To far alone

Yesterday ran a way with me and I found myself with tears in my eyes frequently. It started to go wrong when I actually managed to first remember to make a phone call and second when they actually answered my call. I received an appointment to go for Breast Screening, I knew where the unit was and strangely it is right in the middle of Glasgow just a short distance from Central Station. I decided to ask a few questions about getting there and what would happen when I got there because of my needing help. Just as going to the hospital I was going to have to arrange an ambulance and the stair climber but when I asked about what the would happen on arrival, I felt myself going in to a sort of panic. The clinic is in a very public area and there a about 8 steps from the road to the doors which of course would mean a slow climb in the public eye just to get in there. Now that may sound like nothing to you but lets step through what this day would really mean to me.

First as always would be the getting ready and the stress that alone seems to cause along with the added fatigue. Next getting out of the house and into the ambulance, not a nice trip down the stairs but neither is what I spotted on the last trip out, that people in the blocks near ours, leaning out trying to see who and why the ambulance is sat in their street. I can only imagine how much that would happen at the other end. This building is not a hospital and it is on a very public road where hundreds of people go by and like it or not that will mean loads of them starring, to get up those steps would take a couple of minutes and of course I haven’t added in yet that Adam couldn’t be with me, as they won’t let him come with me in the ambulance. After climbing those stairs in full view of all those on their lunch break, and once actually in there well the person had to think about this bit but said eventually that she thought there was a wheelchair. Next would be the lift and then waiting for the scan where, she said it would take a few minutes but getting the scan done, she thought was possible from the wheelchair, it just meant adjusting the machine. Then all the problems with getting clothes off and on before having to go through everything in revers eventually getting home. Just sat here on the phone discussing it I was getting into a panic about it all, my head was spinning about how I could and would manage it and I was terrified, I couldn’t do all that by myself, there are just too many possibilities of things going wrong. It was completely stressing me out and I got into such a spin that I was a stuttering word less mess, but I managed to cancel the appointment. There is just no way I would be able to manage all of that, even now when calm I know I can’t manage it, it is just too much.

I have gone form the wildly nutty over confident person to one who can’t even think about a simple journey. If I was going to an actual hospital I would be fine, I have done this three times in the past few months it is where this place is and the fact I can’t have Adam with me to take over when I got lost. 5 mins on the phone and I was a wreck, tears and shaking and fear.

The evening found me back in tears and this time well it was understandable, I was watching children in need. Seeing those families and what kid have to go through, well you would have to be very hard person in deed to not have a lump in your throat and tears in your eyes. Having lost a child my heart went out to those parent who had lost theirs and the tears where all over the place, understandably.

Six hours to hell.

AS you may have guessed the full experience of yesterday was far more than I outlined on my brief post. In many ways though having written the bones it is now easier to add the flesh. This morning I woke with pains in my body in places that amazed me a little, some like the pain in my thighs is easy to explain, that is clearly because of all the getting up and down on and off different chairs and so on, they didn’t like it much. To an extent I can add that to some of the pain in my calf muscles as well, but the rest of me not so easy. My whole body when I first got out of bed, where I had retreated to an hour early last night, despite having two hours sleep in the afternoon, was in pain. I was and am still really tired, but I guess that will sort itself over the next few days.

I do feel at the minute that my GP had sort of worried my by insisting that I went to see the specialist, although I have constantly said it fits with my MS, he made me doubt it. I am not saying that that was wrong, he is right in that not everything is down to my MS so checking is right. I know the test could show up something but for both Adam and I to leave there with the impression that the Doctor seemed more convinced by the description fitting into my MS than anything else. I know I am speculating but I do already feel as though the past few months have been a painful waist of time, we could have been working on a better maintenance plan and medications to deal with the whole problem. At the minute I am looking at two more exhausting hospital visits for a scan and then back to the Doctor to get the results of the tests. I wasn’t looking forward to yesterdays visit and I am looking even less forward to the next.

I know that there are limitations on how these things can be done but I really didn’t enjoy one second of the process it took to get me out of here and back. They getting out wasn’t actually as bad as getting back. The bumping down the steps as you would with a child’s buggy one behind and one in front bracing the drop so the bump wasn’t to violent. It isn’t what I would call comfortable, lying backwards on a hard narrow chair, with straps holding me in place, was bad enough as it was. To explain to someone who is able bodied and hasn’t put a seconds thought to it, is difficult, but I felt totally out of control and reliant on the strength and skill of two total strangers. It isn’t a position I or you probably have been in since we were ourselves, the child in the buggy. As an independent adult it isn’t pleasant physically or for the ego. With myself reduced to that of a child I became more insistent once at the hospital that I was going to do what I could myself, but I wasn’t taking into account the early start and the sheer physical effort it had taken to get dressed and ready to go. I stood, climbed, lowered and sat where ever when ever needed by the time we were sat waiting to go home, I was physically already heading for being a wreck. Add into that the time I spent in tears as my emotions went nuts as normal and I really wasn’t ready to deal with any problems of getting home.

The trip back up the stairs was very different from the simpler, for me journey down, this was my first meeting with the stair climber. I erg you now that if you think you can walk up the stairs no matter how slowly, it is advisable to walk. I know it wasn’t just a speed issue I would have been a thousand times worse than I am now, if I had taken what might have been at least two hours of pain and growing exhaustion to reach my door, well I don’t know what that would have really done to me. The stair climber is not a nice beast, again it is narrow and again you are strapped and at an angle that is designed to make you ill by itself, then there is the motion. It is hard to describe although the action is actually reasonably smooth it is a bit like a really bad fair ground ride. Well that is the reaction that my stomach had to it and it really did take me a few hours to get over it.

These really are just another selection of the hurdles to get over, ones that no one ever thinks of until you actually have to face them. In all this was a journey that for an able bodied person, including the time spent with the Doctor, would have taken at worst an hour and a half from alarm waking you up to home again, for me it took just over 6 hours. Twenty four hours on, of which 12 have been spent asleep, I still feel terrible and I am looking forward to my two hours this afternoon.