Life in Black and White - Hospital Stories (A Dose of Reality)

Hospitals…. What can I say?

I don’t think anyone likes hospitals.

But they serve a vital function, and medicine is undoubtedly the most important application of science.

I wrote a post yesterday about the problems that the medical services in the UK face due to a hostile government, and I stand by everything I stated in that post.

Following on from that post, my girlfriend was eventually put in a critical care ward due to the severity of her viral throat infection which was causing such an intense inflammatory reaction, and such pain that she initially couldn't even talk.

When I eventually got to see her it was a serious 'dose of reality' for me as I've watched both my Gran and Granddad pass away, and they were both in critical care wards similar to my girlfriend.

Although I was confident that she would recover with the right anti-virals and/or antibiotics, I was genuinely worried and triggered by the environment, so similar to the wards my grandparents had been in.

Unfortunately, it wasn't to be as simple as putting her on the right drip and watching the magic happen. I'm guessing this is why she was put into a private room in such a highly staffed ward.

In the first two days she showed no improvement and was unable to even swallow water so they put her on a hydration drip along with the antibiotics.

All of her problems were exacerbated by the FACT that her pain was at such a level that she couldn't sleep, and they refused a morphine drip which I later realised through my own research was completely justified as Morphine is a strong respiratory suppressant, and it could have killed her given the nature of the inflammation of her throat.

Whatever the realities, she suffered two days of excruciating pain that if it was any other medical problem would have warranted a constant morphine drip.

On top of all this, she hadn't slept more than a few hours in the last 72 hours (three full days) which was impairing the body's natural sleep healing systems.

I became very frustrated on the third day that I visited her seeing no improvement that the nurses stonewalled me in requesting a sedative so that she could at least get 6-8 hours of sleep to help the body fight the infection.

Outside of hive, I am a freelance writer and aspiring novelist. But I have also worked in a journalistic capacity before on three different publications, so I know the value of research and hard FACT!

If you can’t back up the narrative of your story with sound research as a journalist, you can end up jobless, or in some cases in jail.

The FACT of the matter here, was not them refusing certain treatment, it was how overworked and stretched NHS staff are under our current government that they simply don't have the time (or in some cases have become so jaded that they don't care) to inform family members or patients of the reasoning behind the refusal of treatment.

In this case with a tranquillizer, she could have been administered one that caused virtually no respiratory depression, yet she wasn't due either to a contrary indication with other medication that I wasn't aware of, or just an overworked doctor who saw the diagnosis of Pharyngitis and assumed it was a mild case which many people get.

A mild case can cause pain in the throat, and a small amount of inflammation that can be treated at home with ibuprofen and throat-numbing sprays, yet a severe case can cause permanent damage, and excruciating pain (she described it as feeling like swallowing razor blades when simply clearing her mouth of saliva) and in some cases death if the right anti-viral agent isn't discovered.

I suspect that these oversights were down to an overworked or jaded doctor as the nursing staff would tell me nothing when I asked about pain management issues and the possibility of sedation to induce sleep after my girlfriend had been awake for 74 hours.

I'm happy to report that just as I was losing hope that they would help us, or respond to my queries, she suddenly started to improve, and overnight experienced a dramatic improvement in pain levels and symptom severity.

She was discharged yesterday with a bag of meds as big as Santa's sack and I got to drive her back to mine where I'm going to look after her with nourishing soups and TLC until her symptoms disappear completely.

It has been a trying and stressful time for me the last week, and even more so for her. I can't even fathom how strong she is to take such an ordeal and emerge her smiley happy self.

Even this born-cynic has been cracking a smile the last 24 hours on the regular to see someone I love starting to recover and get back to her old self.

To achieve the black-and-white processing in these images I used a combination of saturation, layering and an overlay trick in GIMP photography editor.

Thanks for reading 🌿