Monday, 13 April 2009

Monday 13th April 2009

A rather worrying and eventful night has just passed. Carole started complaining of stomach cramps around 11pm last night, although initially we gave little notice - with it being Easter Sunday I'd initially considered it to be a simple case of overindulgence. However, by 3am, and with less than an hour of sleep having been attained I started to worry. Carole was shaking and crying and getting steadily worse. As such I called NHS 24 who (after innumerable questions) told us to come straight into the hospital.

After waking Jane and Nick to let them know what was going on (and being extremely thankful they were there to look after Luca) I loaded Carole into the car and set off for Foresterhill hospital in Aberdeen. The on-call nurse saw us immediately, and proceeded (after a repeated set of questions) with a standard examination. Blood pressure, urine tests, physical checks and manipulation (of the stomach and back), etc. After some time, with a confusing set of conclusions reached, she called in the main doctor who thankfully turned out to be one of the head men, and as such hugely experienced. However, he too couldn't come to a conclusive diagnosis, although the following was reached:- Aggravated stomach and colic.

The colic issue is merely hypothetical at present, and is merely their guess as to what the pains could have be - there's no evidence to suggest this will be the case, and we need to monitor her from here in case the pains come back. If they don't, then great. They also mused as possible forthcoming gall bladder issues, but again there's no set evidence to say this conclusively.

I eventually got her home around 6am this morning and put her back to bed. Her stomach is still very tender, but the two antibiotic jabs they gave her seem to have eased the severe cramps. I'll update again tonight.

I decided there wasn't much point in me going back to bed, so after walking and feeding the dogs I got myself showered and dressed before heading into the office - although obviously having had only an hours sleep I may leave a tad earlier than usual today.

Jane is kindly taking care of Luca (and Max obviously) while I'm at work and Carole sleeps. Indeed, he woke at 6.15am and had to be coerced into staying in his cot until a more decent hour (6.45am!!). His calls of "Mummy....Daddy.....Mummy......Daddy" at repeated intervals likely woke the neighbours, let alone our own household! Poor Max is sharing a bedroom with him while they're here so his breakfast predictably came earlier then he would have preferred too.

Today's initial plan was for Carole, Jane, Nick, Max and Luca to go to Gardenstown for the day while I worked, but now, for obvious reasons, it will only be the Armstrongs. Luca will be dropped into nursery before they go though in order to give Carole some peace and rest to recover. As mentioned before, I'll be leaving work sharply, and will hopefully witness a slightly less pained Carole. All have my direct number in the office though, so if there's any changes before then I'll head straight home.

With the occurrences of the past 10 hours I haven't yet been able to mention events across the rest of the weekend. However, as we have a large number of photo's taken which illustrate better than words I'll wait until my next blog in order to feature these, along with an update on Caroles condition.

**Useless fact of the day - Colic is more prevalent in newborn babies than adults, and indeed affects around 20% of newborns**

No comments: