Towards the end of the afternoon on Wednesday I had significantly increased pain in my upper back. The best way I could describe it was like having fishing hooks in the skin just inside each shoulder blade and someone pulling on those hooks. At the same time it felt like I had a knife deep in my back between the shoulder blades. I had a very rough night last night, waking several times in a lot more pain than normal. When I finally awoke in the morning I was completely wiped out again and felt extremely nauseous. I was due to have my first hydrotherapy session at 9.30, but I didn’t feel that I could get out of bed, let alone make it into the hospital, so I rang to cancel the appointment. They offered another appointment at 11.30 if I felt a bit better after a walk around.
Not only did I have the increased back pain that started the night before, I also had stomach pains. I still have quite severe constipation and had not been since the early hours of Saturday morning. With that and the nausea I really didn’t know what to do with myself. I eventually got up and had a bit of a walk around the house, and eventually sat in the den as I am usually more comfortable in the chair there. After a little while I started vomiting, so C phoned the GP. They phoned back early afternoon (unfortunately we had missed the call the first time they tried). I spoke to Dr Green again, whom I had seen about the possible ongoing infection last week. Having talked through the symptoms she asked me to go to the surgery later in the afternoon.
When I saw Dr Green at the surgery, my BP was quite normal, but my pulse was racing (approx 130BPM) and I had a slight temperature (37.9C). She asked if I felt like I had flu, which I didn’t, and she agreed that I didn’t look like I had, but was clearly unwell. She rang the spinal team again, but having spoken to them they did not feel it was related to the surgery.
She therefore decided I should be assessed in the ED at the hospital, so called an ambulance. Bit of a shock to the system to say the least and I had a bit of a panic attack. The ambulance crew came and re-did the obs in the ambulance. My BP was raised by this time, but that is probably due more to the anxiety.
I was taken in to ED where I was assessed. The concern was that perhaps blood vessels around the surgery had ruptured. I was given some morphine to ease the pain, which it did very quickly, and they also did an ECG before taking me to Radiology, initially for a chest x-ray, and then later for a CT scan. Following the CT scan I was taken to the Clinical Decision Unit whilst they awaited the reports. At about 23:15 the doctor came to see me to say that the preliminary reports showed no signs of the issues they were concerned about, and discharged me.
They advised that I explain to the surgeon what had happened when I see him on Monday, in case there is anything else he wants to look into.