My 71 year old partner, Jim, lost his mother to cancer in November 2017. She was 95 years old and suffered from a rare sarcoma on her arm. Jim had been her carer for 18 years and was devastated when she passed away.
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| Photo by Natanael Melchor on Unsplash |
That diagnosis was scary enough but what happened next almost took his life much faster than any of us could have predicted.
He was asked to go to hospital as a day patient for a routine biopsy on his lung and when I left him he was in good spirits. I was told he would probably be ready for home within a couple of hours. When I rang 2 hours later I was told that he was still in surgery, but thought nothing of it because the ward was busy and there were a lot of people waiting for similar procedures.
After 5 hours has passed, Jim rang me and he sounded weary! He explained to me that they were keeping him in hospital for at least five days because something had gone wrong during his operation.
I rushed over and was shocked to see him looking grey and ashen in bed with a tube coming out of his left hand side ribs and wearing an oxygen mask. He told me that he was in a lot of pain and that he felt like he had an alien inside his chest trying to break out. He had been given morphine to help alleviate the pain.
It transpired that during the procedure, after taking a series of biopsies, something went wrong and Jim ended up with a life threatening collapsed lung (tension pnuemothorax). This is caused when air enters the space between the chest wall and the lung (pleural space). He was unable to breathe and was immediately rushed into A&E where he had to be recusitated by having an emergency decompression catheter forced into his lungs through his ribcage to relieve the build-up of pressure on his lung and re-inflate it. Details of this life-saving procedure can be found here. https://goo.gl/izbKs2
The surgeon who performed the biopsy informed us that she had done 1,000's of these procedures over the years and this was the first time anything like this had happened.
When I visited him the day after, he was confused and kept insisting he was at home saying he wanted to go outside for some fresh air but they wouldn’t let him. The nurses informed me that he was “very poorly” and that they were concerned at his confusion and asked me if he was normally this way. I told them most definitely not but I thought it was a combination of the shock, lack of sleep for 72 hours and of course, the medication.
Thankfully, the following day, after accidentally removing his own tube and whilst waiting for it to be re-fitted, but definitely no longer in pain, he seemed to be improving and on my second visit, the tube had been re-inserted but it was much smaller than previously so not as invasive and Jim was feeling much better. I was grateful to note that he was back to being “Mr Grumpy” again!
It looks as if he may be able to come home later today. The fluid that was coming out of his lungs seems to have cleared up so most likely the tube can come out and assuming that his chest x-ray is showing that his lungs are clear, hopefully they’ll send him home to recover.
The moral of this story is: never assume that a routine procedure can’t go terribly wrong. 99% of the time everything goes fine but if you are unlucky enough to be in the 1%, be prepared to spend some time in hospital and make your will today just in case!
Whilst we are not happy that Jim was knocking at death’s door due to an NHS mistake, I must make it clear that he could not have had better care whilst in hospital. The doctors and nurses were amazing — nothing was too much trouble for them.
Jim’s next hurdle will come in a week’s time when we find out the results of the biopsies. Until then, I am just grateful to still have him around for a while longer!
You can also read this article on Medium
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