Microdiscectomy Day

Two years ago to the day I was recovering from my Microdiscectomy. I look back at this day with a mixture of emotions and I have often thought about writing this post in that time but held back, I’m not really sure why.  My husband reminded me this morning that it was two years since my operation,  I guess now is as good a time as any to write about it.

Rewind to the morning of 25th July 2014. I was a new Mum for the second time to my beautiful three week old baby boy, trying to muddle through everything that comes with that, whilst not being able to move due to my prolapsed disc and feeling pretty crappy because of this.  Every maternal instinct in me was calling out to be able to do more, to be more for my baby and here I was in hospital, about to have an operation which would render me even more useless for at least 6 weeks.

I went to hospital first thing in the morning to have my spinal surgery.  I was in a side room on my own due to the fact that I had just had a baby.  This room had a bathroom in it which I spent most of the morning before my operation hiding in so I could cry without my husband or new baby seeing me.  I was second on the list which I was grateful for as it would be over sooner rather than later.  But with this thought came a number of worries, what if something goes wrong?  This was all happening right next to my spine after all, I had every confidence in my surgeon but we’re all human aren’t we?  What if something slipped, what if I ended up in a worse situation than before?  What if I didn’t wake up from the anaesthetic?  All these thoughts were rushing through my head at a million miles an hour and I was terrified.

I didn’t want to let on to anyone close to me how scared I was.  I felt that me and my gorgeous boy had done so well after he was born that we’d used up our fair share of luck.  If something bad was going to happen then this was the prime opportunity for it all to go boobs up.  I got into my hospital gown and I waited to be taken to the operating theatre imagining all sorts of rubbish situations.

A few hours later I woke up in recovery feeling like I had been in a fight.  I remember saying to the Nurse that I felt like I had a fat lip.  When I was put to sleep I was laying on my back but for the operation I would have been placed on my front and at some point the tubes in my mouth must have been knocked and I had a fat lip to wake up to.  However, the fact that this was my first thought as I woke up and I didn’t have any pain in my back was encouraging to say the least.

I was taken back to my room and the hubster and baby were waiting for me, my other two children were with their Nana having a great time.  I was so relieved to see them waiting for me but I was not quite with it yet so I don’t remember much about those first hours.  At some point my surgeon came to see us to say that everything had gone well.  I couldn’t believe it, jammy cow had got through the op and it went well!  I had to lie as still as possible for the rest of the day and overnight and then the Nurses would get me up in the morning.  I was so uncomfortable.  At home, even when it hurt to move at least I could move a little bit to try and get comfortable.  Not being allowed to move at all was torture.  To add salt to the wounds, I remember gymnastics being on the TV in my room.  Brilliant, lets watch these flexible things jump around the screen while I can’t friggin move!  The hubster and baby had gone home at this point and there was no remote control so I just had to grin and jealously bear it until a Nurse came in and changed the channel for me when she brought me my little paper cup of pain killers.

 

Having just had a baby there were things going on in my body that wouldn’t be going on in the bodies of your typical microdiscectomy patients.  I had taken my breast pump in with me to express milk for my baby, but because I was given Tramadol after the operation I wasn’t allowed to give any milk I managed to express to my little one.  I have always found expressing milk difficult with both my twins and my new baby.  By the time I was able to  have a go at expressing my boobs were fit to burst.  Trying to express milk whilst lying down and not being able to move is an absolute nightmare!  It is probably just as well that I knew none of it could be used as half of it ended up all over me anyway in a sticky mess, thank goodness for baby wipes! It did hurt watching the Nurse pour away the rest of my efforts though, it was so hard to get it that it felt like I was watching her pour away liquid gold.

To add to the comedy of errors, I also hadn’t thought my breakfast choice through properly for the next day.  ‘Go on, treat yourself’, I thought as I put a tick in the box next to the cooked breakfast option.  ‘Muppet’, I thought when it arrived and I realised that I couldn’t sit up to eat it.  The Nurse was ace and cut it up for me but it was all a bit of a disaster and I gave up on the good stuff and stuck with a simple, but very welcome, piece of toast.

After a bed bath and a really awkward moment getting dressed by the Nurses whilst laying down (it was really difficult), the Nurses and Physio came to get me up and out of bed.  I was so nervous about this.  I just couldn’t see how, after 7 months of not being able to stand up straight, that I was going to be any different less than 24 hours after my op.  I had been instructed on how I needed to roll on to my side and then drop my legs over the edge of the bed so I could push myself up to sitting.  I did this and then, with a Nurse either side supporting me, I stood up.

My first thought was ‘I’m tall’, and I had a little bit of a head rush.  I am not particularly tall in real life but I could stand up!!!!  I could stand up without being stooped over like the Evil Queen from Snow White when she disguises herself as a haggard old woman to give Snow White the poison apple.  This was bloody amazing!

I then took steps, actual standing up straight steps, along the ward corridor.  Well, this was a revelation, my body was working with me for the first time in a long time and it was brilliant.

“Shall we try walking up and down three steps?” my Nurse asked.

“Yes, lets go for it”, I was on a roll.

And I did it.

My husband was walking behind me holding our baby and when I saw him he had a massive smile on his face.

The operation had worked.  It had all been worth it.

I still had a long way to go but I can’t really describe the feeling of standing up and walking, albeit supported either side by Nurses, for the first time in 7 months.  It was better than Christmas, and I love Christmas.

I was still on the morphine and I spent one more night in hospital before they let me go home.  We moved back in with my Mum temporarily for the extra support while I recovered.  My lovely hospital bed was still there so it really was the best place for me to be as well as the fact that it was now the summer holidays and my twins and the hubster were off school.  Spending this time together and watching my boys bond with their baby brother was really special.

I did struggle with how slowly my recovery seemed to take.  But there were so many little milestones for me, simple things like standing up on my own to brush my teeth, things that you wouldn’t even think about usually, to keep me going.  I had to remind myself that every day I was getting better and a day closer to getting back to normal and being a fully fledged Mummy again.

Although I could stand up and take steps I still couldn’t lift my baby myself.  My special time with him was each night after his final feed, which I had to do lying down on my side as I couldn’t sit up long enough to breastfeed him.  The hubster would put him on my chest and we would lie together until he fell asleep and was then put into his cot.  I spoke earlier about not being able to act on my maternal instincts and I still can’t really think about the effect this had on me without feeling really emotional about it, I don’t think I ever will if I’m honest.  It would rip my heart out to hear him cry and for someone else to pick him up and have that first moment of comforting him before they gave him to me.  I was worried about how this would effect our Mother and Son relationship and as a result I have struggled with anxiety for the past two years and have been getting treatment for it for the past 9 months, once I plucked up the courage to go to the doctors about it.  However, I am happy to say that I have a very loving, happy two year old and we adore each other.  We’ve gone through so much together, even though he won’t remember any of it, we’re a team.

After six weeks I was able to do more.  The first time the five of us went out together as a family was wonderful, we only went to the shop but to me it was amazing just to be with them and not in pain in a wheelchair.

I cannot thank my amazing surgeon and all the Nurses who helped me enough.  The NHS is brilliant.

Once I had stopped taking Morphine four months later, I spent my maternity leave getting stronger, and I went back to work a year ago.  Although there have been bumps in the road, I’ve kept going and I am so grateful every day for being able to walk and move and dance (badly).  I’m still not as strong as I was before my prolapsed disc but I’m getting there.  I have days where I’m stiff and my back twinges but I’m doing my best to look after myself and I know that I will get my fitness back.  After 7 months of not walking there is a lot of work to do but I’m happy to be able to do it.  I can walk my boys to school and I can push my toddler in his buggy.  I can go out for coffee without being in pain and I can go out with friends and celebrate all the good things in life.

I am wife and Mummy again.

I am me again and I bloody love it xxx

 

 

Back and Blogging

It’s been quite a while since I last blogged and it would be fair to say that a lot has happened in these 9 months.

I have often thought about starting to write again but I haven’t felt comfortable enough to put finger to keyboard until now.  Maybe it has something to do with coming up to my birthday and being unconsciously forced to reflect on the last year but also to appreciate the very different place I am in now.

So, the last time I blogged I was a few days from being induced at 37 weeks and 4 days into my pregnancy.  I was so happy to have got to this point as I was more than aware that every extra day he was cooking in the baby oven it gave him a better chance once he was introduced to this big bad world.

The day that I was being induced coincided with the first proper school trip for my 5 year old twins and this sent me into an irrational whirlwind, imagining everything that could possibly go wrong on said trip.  They were going on a coach (do all coaches have seatbelts?), miles away from me (how will I get to them if they need me?) and I was going to be in hospital, not able to take them to school and remind them for the umpteenth time to do exactly as they were told and to stay with their teachers at all times.

The hubster and I had to be at the hospital at 8.30am, so my boys stayed at their Nana’s house the night before.  As I left them there I felt like my heart was being ripped out.  In my mind, not only was the thought of them being on a school trip scaring the life out of me, but also my unborn baby and I had a big job ahead of us and I was genuinely scared that I was never going to see my beautiful boys again.  Completely irrational thoughts, and I was aware of this, but I could not shake the feelings of fear for love nor sanity.

I left my Mum with strict instructions to let me know how the boys were in the morning and to let me know as soon as she picked them up in the afternoon that they were home with her, safe and sound.  I was probably the most wound up I have ever been all day until I got the message that they were home, not the best conditions for being induced.  Obviously, to my great relief, nothing horrible happened, they were safe and happy all day long and were bursting with excitement to tell Mummy and Daddy all their news.

During this ridiculous, irrational time I had been induced and the hubster and I waited with baited breath for things to start.  We both had the words of all the health professionals we had spoken to over the past few months ringing in our ears.  I had previously had a straightforward twin delivery so therefore I would be delivered of this baby in two shakes of a lamb’s tail.  I didn’t need a planned caesarean as I would be able to deliver my baby with the help of an epidural which would be placed higher up my spine than in usual, non-prolapsed disc cases, of labour.  I didn’t need to take my evening dose of morphine as the epidural would wrap me up in a pain free duvet of loveliness and it would work and be manageable.

Yeah…you’ve probably guessed that it didn’t quite work out that way.

Nothing happened for what seemed like forever.  I had three lots of gels applied to soften my cervix and get things moving and if nothing happened after the third one I would have to wait a full 24 hours before I could have another one.  I had everything pinned on this third gel.  And it worked!  A few hours after it was applied, and I was 37 weeks and 6 days pregnant, I started to notice the familiar tightening feelings of contractions.  It was confirmed that I was in labour and then it all went a bit crazy.  Within a few hours things progressed quite quickly.  I was moved to the delivery suite and given my epidural.  There was a TV in my room and ‘One Born Every Minute’ was about to come on, needless to say that got switched off pretty quick smart!
The epidural worked for about an hour and it was bliss.  I sat smugly watching the numbers climb on the monitor, aware that something was happening but feeling no real pain. It was heaven and I began to think that maybe this would be okay.  But then it stopped working and for the first time in 7 months I had absolutely no pain relief in my body. It had to be re-sited.  That one didn’t work either.  I could feel everything that was in the wrong place in my body screaming out that it was in the wrong place.  My back and my leg and my left hip, not a problem before but joining the party now, felt like they were being ripped out of my body, each being pulled in a different direction.  It was the most extreme pain I have ever experienced.  It wasn’t just labour pains, I don’t want to freak out any expectant mothers out there, it was labour pains intensified by having a prolapsed disc and my body being weak from not being able to move properly for 8 months.

This went on for 3 hours and just as I was telling my midwife that I couldn’t cope anymore and she asked if I was wearing nail varnish (I wasn’t, I was fully caesarean ready), it changed and I knew that my baby boy was at the point of no return and I was going to have to push.  I honestly cannot put into words the pain I felt and how scared I was.  I had been prepared for him to possibly struggle when he was born because of the effects of the morphine I had to take throughout my pregnancy.  I didn’t feel physically strong enough to do what I knew I had to do.  I felt alone.  I was supported by my husband and the medical staff, but no one in that room could know what I was going through and I clearly remember telling myself that I was going to die.  I am aware that this sounds really dramatic and over the top, but this is the reason that I haven’t been able to write about it until now.  I still can’t really think about it without getting a lump in my throat and tears forming.  It was the hardest thing I have ever done.

Amazingly, 20 agonising minutes later, he was born and he was perfect.  The midwife put him on my chest and I held him, something I had secretly prepared myself for not being able to do straight away.  And there he stayed, on my chest, for hours.  I kept expecting them to take him away, to tell me that the morphine withdrawal was starting and he needed to be taken to special care.  But that didn’t happen.  I didn’t know whether to be happy or concerned that something had been missed.  Here I was after delivering my baby naturally, holding him while he slept off the ordeal of being born.  We’d done it, he was okay and, although I couldn’t move much, my spine had not completely fallen apart.  How the bloody hell had we managed to pull this one off?

The next few days were spent in hospital in our side room that had been deep cleaned in preparation for my spinal surgery so I that I definitely didn’t pick up any infections before my operation.

My beautiful baby boy was coping amazingly well.  I was back on morphine and breastfeeding him, which was helping him to wean off the drug as he was getting a reduced dose through my milk.  He made a funny little singing noise with every breath which the professionals were keeping an eye on in case this was the start of withdrawal but other than this he showed no signs of struggle.  His breathing was fine and he was behaving as any newborn baby would.

After 5 days we were discharged and I took my baby home to our gorgeous family for the first time.  His big brothers, who were so proud and happy to meet their brother on the day he was born, were smitten and so excited to have him and Mummy home with them.

The next day, the midwife came out to see us and weighed him.  He had lost 15% of his birth weight (way too much) and was showing signs of jaundice so back into hospital we went.  They had kept an eye on his bilirubin levels (a build up of this in the blood causes jaundice) on the maternity ward but over night at home they had shot up and the whites of his eyes were not white anymore, they were noticeably yellow.  He was admitted into the children’s ward and put on double light therapy, as his bilirubin levels were extremely high, just off him needing to have an exchange transfusion. So my baby had lots of blood tests, had a mask put on him so he couldn’t see and was placed under the blue lights that I had seen so many times when watching hospital programmes featuring ill babies. I was devastated.  I’m sure a lot of people shrugged it off as jaundice is so common (6 out of every 10 newborn babies will develop it but only 1 in every 20 babies have high enough levels of bilirubin in their blood to warrant treatment), but when it’s your baby who can’t see you or anything else and is lying under imposing, industrial style lights, so tiny and helpless, it’s heartbreaking.

There was talk of having to give him a nasal feeding tube to help him put on weight but I opted to try him on top up formula feeds after every breastfeed.  My twins had needed these too so I was not averse to this method of feeding.

Fortunately, the double light therapy had the desired effect, as had the top up feeds, and after 24 hours under the lights and 3 days in the children’s ward in total, his bilirubin levels were normal, he’d started to put on weight and we were home.

He was here, in our home and everything was all right.

I wanted to make the most of every moment with him as, in two weeks, with him at just three weeks old, I was having spinal surgery that meant I would not being able to pick him up for 6 weeks.  I struggled to do things for him but I made damn sure that I could with the help of the hubster and visiting friends and family.

Those first couple of weeks at home were lovely, and I tried to keep the looming shadow of the upcoming surgery at bay. This was my time with my beautiful family, now complete, and we bloody deserved it!

Light at the end of the tunnel

 

It’s safe to say that I have been really slack at keeping up with this blog over the past few weeks so here is a quick update to bring you up to speed (and also to help me make sense of the craziness in my pregnancy/morphine muddled mind).

 I am now 37 weeks pregnant.  This is an absolute achievement as the professionals didn’t think I would manage to make it past 32 weeks due to the pain I’ve been in.  I am told that I’ve done really well and I should be proud of myself but in truth it has been the success of finding the right pain management and my beautiful hospital bed.

I have managed to be at home for a while now which has been ace because, although I can’t do anything very practical, I have managed to figure out what I needed and wanted to do in preparation for the baby’s arrival.  This has meant that my Hubby McHusband has been inundated with requests of painting the spare room, putting up shelves and buying various pregnancy and new baby paraphanalia.

 I am being induced this week which is as exciting as it is terrifying.  I have recently had another MRI scan, not the nicest thing to do with your day, and it showed that there has been little improvement since February so I definitely need to go down the surgery route to put things right.  However, as I have had a relatively quick and straightforward twin birth before, all the professionals have put their heads together and decided that I can, under lots of supervision and strict limitations, try to give birth naturally.  If it all goes belly up and my back decides to completely give up they will perform an emergency c-section to bring my baby into the world, hopefully this will not happen.

It has all been very carefully planned and all the professionals that need to be around will be around, including neo-natal for the baby in case the morphine I have been taking has made him ill and he needs help in the Special Care Unit, and my back surgeon in case I need putting back together again as an emergency on the same day, again hopefully this will not happen.

I’m hoping that it will be a huge waste of everyone’s time and me and the little one won’t need any special help.  We’ve got this far together through all sorts of crap and my baby has been doing everything he should be doing and looks like he’ll be a healthy weight when born.  We are made of strong stuff.

However, I’m still terrified of all the things that could cause us problems, but I’m trying not to dwell on those little monkeys.

I have been having crazy Braxton Hicks recently and my feet have swollen up to the point where they are looking not too dissimilar to those of an elephant.  These are the parts of pregnancy that I definitely will not miss.

It seems bizarre that after everything I have had to deal with over the last 7/8 months, there is a light at the end of the tunnel.

 It turns out that, unless there is an emergency with my back after I’ve given birth, I’ll probably be waiting a couple of weeks for my back surgery to make sure that I have fully recovered from the birth.This I am not looking forward to as it means I will probably be separated from my baby for a few days which isn’t ideal and if I’m honest, breaks my heart a little bit.  I need to stay focussed and concentrate on my goal of being able to walk my boys to school when they go back in September.

You never know, I might just do it!

My Beautiful Hospital Bed

My absolute superhero!

My Heroes

A little photographic ‘hoorah’ to the things that have kept me going over the last 7 months.

Morphine, a hospital bed & a wheelchair = ‘The Dream Team’

16th May 2014

Over the last few weeks I have had lots of hospital appointments in various departments to see many professional people.  I’ve had growth scans for the baby, seen obstetric consultants, obstetric anaesthetists, physiotherapists and orthopaedic consultants.

Some weeks I  have felt like a permanent fixture in the waiting areas and I have even bought a new tote bag to carry around my hand held pregnancy notes (I say carry, I mean sit on my lap as I’m pushed around on my wheels).  I really like bags so this was no hardship.

The reality of the situation is that I am not going to make it to the full 40 weeks.  Although things have improved greatly due to having my lovely hospital bed at my Mum’s house and my pain relief changing from a low, pregnancy safe, dose of Codeine and Morphine to the more constant pain relief of slow release Morphine, I need to have surgery on my back soon.

If I had not been pregnant this surgery probably would have taken place about 8 weeks ago.  I need to have a Microdiscectomy which means that the surgeon will operate on my lower back.  He’ll go in with a microscope and take the part of the L5 disc that is pressing on my S1 nerve, causing all of my pain, away.  For this to happen I need to be out cold under a general anaesthetic for about an hour and a half.  If I am under an anaesthetic then so is the baby in my tummy and it’s just a little bit too risky, so the decision has been made to wait until I have the baby and then I can have my back surgery a few days later.

Scary biscuits!!!

At the end of March my pain had got so bad that I was admitted into hospital overnight while they tried to figure out what to do with me.

Pregnancy and prolapsed discs do not mix well as I can’t take any anti-inflammatory medications and some of the pain relief I would normally have been prescribed were definite no no’s for me too.

I have slipped a disc before, when my twins were around 9 months old.  I was able to take Diclofenac, Codeine and Amitriptyline and these, along with regular chiropractor appointments, meant that I was back to normal within a couple of months.  It did mean that I had to sell my tickets to the Take That Circus tour, this was a bad day.  At that time I could only lie on the floor, so when I felt like I wanted to have a full on tantrum due to selling my tickets, I was well placed to do so.  Being able to kick my legs around and bang my fists on the floor would have had a better effect, as it was I just had to lie still and look unimpressed.

This hospital stay this time around was a real blessing in the end as it introduced me to a full night’s sleep, courtesy of an electric hospital bed.  I loved being able to get into a position where I could feel slightly normal and not have the piercing, burning pain constantly.

I was assessed by physios, anaesthetists and orthopaedic surgeons.  I thought at one point that they were going to give me a type of long lasting epidural to combat the evil pain but it was decided that this would not be suitable as I needed to be aware of the pain getting worse in case things got really bad and I became a candidate for emergency surgery!  Never did I think I could feel so disappointed and upset about not having a massive needle stuck into my back.

There really wasn’t very much that could be done for me in hospital, due to me being preggers, so I was sent home the next day with a frame for the toilet and a perching stool to help me get washed and brush my teeth.  Seeing as we were at the point where either my husband or my Mum were having to help me have a bed bath each day, I looked at these aids as big pots of gold at the end of a bad back rainbow.  And they are amazing.  A good friend of mine pointed out that some celebs have been embracing the old lady look recently, dyeing their hair grey and going out in pimped up wheelchairs (Lady Gaga), so I figure I’m just ahead of the times and everyone will be rocking a perching stool pretty soon.

Three days after being discharged from hospital things got pretty bad again.  I couldn’t sleep at all due to the pain.  I couldn’t get away from it, there were no positions I could lie in to feel any respite and I couldn’t walk the 8 steps to the toilet without hyperventilating.  I spent about 3 hours crying constantly and uncontrollably as it was all that I could do.  I like to think that I have a high pain threshold but this had beaten me.  My husband was on the phone to the hospital and my GP but there wasn’t really anything anyone could do for me.

What was it that had happened in hospital that made me feel a little better?  The hospital bed!  The genius piece of technology that meant I could lie in a secure position without having to prop myself up on pesky pillows that would rearrange themselves at a moments’ notice, inducing excruciating pain.

My GP, who has been wonderful, got on the phone that afternoon and arranged for a hospital bed to be delivered to my Mum’s house the following day and it has been a revelation.  This was also when my medication was changed to the slow release Morphine and, for me, they have been the dream team.  The ultimate combination of pain relief that has said “Screw you prolapsed disc, we’re winning now!”  My super heroes!

Eight weeks on and due to these amazing aids that I have been provided with by the wonderful NHS, I have regained a bit of independence and even managed to go back to my own house for a few days.

I’m hoping that all this means that I’ll be able to keep this little one in his cosy little temporary home for a bit longer before he is born and has to go into the Special Care Baby Unit to help him be weaned off the Morphine that I have to take.  I have another scan and consultant appointment next week and I have my fingers crossed that they’ll let me try to keep him in the bump until at least 36 weeks before they induce me. We also have to consider whether I am going to try to have him naturally or have a C-section.  I might leave that one to the professionals as when I think about it too much it makes my brain hurt.

It’s funny that when I was pregnant with my twins I was considered high risk and had been prepared for all sorts of things to go wrong and in the end I had an amazingly straight forward pregnancy and uncomplicated, natural birth.  When I found out we were pregnant with just the one this time I thought that it would be a walk in the park and it turns out that there are even more risks and potential problems to think about, typical!

The good thing is that I can now see a light at the end of this very long tunnel and I am focussing on that.  I may not be sure of exactly how things are going to pan out, how well my baby will be, how successfully my back surgery will go, but there is an end in sight.

I can’t wait to be able to walk around in the sunshine, pushing my new baby boy in his pram with his brothers scooting along by my side.  This may sound simple to most people but never take the little things for granted, for me this would be bliss and the day that I manage to do it will be the day I have a massive smile on my face!

 

Alcohol free but Morphined up birthday

Here’s another post that I wrote in April, more recent ramblings are on the way soon…promise!

It was my birthday yesterday, I turned 34 years of age.  I didn’t put a lot of expectation on to the day itself seeing as I am still spending a lot of time on my lovely hospital bed.  I am a bit guilty of thinking about my birthday well in advance every year and thinking about how I can make it fabulous.  Each year I place too much hope onto it and tend to feel a little bit disappointed.  This year I didn’t think I could cope with any disappointment so I hadn’t planned anything, other than telling my Mum that I quite fancied a cream tea when she asked me if there was anything special that I wanted to eat.  This was a good call as we had a Chinese takeaway the night before my birthday and what I ordered wasn’t what I thought it was.  I was gutted and naturally it was the universe conspiring against me because it was nearly my birthday, it’s favourite time to mess with me, and not because I had misread the menu.

My alarm woke me up, reminding me to take my morphine at 8am and everyone else was sleeping soundly.  Like a kid at Christmas, I thought I would stay awake and so I went onto the internet and read some blogs and bits and pieces from women that I admire and take inspiration from, a good way to start the day.  I heard the first son wake up and husband say to him that, “It’s Mummy’s birthday”.  Cue an excited giggle and waking up the second son, so that both boys could creep out of the room.

A minute later and my two beautiful boys came in with cards for me.  As they explained how many kisses and hugs they had put into their cards, and the reasons why they had chosen those particular ones, I could feel myself beginning to tear up.  Yes I feel shit, yes this is a crap situation to be in, but look at them.  Look at their beautiful, innocent, excited little faces and tell me that I am not the most blessed and lucky person EVER!

Then they passed me a card and said, “This one’s from the baby”.  Inside the card it said “I can’t wait to see your beautiful face Mummy, lots of love, ?”

Well, the flood gates well and truly opened.  I love this little guy so much already and I hate that he will start his life being weaned off horrible morphine because of my stupid, crappy back.  But, again, tell me that I’m not lucky and I wouldn’t believe you. He’ll be here soon and he’ll be looked after and he’ll be okay.

My husband is the coolest and knows how much I love cards (I am a bit soppy about them if I’m honest).  And he did this for me because he knows that I feel like a 94 year old, not a 34 year old. He knew that this would make me happy, and he was right.  It didn’t matter what else happened for the rest of the day because I had had my perfect birthday morning, a special moment with him and my children, all three of them.

As it happens, the rest of the day was pretty good too.  A surprise visit from two special friends who have really outdone themselves in the supportive friends’ front, you certainly find out who your true friends are when times are rough.

I had a lovely cream tea, my Mum had cut the crusts off the sandwiches and got proper clotted cream, pasteurised of course, and put alcohol free pear cider in a champagne glass for me.  I love her.

The boys had been invited to two birthday parties in the afternoon, a disco and one at the Olympic Gym.  I felt good enough to go along to the disco party with them in my wheelchair, obviously husband came too, and it was good.  I was out of the house and it wasn’t just to go to hospital! I got asked the same questions over and over again by the other Mums but it was okay.  I watched the boys get excited as the disco man flooded the hall with foam and saw the smiles on their faces as they came to show me how much foam they were covered in.

When we got home I was exhausted and husband had already said that he would take the boys to the next party, Olympic Gyms probably aren’t the most wheelchair accessible of places.  So I resumed the position on my lovely hospital bed and happily waved them off for the next instalment of birthday fun.

Today, I am struggling a bit.  I just feel a bit unwell and tired and I’ve had a nosebleed which is a bit rubbish.  I’m giving in today and not putting any pressure on myself to be superwoman, and I’m okay with that because yesterday was my birthday, and it was good.

 

 

Poo Gate

The following post was originally written in April this year.  It has taken me this long to share it as its content might put some of you off your dinner.  For this, I apologise.  Don’t read if you don’t find hearing about poo mildly amusing!

The past couple of days have been good.  I have had visits from some of my best friends who have brought a smile to my face.  Two of my best girlfriends were fortunate enough to hear the telling of the Codeine constipation story, the story I am going to tell you now.

So, one of the main side effects of taking Codeine is the fact that you get a bit bunged up in the poo department.  I was prescribed Senakot and later Laxidose, which is a powder that you mix with water, which tastes like you have taken a swig from a swimming pool…yuk.  Originally I was very good at taking them but, as I felt I didn’t need to take as much Codeine because I was managing my pain, I started to take it less and less and then, not at all.

In the past couple of weeks I have experienced the worst pain of the whole prolapsed disc saga and therefore had to take the full dose of Codeine prescribed to me.  Sensible people would have thought, ‘I should start to take the laxatives again’, but unfortunately sense doesn’t really come into it when you feel like someone is drilling a hot poker into both your spine and left leg whilst someone else is trying to rip your left leg off using only their hands and brute force.

I didn’t take the laxatives.  I thought it was fine.  I thought that perhaps my digestive system would take pity on me and let the waste leave me regularly and with no discomfort.  How wrong I was.

Last Tuesday I went to the toilet at 2.20pm, feeling that a number two was ready to go.  It occurred to me that I hadn’t been for a few days, worry started to set in.  Fifteen minutes later, only a pitiful amount had passed into the toilet bowl, and much like when a baby is on the brink of being born, I knew there was a hell of a lot more to come.  I started to sweat, I started to think about what they tell you in labour regarding breathing, because at this point it was pretty obvious to me that nothing less than a poo baby was coming and this was going to be hard work.

Add to this that I can’t sit down without feeling like my leg is going to implode and my spine is going to fall apart and I’m sure you can appreciate that I was facing defecatory hell.

In this time my husband had gone to pick up our children from school and had arrived home with them.  Normally, I would give them a kiss and a hug and ask them how their day had been.  They would say “I can’t remember” and then go off to play, leaving me pondering whether all 5 year olds have such a short memory span.

Instead, I was huffing and puffing and trying not to cry on the toilet and wouldn’t get to hear that they couldn’t remember anything about their day for another two hours.

After these two hours, I gave up.  I grabbed my crutches, got a bundle of toilet roll and stuffed it into the back of my knickers and hobbled back to bed.  This is normally quite a painful trip anyway but on this occasion it was even more difficult.  I felt like I had a baby’s head hanging out of my arse!  I know this is gross and I can assure you that there was nothing hanging there, chance would have been a fine thing.

I lay on my side and took deep breaths and waited…and waited…and waited for any sign of movement.  Anything, a slight rumble in my tummy would get my hopes up and come to nothing.  I resigned myself to thinking that it was going to be a long night.

It wasn’t until I was watching The Great British Sewing Bee a few hours later that I thought I might be brave enough to try again.  I waited until the end of the program, just to make sure that it was absolutely on the cards that my poo baby was ready to be released into the world.  I hobbled into the en-suite and regarded the toilet with a look of pity mixed with familiarity, ‘come on now you porcelain prince’, I thought to myself, ‘don’t let me down’.

I put my hands on the frame that I’d been sent home from hospital with the week before and slowly turned around, lowering myself down to sit and await my fate.  I won’t bother you with the exact details, but it was tough.  I was determined though and thought about the relief I would feel afterwards.  This pain and discomfort will be short lived and I will emerge victorious, and probably feeling slightly violated.

Half an hour of hard work later, my poo baby emerged and, my goodness, he was colossal.  I was disgusted with myself and at a complete loss as to how I had managed to accumulate such a mass of waste.  What sort of pressure has this been putting on my back?  I might as well have been limping around with a half-tonne weight strapped to my coccyx. I hastily stuffed toilet paper down the loo to cover it and called for my husband, as I can’t reach to flush the toilet in my current state.

My husband flushed the toilet for me after I had pleaded with him not to look at its contents.

“It hasn’t gone down”, he said.

“Did you look?”

“Yes.  It is bigger than my beer can.  I am proud”

As my husband looked at me, trying not to laugh, I saw a flicker of pride in his eyes.  He has been through a lot with me recently and is effectively my carer when he’s not a shit hot music teacher.  And even after seeing my gigantic poo, he can still look at me with pride and love.  He’s ace.

A day later, all evidence of the poo baby was gone and my bits all felt normal again.

I have been taking my laxatives regularly ever since.

 

Well, hello there

At this present moment I am growing a little baby in my womb.  I have been doing this for the past 25 weeks and 3 days.  I am also the owner of one prolapsed L5 disc that is pressing against my S1 nerve.  This means that I have been in pain since late November 2013 and I’ve not been able to work since mid December 2013.

It is now April 2014.  Christmas was shit, New Year was painful, my husband’s birthday was uneventful, our usual February half term break with our two beautiful boys didn’t happen, my birthday will be uneventful and Easter will be a wash out.  All because I can’t walk, sit or stand for more than 5 seconds.

I feel robbed of my pregnancy, a time when I should be out and about, relishing in the comments from friends and strangers about my bump and perusing the aisles of Mothercare and Kiddicare excitedly planning my third sons’ arrival. None of this can happen, because the only way I can move is in a wheelchair, and I can’t sit in one for more than 5 seconds, which is a problem.  Robbed.

So I am going to do something about it.  As I am not an orthopaedic surgeon, and if I was I would have to be a shit hot one to be able to operate on myself, physically my predicament isn’t going to change until after my baby is born.  Unless, in some realm of fantasy, my unborn son realises that Mummy is in pain and reaches out to my L5 disc and pulls the bugger back into place, like some sort of miniature super hero, “Ortho-Baby”.  That would be amazing.

In place of this medical miracle I am going to focus my energies into positive activities.  For the past 4 months I have been consumed by pain and worry for the situation I am in.  Apart from the obvious facts that I can’t move and spend my days lying on my right side on a hospital bed in my Mum’s house, I worry about the effect it is having on my 5 year old twins and my husband.I have struggled emotionally and mentally and felt guilty for feeling this way because I am surrounded by a very loving and supportive family who are putting their own lives on hold to make mine a little more bearable.

My husband is the most supportive person I have ever met.  His belief in me and my abilities is endless.  I want to make him proud and I want to access the parts of me that I have forgotten about but he still sees.  He still sees the singer, the writer, the ambitious and talented 19 year old that he fell in love with.  I see the 33 year old mother, wife, inclusion worker that I am now.  I see the woman who feels about 90 years of age, has a frame around the toilet and a perching stool who occasionally catches sight of the creative individual full of ideas and promise that I once was.  I want more of her back.

I work with young people and I love my job.  I spend 24 hours a week trying to give these young people the confidence and belief in themselves to go out and make things happen.  I think it’s about time that I started to take heed of the words that come out of my mouth and start to apply them to my own life a lot more. I want my own children to fearlessly go after their dreams and I will do everything I can to support them in doing so.  Therefore, I need to start setting them an example, stop being such an idiot and start going after a few of my own.

And, what better time to do it?  I am bed ridden and this isn’t likely to change in the next 2 to 4 months, but there are these clever things called laptops and extension leads which means that I can write, even in my immobile state. I can research, I can learn, I can enrich my life through knowledge and maybe even focus a few of my ideas to find something that I can do for my own enjoyment, and then maybe for the enjoyment of others.  Perhaps I will find a sense of self-worth in this seemingly never ending cycle of hospital appointments, pain, joy and disappointment.  Then perhaps this time in my life might begin to make sense, it might start to have some reason behind it.  And then I can truly say to my children that life is what you make it and you don’t have to let it beat you down, even when there doesn’t seem to be any other option.

I am lucky in that I know this part of my life is temporary.  I’m not going to be permanently disabled and in a few months’ time, I am going to bring another life into this world, by hook or by crook, although probably by a surgeon with a big ol’ knife if I’m honest. And maybe, just maybe I’ll have reignited a spark in me that yearns to do more and to be better.

I’m looking forward to finding out.