A trip to hospital and no therapy AGAIN

***Trigger warning for those with emetophobia and any other difficulties around pain and illness***

Just a brief post as I’m feeling pretty wobbly and whacked out on pain relief still. I (inevitably) caught my daughter’s sickness bug. Woke up vomiting at 5am yesterday and then the virus seemed to trigger a huge flare-up of fibromyalgia pain, which I so rarely get these days and have not had at that intensity for 10 years or more. I tried taking some pain killers but they came straight back up again and, having overdosed on paracetamol and codeine, among other things, in my 20s, this was really flashbacky and awful. By 10.30 I was in a pretty bad state and my daughter was, understandably, panicking as she didn’t know what to do. My Dad is in France till this afternoon so she called to get one of my friends to come round. My friend called 111 and they sent a paramedic round who gave me an injection of an anti-emetic and a prescription for codeine. Except the anti-emetic didn’t work so I threw the codeine up and the pain kept getting worse – I was literally screaming it was the worst pain I’ve experienced, including childbirth! Another call to 111 and, eventually, after hours of waiting and call-backs and me screaming that I needed help (on and off the phone), they said I needed to go to A&E and that they would send a car. Another friend came to take my daughter to stay with them. The car came except it was a fucking taxi and was just going to drop me outside the doors of A&E to fend for myself again. Luckily my friend was there as I was absolutely losing it at this point. So I sit in the taxi with a sick bucket wailing “I’m going to die” over and over again – poor taxi driver (and also totally unfair he might catch the bug – even though obviously it was the fibromyalgia causing the major problems, it’s still not nice for him to be subjected to the risk of such a horrible bug because the NHS no longer have their own cars to send).

At A&E I had to give my details and explain the problem for the dozenth time, and then ended up sitting on the floor in agony as the waiting room was packed and I couldn’t handle being near all those people with that level of pain and wearing my pyjamas whilst clutching a sick bucket! I’ve never known anything like it, off the chart pain. I had a constant really severe headache for more than 10 years from when I was 20 and that used to get so bad I would have to go to hospital for injections of painkillers. I was told then that the level of pain I get from that is the equivalent of having a limb accidentally amputated. I can well believe that. Getting seen in triage took ages, but at that point I was prioritised for a cubicle and after a few more minutes on the floor of the waiting room, wailing with the pain and wanting my Mum and vomiting more, I was taken through. It was so busy in there and took ages to get a canula fitted and some more anti-emetics in me. They tried IV paracetamol and then eventually hit me with the morphine which brought the pain down to a manageable level and I was allowed to come home around 7 (so they met their target of getting me out within 4 hours!). Phew!

My friend stayed overnight as I was feeling really distressed after such a scary day and also freaking out the pain would get really bad again. I slept through with some codeine and a sleeping tablet and though I’m feeling wiped out today and quite achy still the pain is nothing like what it was like yesterday. I was literally begging to be killed it was so bad. I’m taking today and tomorrow off work to recover at home and my Dad is coming round at 5pm to help out tonight.

So, needless to say – no therapy again today! I emailed K yesterday and we are meeting for an hour on Wednesday afternoon. I’m glad she can fit me in as we are not meeting for our double session next week either (I can’t do Monday so we are just doing an hour on Tuesday). I think an hour this week may be better as talking about the rupture will be intense, but it will be hard to have had only 2 proper hours of therapy (not counting the shit-show of a session on May 21st) in 4 weeks by the time we get back to ‘normal’ (if we do). I hope all will return to normal with the double sessions on June 18th, and that this isn’t the start of her saying we can’t do double sessions anymore… I do have the other T, L, lined up to start on July 3rd if things don’t resolve with K. I’ve said I’ll let her know, but I’m thinking I might go for a one-off session that day anyway, to check out how we would do parts work and how we would manage out-of-session contact and crisis support, and to see whether moving to her ever would be an option. I think it would reduce some of my anxiety around K going away, getting sick, me becoming too much for her, etc. to know there is someone else we could work with. L said she would be happy to do a double session each week and gave me her holiday dates till the end of the year, so I can see she understands how important a regular slot without too many breaks is for me. I will see how the next week goes with the two one-hour sessions, and what K says with regards the rupture and her phone call and stuff, but every time I freak out I remind myself I can see L on 3rd July and that really helps.

Right, enough from me as I only meant this as a brief update and have written loads and I am going to try and have a little sleep before my daughter gets home from school. I’m feeling quite traumatised and unsettled. Yesterday was also a painful reminder that I am motherless. I wanted my Mum so much. And I know if I had called her, despite everything, she would have come to be with me because I needed her. Knowing that this wasn’t an option and would just end up hurting us both helped me to restrain myself from calling her, but it was so painful and there was a huge outpouring of grief about that on top of everything else yesterday.