So, having said in my last post that I was going to stick to my training plan and just enjoy the process, everything promptly went completely and utterly pear shaped ... Ben came down with a fever and a swollen gland just over a week ago and by Saturday was on antibiotics. By Monday morning the lump still hadn't gone down so back to hospital we went for a check-up. I walked him down in the buggy fully expecting to be back home a couple of hours later. That didn't happen.
We were sent straight to Paediatric A&E at Epsom General Hospital, who were fantastic. After a fairly short wait, we were seen by a doctor. Turned out that Ben had an abscess so they immediately put a cannula in (you can imagine how much fun that was for a 4 year old) and got him started on IV antibiotics. He was then admitted and we were sent up to Casey Ward so they could continue the IV antibiotics until they could get him into St George's for surgery to drain the abscess (they don't do paediatric surgery at Epsom).
Somewhat unsurprisingly (when you think about it), staying in hospital is really not a lot of fun. Ben was in a lot of pain (having recently had an abscess as well, I know exactly how frigging painful it is!) and, even with as much paracetamol and ibuprofen as they could give him, it was barely touching the sides. On top of that, Ben started to dread the nurses coming to give him more antibiotics (which happened every 6 hours, day or night) as the drugs going in really stung his arm.
The first night was, quite frankly, hideous. I was worried about not being able to sleep because of all the sick children in the ward but, as it turned out, Ben was the one keeping everyone else up most of the time. I think he woke 10 or 12 times that first night. At about 11pm, he had just had another dose of antibiotics and was crying endlessly with the pain and tiredness. I felt completely useless - he'd already had all the painkillers they would give him and I couldn't do anything to help him other than be there. I ended up sitting next to Ben on the bed, shushing him, with tears streaming down my face and trying not to make any noise so I didn't upset him anymore than he already was. It was horrible. I started thinking about what would happen if something went wrong and he died. How would I ever cope if I lost another one of my babies? I know the chances of anything going wrong with something like an abscess are extremely small but, once you've been on the wrong side of statistics, you don't really trust them to protect you anymore.
Thankfully he finally stopped crying not too long after that and went back to sleep (for ... oh, at least half an hour). Many, many wakings later, it was 5:30am and Ben was somehow ready to get up for the day. As everyone else in the ward unsurprisingly wasn't, we moved to the playroom (yes, the ward has a playroom) and a very boring day got started. Mum phoned to see how I was a bit later and, although I tried to say that I was fine, the rather shaky voice may have given me away. Mum, being the wonderful mum that she is, arrived at the hospital a couple of hours later and didn't leave until Ben's bedtime. By that time, the antibiotics had started kicking in so the second night was thankfully a lot better.
The staff at St George's still hadn't been able to find a bed for Ben by the end of the second day, so decided to put him on the outpatient surgery list for the Wednesday with the understanding that we would be transferred back to Epsom General after the surgery. I was assuming we'd go in hospital transport but what actually happened was that a cab turned up at the hospital for us at 6am. It seemed completely ludicrous! Such a waste of money for the NHS when I could just have driven us ourselves ... hey ho.
We arrived at St George's at 6:30am, only to be told that Ben wasn't actually on the list but they'd try to fit us in and were hoping that he could be seen that day. Given that Ben hadn't eaten since 5pm the night before, and he's only 4, I wasn't overly happy about him having to potentially not eat all day and then have to do it all over again the next day. Plus I felt too guilty to eat in front of him, when he couldn't, so I hadn't eaten since the night before either. I managed to scoff a yoghurt when he was distracted by Paw Patrol (thank God for Paw Patrol!) but, by 2pm when he finally was called for surgery, that was still all I'd eaten so we were both pretty hangry ...
We went into the ante-room to the theatre and the two (really lovely) anaethetists, Ben and Sam, started chatting to my Ben. Ben was not particularly happy with more things going into his arm but they were really good with him. The bit that kind of freaked me out was when they put the anaesthetic in his IV and within 3 seconds (if that), he fell asleep. It was unbelievably quick. The anaethetist took Ben from my arms, told me to kiss him goodbye and showed me out. I was definitely more traumatised than Ben was frankly. I hated leaving my little boy with the surgeons to be cut open when he was asleep. Obviously I did, because that's what he needed, but I really didn't like it ... but, on the plus side, I did then get to go and have a coffee and a sandwich (which, given I was literally shaking by that point, I suspect I needed quite badly). I got to take a little buzzer with me so they could call me when he was waking up. All very sensible.
The surgery only took about an hour but, when I went to see Ben in the recovery room, he'd fallen back asleep and really didn't want to wake up (not a huge surprise as Nick always has trouble waking up from generals as well). A lot of tickling and cold flannels later and we eventually managed to wake him up and took him back to the ward bed. He had a sweet and a sip of water and promptly went back to sleep. He looked so little curled up in the massive hospital bed! Two hours later, the nurse and I decided he really did need to wake up and pestered him until he did, then fed him sweets, crackers, raisins and nuts until he perked up. The good news was they decided we could go home though, instead of back to Epsom General, and he could continue on oral antibiotics rather than IV. So Nick came and picked us up and I have rarely been so happy to see him! Ordeal (mostly) over.
Ben is still very tired and a bit sore but so, so much better than he was before the surgery. He's having to have the dressings changed every other day which is pretty painful for him at the moment but he's getting there and I'm so very grateful to all of the lovely NHS staff who have looked after him over the last week.
So, training has gone completely almost off-plan this week but I did still manage to fit in a spin session on Thursday evening and then a long ride with my lovely friend Reinet this morning. And far more importantly, Ben is home and recovering, so I'm going to take that and be happy :-)
https://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/SusannaSpeirs
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