How the hell did we get here?

After 25 years of living like a man-child with my parents and siblings, I decided to start my adult life out and move out of the family home. Despite my Mum's heartfelt but not totally serious (probably just 90% serious) pleas for me to stay with her forever and ever, my entire family came and moved me in to my new, shiny flat. A month in, my 26th birthday was the perfect excuse to throw a party but I'd not been feeling too great (more on that in a sec) and with the big party coming up, I decided to be an actual grown up and book my own doctors appointment. 

Now before we get into the proper nitty gritty, here's your warning that there will be some talk about special body parts, questionable fluids and rather unpleasant processes - I'd never intended to discuss these with anyone before, but it looks like my body had other plans, so there's your warning, turn back now if you're squeamish. 

Here we go then - bloody diarrhoea. This was the start of the aforementioned "not feeling great", which looking back, is an understatement. 

When you go to the doctor you want to have a pretty mundane illness to talk about, so it's not a pleasant subject to have to introduce yourself with. Obviously, being a stupid “bloke”, it took me longer than it should have to actually build up the courage to go through with even calling the surgery, let alone sitting in front of a doctor I'd never met before and telling him about my poop issues.

I know they say it all the time on the health segments on This Morning, but it turns out doctors really don’t give you a chance to be embarrassed. He didn't immediately go looking up my bum (my most pressing concern, obviously) and the GP actually made me feel very at ease - but in any case, he was obviously concerned (not embarrassing, still serious) so booked me in for blood tests and sent me home to shit in a tiny little pot. 

Cutting out the boring bits, shitting in the pot was tactically tricky and the blood test was straightforward enough - but in the week since my appointment, I felt myself getting much weaker (being only 25 and relatively healthy, this was unusual) and I couldn't eat properly. After making it back home from Newham to Enfield on the train for the test, I was knackered. Too knackered. So I decided to bite the bullet and give up being a grown up. 

I called my mum. After explaining what was going on, getting told off for not saying something sooner (and of course a proper Mum hug), the next step was the GP follow up.

What you don't want to hear when you walk into a follow up appointment is: “Go straight to A&E. Tonight.” 

But that's what I got the next evening at the GP. Apparently seriously high CRP markers on your results indicates an incredibly severe infection and requires immediate attention. Safe to say although I'd been feeling like total crap, I hadn't been expecting this. 

After 4 hours of sitting in Accident and Emergency, a few more hours lying on a gurney in the corridor waiting for the doctor, the real phase of physical humiliation began - so for any sadists out there, grab your popcorn because this is the bit you've been waiting for.

Over the next few hours, three separate men whom I had met for less than 10 minutes had lubed up and poked around in my butt (and without even so much as a compliment or buying me dinner). 

To cut a long story short, I was admitted for the next two weeks. As a result I got very familiar the butt poking process, so much so that it became an almost Pavlovian response to roll over and present myself whenever a doctor came in the room. Unfortunately, unlike Pavlov's dog, I wasn't given a treat for responding so quickly. 

Happy Birthday to me...

Over these two weeks I was properly examined - they even sent a camera (the poor, poor camera) up there and I was diagnosed with “indeterminate Inflammatory Bowel Disease”. 

Translation: look mate, it's either Crohn’s or Ulcerative Colitis, we don't have a clue, but the treatment is the same so doesn't matter. 

Lots of steroids followed and over the weeks my stools went from a very unhappy 7 on the Bristol Scale to a 5, which is just short of a normal poop, so I was sent home with a HUGE bag of pills and told to get on with it. Happy days all around right? Not quite... 

Being waited on hand and foot back at the family home by my Mum was absolutely fantastic for the first few days. I just sat around, receiving whatever food took my fancy whenever I wanted it and playing with the birthday presents which had been waiting patiently for the last 2 weeks.

Things took a real turn however once the severe cramps started. My stomach felt like it was being wrenched and wrung out and eventually painkillers stopped doing anything to help. In a real double-whammy I also developed haemorrhoids at this point which made sitting or lying down EXTREMELY painful. 

It finally got to a breaking point of pain and loose bowel movements and an ambulance was called to take me back to A&E.

I’d never been in an ambulance before, so honestly apart from being scared of shitting myself on the way and the searing pain in my bum I thought it was actually kinda cool. No dramatic blue lights or sirens but still did the job. 

Thankfully it was a Monday morning so A&E was pretty quiet, I even managed to get my own side room so I could writhe in pain in private which was nice.

Another gross bit: lots of rectal talk to come and then some. You’ve been warned, read on at own peril.

While being examined in A&E it was discovered that the haemorrhoids were actually the start of an abscess (yeah, on top of everything else I now had a big bag of pus next to my butthole) which was growing fast and causing even more pain.

This is where it actually got really good for a few hours because with this discovery came a dose of Tramadol which was AWESOME and left in a beautifully floaty, stoned, drowsy state for the next few hours while they admitted me yet again and moved me up to the ward to wait for it to be drained so I missed all the boring bits.

I don't really remember the next day or so until the draining, so the next proper memory I have is coming round from the surgery with a sore bum and still feeling pretty stoned but which is a VERY disconcerting feeling let me tell you.

Example: (I have no idea why, but on waking up I also felt really compelled to choose between either yellow or blue which were represented by floating digger trucks. Clearly whatever drugs they gave me were kickass. I chose yellow.)

Anyway, the abscess was now drained which not only meant less pain but the addition of a fetching dressing across my arse and the addition of yet another stage of embarrassment in aftercare…”irrigation”.

I discovered that this meant that after every bowel movement, which was still about 8-10 a day at this point, I had to call someone to spray a bit of water at my butt and essentially wipe me like a giant baby. This is no exaggeration, at some points when supplies were low actual baby wipes were used so the only major difference between me and a newborn at this point was a liberal sprinkling of talcum powder.

That whole next week was a pretty boring and bland affair to be honest. The doctors were great and prescribed stronger versions of the drugs I had been on in my previous stay which medically was fine but by over-riding memories of this time are just boredom, tiredness and generally being really fed up. 

This wasn't helped by the introduction of the dietary element of the treatment. After settling for the hospital food in my first stay I didn't think this could get much worse… ohhh boy was I wrong. I was put on an “elemental diet” which basically just meant I had to drink some warm watery milk crap four times a day instead of any food. When the increasing volume and frequency of this diet became apparent I knew I couldn't do it so the alternative was a nasogastric feeding tube (hereby referred to as “the NG”). 

After all the stuff I’d been through, having the NG fitted was honestly the worst process of my entire hospital experience. The staff doing it were excellent, but gagging down a tube with a hard metal wire in it through my nose and having it linger there in the back of my throat for ages while they waited for it to be ready almost proved too much. It turned out to be true what they said in that you get really used to it and it becomes very background but initially this was truly horrible.

Thankfully, this was when I think I really turned the corner.

After the week of monotonous shit daytime TV and getting used to “feed” (not food importantly, so you feel even more like livestock) constantly dribbling down the back of my throat I actually began to feel more myself than I had in the past few weeks. Thank god for this as I think my poor parents (one or both of which have literally been at my side this entire time, in hospital) must have noticed I turned into a real grumpy prick at times, some of which can be blamed on steroids changing your mood, but also sometimes I felt I just couldn't help it so this was a welcome change.

Happily, on that note the brief history of my intro to having a chronic disease diagnosed is up to date. Right now I'm still in hospital, still on the feed and still having all the stronger versions of drugs etc. but medically things seem to be moving in the right direction so now its just a waiting game until I can get out of here.

If you’re actually still reading this then I guess all thats left to say is well done, you really stuck with that so thanks. More updates and probably complaining to follow!