly seen anybody beyond my parents due to being too poorly to go out and do normal things. The CSF leak had left me feeling more and more isolated as the weeks and months progressed.

Being at a hospital that wasn’t considered local to me meant it wasn’t easy for people to come and visit (or at least I tried to justify their absence to myself in this way). Seeing my bestie, having a mocktail and a good old gossip was the closest I had come to my usual life and even though it was only for a couple of hours, it was perfect.

Mental health restored slightly, allow me to annonymously introduce a new main character. As a long term patient, you experience an array of emotions when someone in your bay is discharged. You are happy that their are escaping. You are jealous that they are escaping. You are sad if they were someone you got to know. However, nothing overpowered the dread of who might be placed in the now empty bed.

Life on a ward as a below 30 …

I really thought I’d seen it all by this point. Turns out I wasn’t even close to having seen it all.

An elderly lady was placed in the bed diagonal from me. Little disclaimer before I go any further … she was very sweet, but I want you to read this from the point of view you are a 27 year old young woman with a crippling headache.

This lady had been admitted with a form of neuralgia pain which I understand is incredibly painful. However, from her familiarity with the staff, it appeared as though she visited more than I did!

During the day she didn’t really cause much bother. However, nothing could have prepared me for being woken up somewhere between 2:00 and 3:00am by the most harrowing screams I have ever heard. Like I am talking screams I would expect to hear if you were having a limb torn off in the wild (sorry if that’s a bit graphic for anyone!). What made it worse was that these screams then occurred roughly every 30 minutes until the early hours of the morning.

This continued for what felt like months. In reality it was more like 7 days, but believe me, being woken up in the early hours of the morning on consecutive days is enough to trigger a headache in a normal person, let alone someone with a crippling headache on the severity of mine. I started to question how many more nights I could cope with being woken up and then kept awake because the exhaustion was starting to take over my whole body.

I’ve got to get out of here …

Medically, I was still waiting for my CT myelogram to be scheduled, but mentally it was becoming more and more challenging. Although we must give shoutouts to several staff members who made a point of checking in, sitting and having a chat and making sure I was as okay as I could be.

It could only happen to me!

X O X O,

Your favourite headache!

The hospital was a drag, wost sleep that I ever had ~ The alchemy, The Tortured Poets Department, Taylor Swift