The Nightmare

I used to have this recurring nightmare about a night I was in hospital back in 1993. In all the pain, worry and horribleness of the time I was there this night my overriding memory.

When I dream about it I wake up in a sweat or crying and my hubby trying to comfort me in my sleep.

Last year as part of a trail for people with chronic pain I was offered the chance to see a physiologist.

After a few sessions with her my nightmare, instead of being a couple of times a month was once in a year and a half.

However since I found out I am having surgery in a couple days I've had it three times already.

This surgery is not anything like as serious as my one before but it seems to have triggered something in my self conscious so I thought maybe if I wrote it down it might help it get out of my head so here goes.

By the way don't read any further if bodily fluids freak you out!

The hospital I was in, Connolly Hospital Blanchardstown, was an old TB hospital and at this point I was in one of the units away from the main hospital. I was in a room on my own.

I had been getting several blood transfusions and had a cannula in my hand for that. I couldn't walk due to the abscess on my intestine attached to muscle in my groin, though they didn't know that yet. Because I couldn't walk to the bathroom they had a commode in the room for me and I was to call the nurse to get help to get to it. For some reason on this night they left it on the far side of the room.

I woke up in the middle of the night needing to use the commode and rang the buzzer, no one answered. I kept buzzing and waiting, buzzing and waiting but no one came.

So I was fifteen, a young fifteen in 1993, 5 stone, scared, in pain, alone and in the dark wondering what the hell happens now. I decided or was forced to try make it myself.

I eventually managed to get to the edge of the bed which seemed to be 7 feet away from the floor.

I psyched my self up and put my good foot on the floor.

It was freezing cold tile.

December 1993 was the first real snow Ireland had had in years, I’d watched it fall through the window wishing I was able to be out there.

Anyway slowly yet urgently I managed to shuffle around the bed. Unfortunately I couldn't get out the right side of the bed due to medically stuff, that is the technical term!

There was probably three or four steps to the commode at this point.

I sat on the corner of the bed looking at this near gulf of empty space.

Eventually my bowels made the choice for me, I needed to move.

I made it two steps before I fell.

I caught the cannula in my hand on the arm of the commode trying to stop myself falling and it bent and ripped out of my hand, it was agony and started bleeding profusely.

I tried to get up but I fell again and unfortunately then soiled myself, however at this point all I was passing was blood and basically lumps of my insides as I couldn't eat.

I lay on the cold hard tile floor in my own blood and cried silent tears.

I have never felt so alone and desperate in my life.

I lay there wishing to die, I had had enough.

Eventually after what seemed like an hour or so I was found by a matron whom I hated, she’d force me out of bed and try to make me walk up and down the corridor outside my room when I couldn't physical do it.

She looked at me laying there and said,

“Look at the mess you've made”

...............................................

“Look at the mess you've made” to a tiny, dying girl who was crying and staring blankly at a wall.

Of course she walked back out and went to get a nurse to help me, who was lovely and tried to comfort me.

I think that was my breaking point.

I think after that night I was just on autopilot.

Before it I’d cried a lot but afterwards I don't remember crying.

I don't think that blank stare left my eye for sometime.

It is that laying on the floor, alone, scared, in the dark, wet from blood and mess wanting to die that haunts me.

Even writing this down has made me cry.

It was 24 years ago and it haunts me.

Hopefully it sinks back down after this surgery is done.

Kayt Nov 17