Originally Posted by Trollheart

Your Day? More like Your Week! Or almost. Anyway, we went up to vote Friday (YAY for the YES vote!) and on returning Karen felt iffy so I got her doctor to come up to see her. Meh, nothing wrong says he and off he goes. A few hours later she's feeling worse, so I summoned D-Doc, the out-of-hours emergency doctor service. This doctor says, well, might be a urinary tract infection (UTI – a kidney infection to you) but we can't get a urine sample as she's in bed and not catheterised, so sure we'll wait and see. Wait and see my arse. She was in pain. So I had to scour the city looking for a chemist (pharmacy to you) who stocked phosphate enemas. No, it's nothing to do with my sex life. Karen occasionally needs these when she's, well, blocked up, and the symptoms were all there. So after trying three chemists who hadn't got them, I finally managed to purchase the enemas. Cost me thirty quid on a taxi but there you go.

Went back and did the deed. Man, I do not want to have to clean that kind of thing up again! Usually I do the enema and her carers clean her up, but this was late at night (10 pm) so no dice. Down to me. I hadn't any facemask so I had to make one out of a pillowcase, and had it tied so tightly on my face that my nose was actually hurting. Hard to breathe too, but then I guess that's part of the point. Anyhoo, did that and she felt better right away. Next day, no problem. Come Sunday, she was feeling worse (again) so I got another doctor up. He prescribed her some antibiotics but the next morning there was no change, in fact she was worse, so hi ho hi ho it's off to A&E we go. About 12:30 in the day we left, and were in A&E till 11 pm – well, I was: I had to go home to get something to eat and get some sleep. They promised they'd call me to let me know what the deal was. And they did. 6:30 AM I get a call to say she's ok and she's ready to go home, can I come up and get her? So I tell them I've no transport, and I can't arrange any at half six in the morning; they'll have to arrange an ambulance to bring her home. 11 AM she arrives back, and she looks terrible! As she comes out of the ambulance she moans “I don't feel right” but what can I do? They won't take her back, so I have to have her brought in and put to bed.

For the next few hours she is in AGONY! I mean, she is CRYING with the pain, squeezing my hand, gasping, grimacing. Doesn't look better, in fact she looks worse. So I call the hospital and ask can she not be admitted, and they tell me look, you can bring her back but chances are they won't take her in. So I say let's see how she is for the afternoon. Anyone want to guess? Yeah, come 4 PM I'm calling an ambulance again. THREE HOURS later it arrives! We spend the next TWELVE HOURS in A&E with virtually no attention (they don't like people, it seems, who go back up after they've been discharged) and eventually a doctor sees us at 3:30 AM, tells us that she can give us some strong pain medication for Karen but that again it's highly unlikely that she will be admitted. They'll keep her overnight, she says, so I say right: I can't sleep on this chair with this blanket wrapped around me so I'm going home. Karen is at this point a good deal better due to the pain meds they've already given her, and she is basically asleep.

The next morning I check and I'm told, yeah, they're just waiting for the ambulance to arrive. Finally comes at 11:45 AM and she's looking so much better. From there on it's just a case of slow improvement and she's feeling much better now. The antibiotics kicked in, the pain is gone and now she's very much on the mend. So in the end I feel a bit foolish for having brought her back up to the hospital, but what could I do? She was in agony. I thought maybe they got it wrong, missed something you know? Still, all's well that ends down a well. But what a few days! Thank you, Irish health system.