But it's only chicken pox...part 2

So wednesday night, thursday night, friday night all pretty much without sleep. And I'm still feeling like shit, and the spots are just multiplying (still it's only chickenpox). By saturday I'm really not happy. I'm not sleeping, I'm not getting any better and by this time my breathing is getting bad. It's now really hard to breath and this is now the reason I can't sleep, because if I am in anything other than an upright position I can't get enough air in.

As a lifelong asthmatic I'm kind of able to deal with the lack of breath, I know what to do, what is the best position to be in, how to slow stuff down, talk a word at a time, all the things that asthmatics do (as an aside I can always spot asthmatics on TV becuase of the way the mix talking and breathing) so I'm coping, but getting increasingly worried and manic as you can imagine.

Anyway, I survive Saturday night and come Sunday morning I'm up with my kids, but thinking this is *really* not good. So, not for the first time, I'm surfing the web looking for chickenpox and complications, when eventually I come across a British National Health Service (NHS) site that says, if you are having difficulty breathing with Chickenpox call your Doctor. So I do!

So a Locum Doctor arrives (actually quite promptly) and does his thing, result not so good. He's not happy with my condition so sends me to the local Hospital's Emergency Department in an Ambulance. And I have to say, I am deteriorating now and finding it increasingly difficult to breathe.

Next stop Hospital. I go in the ambulance, Elaine (my wife) gets a cousin in to look after our children (thanks Pat) and follows by car.

From here on in, things start to get more and more fragmented in time and space, hazy and indistinct. Although there are some really clear bits in the mistiness.

I am wheeled in via a side entrance (because I'm still infectious) and put in a room in the ED. I'm put on a bed/trolley and am seen by a succession of people who to my recollection take no notice of my protestation that I can't breath (and I'm a fucking expert and I know it's not right!) and take blood and other measurements. By now I'm desperate and screaming and crying because I know I'm so bad, and eventually they decide to admit me because they think my liver is not working 100%. I don't care why they admit me, I just know I need to be in Hospital and if my liver has to be dragging on the ground behind me to get me in, that's fine by me. And this is odd, because I generally don't like being in Hospital, if nothing else it is terminally boring AND full of sick people, but at that point I would have done nearly anything to get admitted because I thought I was so bad.

So admittance is fine, forms and an x-ray really and then on to a Medical Assessment Ward. All fine, except that the Hospital Porters (let me see, ah yes, employed by the Hospital to move patients around) refuse to push the wheelchair I'm in because I've got chickenpox. A pox on you Hospital porters, it's your job. I mean, what is this, we only push the well ones around? You work in a Hospital patients are infectious, if you don't want the risk don't take the job, and lets face it I didn't have SARS or Ebola! Fortunately Nurses take their jobs more seriously and a Nurse pushed me everywhere. And thinking back, the x-ray was tough, I couldn't stand or hold my breath or any of the things the radiographer wanted, but she managed somehow.

What a result that Sunday was, in Hospital, with an Oxygen mask, private room (infectious!) and blessed, blessed sleep. Things were looking up at last.

You may wonder why I am going on about this at such length and in such stultifyingly dull detail. You may be right, on the other hand it may all become clear in later posts. Either way it's clearly important to me, and it is "my2p" after all.

To be continued........