Both Sides of the Sheets , livre ebook

Troubador Publishing Ltd - Annie Armitage

Découvre YouScribe en t'inscrivant gratuitement

Je m'inscris

Obtenez un accès à la bibliothèque pour le consulter en ligne
En savoir plus

204 pages

English

Vous pourrez modifier la taille du texte de cet ouvrage

Obtenez un accès à la bibliothèque pour le consulter en ligne
En savoir plus

A propos
Informations
Extrait

Description

Annie Armitage was a successful career nurse, with a dedication to quality nursing and care as taught during her rigorous training in the 1960s. Taking her skills, Annie eventually worked as a consultant to the Department of Health, advising on the quality of nursing care in the NHS. However Annie had been diagnosed with Lupus, an illness that effects over 50 000 people in the UK; is more common than Leukemia, yet is virtually unheard of by the wider population. Lupus usually causes great pain, serious organ damage and is potentially fatal. At 26, Annie was given 5 years to live, she fought to look after her two young children while dealing with the insidious illness. As Annie became increasingly ill, she was able to reflect on her changed situation as a patient not a nurse. During the time she was in hospital under treatment she started to wonder how the standard of nursing had slipped so drastically since her own training. Her experiences as a Lupus sufferer, and previously as a nurse, have given her first-hand experience of the quality of care experienced in NHS hospitals. Annie's observations and knowledge make this essential reading, not just for those suffering from Lupus, but also for anyone concerned about standards of nursing and care in hospitals, as well as those experiencing long-term incurable illness

Sujets

Nursing

Informations

Publié par	Troubador Publishing Ltd
Date de parution	01 novembre 2010
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781848769878
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0250€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

Both Sides of the Sheets
Annie Armitage
Copyright 2011 Annie Armitage
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.
Matador 5 Weir Road Kibworth Beauchamp Leicester LE8 0LQ, UK Tel: ( 44) 116 279 2299 Fax: ( 44) 116 279 2277 Email: books@troubador.co.uk Web: www.troubador.co.uk/matador
ISBN 978 1848764 866
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Typeset in 11pt Biook Antiqua by Troubador Publishing Ltd, Leicester, UK

Matador is an imprint of Troubador Publishing Ltd
For Ian. For those caring for the sick. For patients For my profession. For Lupus suffers. (Lupus UK - Telephone number (044) (0) 1708 731251)
Contents
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I wish to thank Ian for his love and compassion over all the years, for editing this book, and for encouraging me on numerous occasions when I was threatening to abandon my writing.
Thanks to all those that have read my chapters, contributed ideas, constructively criticised and encouraged me and particularly June Counsel, Anne Elphick, and Rebecca Duffey,
Thanks to my dear friends The Queen Elizabeth Nurses - Eileen Fortey (nee Anderson), Sylvia Williams (nee Edgington) Gill McGowan (Nee Bradbury) and for all the support from my other friends and relatives.
Some name changes are to protect the innocent and me from the guilty.
CHAPTER 1
CRISIS
I opened my eyes.
Are you all right? a female voice asked gently. I tried to answer but couldn t make words of the thoughts inside my head. I wriggled, eventually managing to whine,
I -I -I need a wee.
The voice said soothingly, Don t worry, just do it You re wearing an incontinence pad as a nappy, so it won t matter. I relaxed, feeling the damp warmth seeping between my legs. Then, opening my eyes again, I stared at the owner of the voice, but I couldn t make sense of what I saw. Then she was talking again, You ve been in a coma, so we re moving you from Peterborough District Hospital to Addenbrooke s Hospital in Cambridge.
I was finding the journey tedious in my damp nappy. The sun was streaming through the skylight in the roof of the ambulance. I thought, Ah I have it, perhaps we could break the journey and stop for a picnic. Somehow I would have to put my thoughts into words.
C -c -c- could we stop for a picnic?
The ambulance woman sounded incredulous, It s January and it s freezing outside.
The warmth of the heating had protected me from the winter cold, and even the urine in my damp nappy had retained its warmth. I slept until, eventually, we reached Cambridge and the ambulance doors were drawn back.
A male voice asked, Has she been all right?
Yes, she s been fine, was the response.
Indignantly I thought, how can she say I m fine when I m in this state? But now they gently moved the stretcher down the ramp, out of the ambulance, into a lift and onto a ward. Two nurses appeared and transferred me into a bed. A warm hand took mine and the ambulance woman said,
Take care, my love.
My education of life as a patient between the sheets had begun. Gradually, as the dimmer switch of consciousness increased in intensity, I became aware of my environment. Actually I d lost only three weeks of my life and fortunately, at that stage, I didn t realise what was going or what was ahead of me.
Only a month before it had been Christmas, but a very different Christmas to those that had preceded it. Shortly before the day my blonde, twenty-year-old student daughter, Sarah, arrived anticipating the festive season. All the cards had been written and posted and the fridge and freezer stocked with food. Carefully wrapped presents had been retrieved from their secret hiding places and placed under the tree, which my husband, Ian, had brought in from the garden. I could still recall the evocative smell of pine filling the sitting room, as Ian, at six foot tall, had no difficulty in reaching up to the tree and various other places that needed decorations to transform our modern, four-bedroom house into something of a winter wonderland.
Then, at the most inconvenient moment, the oven broke down and refused to work. Spare parts were not available at such a late stage in the festive season. It was Christmas Eve, so Ian, who is always good in an emergency, nipped out to buy cold meat for our Christmas lunch. The turkey was relegated to the freezer. My breathing had begun to deteriorate since early December and despite visits to the GP, had continued to worsen. By this time I was so breathless I couldn t participate in the preparations in any useful way. After all the excitement of Christmas, it must ve been a very disappointing time for everyone, as my relatively small frame lay gasping for breath on the sitting room sofa.
As soon as the Christmas holiday period was over, Ian drove me to see Don, the acupuncturist. Don felt for the four pulse levels of Chinese medicine, but didn t reach for the acupuncture needles. Instead he turned to Ian, saying,
Anne needs to be in hospital. Take her straight to her GP, may I phone to say she is on her way?
Ian must have agreed because when we arrived at the surgery we were shown straight into see Dr Doyle, my G.P. He stood up looking concerned and asked,
Would you be happy to come into hospital under the care of my next-door-neighbour?
Dr Doyle s gentle voice with its soft Irish accent immediately made me feel secure. His presence exuded warmth and he was holding my hand while waiting for my response.
Dr Doyle always looked as though he d rushed out to a call during the night, hastily dressing in any clothes that came immediately to hand. On this occasion I felt so poorly that I would have accepted any suggestion with gratitude even if his next-door-neighbour had been an astrologist In fact Dr Doyle lived next door to the consultant Dr Guttman, whose speciality was in heart and kidney medicine.
Ian drove me to Peterborough District Hospital and we were directed to Ward 2Y. I was shown to a bed in an eight-bed bay and Ian went home, relieved that I was in good hands. By that time I was out of it and quite unaware of what was going on. I presume the houseman must have admitted me. I lay in bed for a few days periodically coming round but becoming increasingly disorientated. This culminated one night in my going to the toilet and, on returning, climbing into the first unoccupied bed. The occupant had left it to meet her call of nature and was not best pleased to find my soporific body in her bed on her return.
My bad behaviour was reported to Ian the following day and I was moved into a single room; possibly as the result of my nocturnal wanderings, or maybe because my breathing had deteriorated into such a state of hyperventilation that it was disturbing the other occupants of the ward. Years later, I found out that my chief misdemeanour was masturbating during the night. The Ward Sister had confided in Carole, my friend, who at forty still maintained the appearance of a punk and, because of this, the Ward Sister felt able to share such delicate information with her.
As a further test of Dr Guttman s abilities, my breathing problems were exacerbated by partial heart and kidney failure.
But not clitoris failure, Carole said later.
Clearly if left to my own devices I d soon be dead.
Something had to be done. A very kind Ward Sister sat and held my hand for most of the day, handing over to a nurse when she went off duty. When Ian visited, he whispered in my ear,
Just keep breathing Annie.
Ian heard the doctors discussing my chances of survival and my potential life expectancies after survival. A lengthy discourse ensued and eventually the doctors decided to take the plunge and offer me an intensive-care bed. I had my chance.
A case conference was held and Hilaire Belloc s poem, The Death of Henry King , might have been written with just that event in mind;
Physicians of the utmost fame
were called at once,
But when they came
they answered as they took their fees;
There is no cure for this disease
Henry will very soon be dead
I knew the odds but I was not dead yet
I was twenty-six when I was diagnosed with the autoimmune disease, Lupus. When I consulted my nursing textbooks, I d read, prognosis must be guarded and particularly where there is renal involvement, the outlook is bad, patients surviving just a year or two.
Once Lupus has been conclusively diagnosed there is no cure.
As for me, I was transferred to Intensive Care and my nearest and dearest relatives were called to my bedside from far-flung corners of the country, to potentially say goodbye. But at my greatest moment of melodrama, I was cerebrally absent.
Ian orchestrated the initial meeting between relatives and the medical team, who began to explain my state of health with the aid of matchstick-men type drawings. My relatives sat entranced, until Ian broke in with an explanation of the backgrounds of the audience, pointing out that there was a GP, a pharmacist, a senior accountant and company director, and two undergraduates, with himself an ex bank manager, all knowing that I was suffering from Lupus, some having known this for over twenty years. One of the doctors pointed out that I was in kidney failure, but I could