We've had a crazy few weeks here in the Hurley House, with Daddy spending most of the time in hospital, and Mummy having to juggle two children, a house, a cat and visits to see Daddy.
It all started on Monday 24th April, when Daddy went to bed feeling a bit rough. He woke up in the middle of the night, and spent the rest of the night awake with stomach pains and being sick. He phoned into work on Tuesday morning to say that he was ill and wouldn't be in.
He was still being ill throughout Tuesday, day and night, so he phoned into work on Wednesday and said that he felt even worse today, and he was going to see the doctor. The doctor thought it might be kidney stones, or a bad stomach bug, so prescribed antibiotics and stronger pain killers. She also said that if the pain got any worse overnight then to go to the hospital.
Two hours later, Grumpy was driving Daddy to the hospital, who by now was bent over double in pain! Daddy was admitted into the hospital, after a couple of painful hours wait in accident and emergency, and they connected a catheter, which brought instant pain relief, and a drip to get some fluid into him, as he was very dehydrated having been ill for the last couple of days.
Mummy phoned Daddy's work on the Thursday to say that Daddy was in hospital. We think that the office were half expecting a phone call from the cemetry on Friday morning after things going down hill so rapidly during the week!
Thankfully, there was no trip to the cemetery, but there was a very long stay in hospital. It took the doctors about a week to determine what exactly was causing the pain and sickness - one minute they thought it was kidney stones, the next appendicitis, the next a urinal tract infection, the next gastroenteritis...
After an ultrasound scan (no babies found, thankfully, but that's another story!) they realised that there was an abscess growing in Daddy's stomach, probably caused by appendicitis. They were unsure whether to do the hard, quick option (which was to cut the stomach open and yank out all of the bad stuff!), or to do the soft, slow option (which was to put a drain into the abscess and drain it out).
The doctors opted to go for the soft, slow option (although putting the drain in was the most painful experience ever, so we'd hate to think what the hard, quick option would have felt like!)
As soon as the drain went in, Daddy started feeling a lot better, and was up and walking very quickly after that, and gobbling his food up! Now that the pain was gone, and everything felt back to normal (apart from the big tube and bag of 'weird stuff' coming out of Daddy's stomach), the hospital suddenly felt like the most boring place on earth, and we all just wanted Daddy to be home and for things to be back to normal. Unfortunately, this didn't happen that day, or the next, or the next, or the next...
It seemed like forever, until the doctors decided that the drain could be removed and that Daddy could go home. It wasn't until the evening of Friday 12th May, two and a half weeks after being rushed in, that Daddy managed to escape. We had a great party tea to celebrate Daddy being back home on the Saturday.
Things still weren't completely back to normal, though. Pulling the drain out of Daddy's stomach caused a lot more pain, and it took a good week or so (and a lot of pain killers and antibiotics) before Daddy felt like he was well enough to go to work, and felt almost human again.
The doctors say that Daddy will need to go back to hospital in 10-12 weeks to have his appendix out, to make sure that this doesn't happen again. Even though Daddy has decided that he doesn't like hospitals, it's definitely worth going back in as we don't fancy going through all this ever again!
The only good news out of this whole, long affair is that Daddy has lost a stone in weight! Next time he'll just do Weight Watchers instead!
