First Hospital Stay - Part Two

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First Hospital Stay - Part Two

Waking up at 6am after only a few hours sleep I was surprisingly alert, so I had a shower because there really wasn't anything else to do.  After breakfast the nurse wanted to start my steroid infusion earlier so I could hopefully sleep better that night.  About 20 minutes into my infusion there was a knock at the door and my favourite surgeon was standing there asking if he could come in.  What a nice surprise!  I couldn't go far with my little IV friend attached so he came over for a hug and stayed a short while for a chat to check on how I was going.  When he left I told the nurse that my arm was really starting to hurt - my cannula had tissued (most likely from the position it was placed) so they had to stop my infusion and call the cannulation nurse to re-site my cannula.  

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First Hospital Stay - Part One

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First Hospital Stay - Part One

Apart from being born in a hospital I've never actually been admitted as a patient.  I do come to work in this hospital 5 days a week but standing in the 'Admissions' line was a totally new experience .  I do now have a new appreciation of what patients have to go through filling out the paperwork, answering questions and signing different bits of paperwork.  After all of that was done and I was officially admitted a lovely volunteer appeared to help us find the ward.  

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"You have MS."

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"You have MS."

Those are words I never imagined would be aimed at me, but there they were.  A phrase that I will never forget.  A phrase that changed my life.  A phrase that made me feel disabled, like I would never live a 'normal' life.  Here I am, 27 years old being given a diagnosis of MS, a progressive disease that is unpredictable and the same for no two people.  Being a Registered Nurse and having some knowledge of MS, brain lesions and demyelination,  my world felt like it had come crashing down.

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