early Arthur

ritwren

I'm quite new to the boards and have only recently started posting a bit more. Thank you so very much for your ongoing memories of what has happened to you. I'm sorry to read that things are bad for you at the moment. Thankfully you come on here and get support from folks who obviously care for you and wish they could help. I hope your day gets better and you feel brighter soon.
rita

noeltone

The latest from my early arthuritis memoirs.


It seemed that surgeons held an attitude towards fracture patients then and even more so against teenagers who hurt themselves whilst messing about up trees and those in authority seemed to think that such people like me were a nuisance, frankly, tedious and time consuming and not very interesting. The likes of me needed X-Rays, cast changes, adjustments in traction, and there were always a thousand small things to be done and the staff could never relax with a smoke for although pinning a hip was the most common procedure on fracture service, once they had started the operation the chances of infection increased in almost direct proportion to the length of time the incision was open and McCall who was looking after me had the attitude that these problems were exasperated enormously when a snotty nosed imbecile of a kid was his patient.

The body will tolerate the pin in the hip only as long as there was no infection around it and in my case at first there was infection. Therefore as the infection enveloped my body any infection could not be cleared very easily and it was easier to clear if the pin was removed and then you have to start the process all over again or so I was told. In this changing procedure it is vital to get it right first time or the very next time but of course the body does not tolerate to many times and getting it right has to happen pretty quickly as far as the body is concerned. McCall took a grim relish in pointing this out to me and eventually I would have to grin and bear any further infection as any more operations around the pin were over.

The dominant feature at this time for me was one of being painfully awash and frightfully scared. McCall and his trusted team operated the next day after my admittance and he was merrily whistling Puccini apparently as his team hummed along but not to loud so as to out perform their leader. After this operation I was put into traction, my leg suspended from the knee with weights attached to the ankle to stop the muscles pulling the pin out of alignment. The pain began with each return to consciousness, built rapidly to a peak, where it held with an excruciating intensity, it had me twisting from side to side like a crocodile on a slippery slope as I did everything imaginable to keep from screaming, and not always, well mostly not succeeding. A nurse would be summoned to fetch Dr. McGuiness the needle man and his sending for took forever but when he finally appeared, and made his way down the ward to me, rather than relief at his approach I would grow even more frantic and by the time he reached my bed I’d literally be begging for the needle, and not even the twitch of contempt in his face or his smelly breath, or his food encrusted whiskers made me wish him not come close to me, nothing could silence me, not even his contempt as I needed that needle, that is how bad it was. I longed for some comfort, a parental cuddle but I had to make do with a grizzly haired staff nurse tut tutting and saying ‘dear dear now be a good and brave boy.’

debatat

Cris, it must have been so scary, to be in hospital on your own for all those procedures. I was in hospital as a child but it wasn't that bad, everyone was kind to me. I couldn't leave my children in hosp on their own though I would have to stay with them and indeed have done so many times.

Your experience has clearly had a marked effect on you. What a shame the docs were not nicer to a child, it is apalling. I can't bear to think of that. I really dislike people who are mean to children.

As always, thank you for sharing your experience. Hope you are well today.

Deb

joanlawson

Hi Chrisov

Your description of your fall, and the treatment you received, is so vivid that I could almost feel your pain. It must have been traumatic for you to endure such attitudes of indifference to your pain and feelings when you were so young. Such horrible experiences stay with you, unfortunately, but I think writing about it is a good idea.

I once had a child in my class who had been in a terrible fire, in which her mother and sister had died. She bottled up her feelings, and was very withdrawn at school. Then one day she started to write a long account of the fire. I let her carry on with it, ignoring other lessons, until she had finished. It was very moving to read, and she poured out all her anger and sadness. However, it seemed to help her, and gradually, she opened up far more.

All the best. Take care

Joan

eckstardeluxe

Hi there

I was just catching up with this.

It is a good idea to write things down but I felt in my experience although it was cathartic, it made me very angry and upset at the same time reliving it all. When I met with the Hypnotherapist, firstly she put me under (which no-one has ever been able to do before at gigs etc) and had me go to my safe place. The shocker is where it is, you imagine it to be with your children or hubby or something - nope, I saw me open the door to the outside door of our gym class on a sunny day looking over at the tennis courts and I could hear someone cutting grass and butterflies flying and bees buzzing. Very strange.

One thing I realised was how I hate diluted orange juice. I've been absolutely sickened by the sight or smell of it, just thought it was one of those things. In a session I remembered sitting in the hall of Urology, must have been about 7, the Nurse came with about 12 plastic cups filled with it and told me to drink them all. When I was struggling and starting to cry, she pushed them into my hand telling me they needed a good scan picture. Then she went away and came back with another tray full! After they stripped me down with nothing to cover me and put a needle in my arm and started injecting dye into me while they sat me on a potty. I had to pee and they all stared at this computer screen I was connected to. I have hundreds of these stories and they decided in my child psychiatry sessions my folks must be abusing me !!!! Even asking my sister and brother the same. They never considered for one moment this treatment was the cause.

I can share that story now and feel nothing. Before I'd have been in fits. It just shows what hypno can achieve.

noeltone

Continued

I will never and others should not presume to judge the severity of another’s pain! McCall my quack would sit at my bedside and spout these sentiments and more as to how I should be more careful when climbing trees. He would frown as he drew the fluid into the barrel of the syringe and mostly murmur such retorts as ‘calm down you scallywag, and you’ll get your shot’. And even in my bleary wretched state I felt that I could read his thoughts, he was thinking it was contemptible that a boy should be troubling him and humiliating himself after falling out of a tree and taking up a space on his public ward. But I didn’t care I just wanted some relief from the needle. At last Id feel a prick as McGuiness the needle man would accompany McCall and there would be a prickle, then I’d begin to sweat, my mouth would be as dry as a man lost in the Sahara desert and the pain would ease, and I’d lie there, soaked in sweat, gazing up at them and the Balkan frame of steel bars and pulleys mechanically assembled over the bed, and in the now misty remnants of consciousness I’d breathe a faint prayer of thanks and this prayer would be mixed in with many hail Marys and me pleading for the forgiveness of my many sins and mostly forgiveness for the sin of unlawfully climbing trees. As MC Call said if you must climb trees you must try not to fall out of them. Soon I’d drift into a shallow restless sleep until I woke up again in pain and needing another shot from McGuiness the needle man. I gazed out at the hospital garden then and again after my car accident in 1998 and try to shake off the shame I felt and the memory that try to cling to those days. It was terrible, shocking the indignity of being dependent on the nurses for bowel and bladder functions and many more basic functions in 1998 but back to my teens and my hospitalisation and the shame of being unable to turn over in bed, or reach for a book or to write was humbling in its extreme. Crumbs would get into the sheets but worse of all was the pain I tried to keep wanting the injections initially down to two a day but I always needed more. I tried to control it I bore it as best I could but when it really began to bite, when it climbed to that cress and simply did not break then I’d feel my will power rescind and shred like the fibre of an old rubber band and I would put up with the medical staffs huffing and unhelpful frosty stares and comments.

debatat

Eck and Crisov, I can't believe people can be so cruel, I am glad that things have come on in childrens depts since then.

Crisov, you have such a way of describing things, it is amazing, you are so very talented. It is gripping, reading your account, I am just sorry for your appalling treatment.

Deb x

frogmorton

cHRISOV
I still feel for that poor little boy and want to help him I know i have said it before but this does make compelling reading. I am reading it despite it being so awful
Eck
You too. that hypno really helped you didnt it? I am so glad kids today are allowed to have their parents with them. Inhumane it was
Take care
Toni x

jennywren

Hi my Darling man I still think you should pull yourself together and snap out of this blackness and allay your sensitivity and turn off the negative switch I can do it and my arthur is just as or worse than yours I know you and I know you can do it so snap out of it man and lighten up a bit and Than you may not p--- off others like you do on the forum Sound advice from Jenny

lindalegs

I think it's time a complaint was put to the Moderators about unhelpful comments.

Legs

noeltone

Ha ha ha I hope you are very swincere

jennywren wrote:

Hi my Darling man I still think you should pull yourself together and snap out of this blackness and allay your sensitivity and turn off the negative switch I can do it and my arthur is just as or worse than yours I know you and I know you can do it so snap out of it man and lighten up a bit and Than you may not p--- off others like you do on the forum Sound advice from Jenny

eckstardeluxe

frogmorton wrote:

cHRISOV
I still feel for that poor little boy and want to help him I know i have said it before but this does make compelling reading. I am reading it despite it being so awful
Eck
You too. that hypno really helped you didnt it? I am so glad kids today are allowed to have their parents with them. Inhumane it was
Take care
Toni x

Yes Toni, I was told recently by an OH I visited through work, he had worked in the Urology Dpt I had the worst problems with. He said they were "butchers". Not nice to hear, but just shows you what they were like back then, probably to the adults too. I had some problems with staff when I had my osteo illness in childhood, on particular nurse, oh how I'd love to meet that woman now!But there were some wonderful nurses on that ward too that'll never ever forget.

But let us not forget, we are not just talking arthur here. We are talking about children being abused because of earlier illnesses. Would these posters tell any other child to switch off who had suffered this?

noeltone

Ha ha ha I have just got up and logged on and this is a good laugh.
I hope you are a very sincere one I have met many such sincere people in my time who know what is best for me these say do this do that in their instructions which they are convinced are best and will see me through. The way to a man's heart is by drawing the rapier from the scabbard this is proverbially through the stomach but if you want to get into his brain I recommend the heart. We embark uon our own lives with trepidation much like each day as it comes and the way we are is done for our own reasons but as the conflict takes on takes on a life of its own i find Ive become a component in their own machine and the machine it would appear has one purpose to render one incapable of any feeling and robotic like turn off the gloomy light and bathe in positive glow.It does not work like that our own arthurs are not a competion to see who is the worse we are all complicated efficient and well consrtucted despite how well others think but as our own protagonist we are well oiled machines whose existence is often dictated by the system and if you are well off in the stysten then the system is fine biut if you are not well off in the system then the system stinks and to me atm the sysyem us like that you cant fight it if yiou do you just get worn out. All the luck in the world i think as i climb up my hill wont change it a fine example of the lesser irony there because of who we are we cannot buy or get what we want but are obliged albeit relunctantly to accept a free gift and then make of it as if it is of some real use and that is why I laugh at these well though out and very sincere remedies.
I am no ones darling man no one likes me ha ha pull and snap are cool words pull too hard and you could snap and remaun in blackness perhaps I am too sensitive becos of all the hardship ive endured but of course this is not as bad as others and defo worse then your arthur and I quite like not turning on any lights just to ignore those who philosophise about wishing a bright light lifes not a bright light and I like p--- off others when I philosophise as I like to and I know there are many on here who I do not pi--- off as I said before perhaps we need a secretive forum where the mad and the annoying and the depressed only go witha secret code for entry and of couse we could have a forum for those who know best and like to compete with each other haq ha Im still laughing at thios sound advice my sides are aching like my head

noeltone

Hi legs dont let it bother you just laugh he he

eckstardeluxe

noeltone wrote:

Hi legs dont let it bother you just laugh he he

You certainly don't pee me off Christov.

xxx

noeltone

Hi eckstardeluxe I am really glad about that I certainly dont want to pee anyone off but I do struggle to cope and carry on regardless my with arthuritis??

debatat

Crisov, I think you do really well considering all you have endured. Just arthur is enough to get us down, let alone anything else. Battling depression isn't easy, and each person has to find their own way through it. What works for one might not work for everyone. Keep posting.

I wish you well

Deb x

eckstardeluxe

noeltone wrote:

Hi eckstardeluxe I am really glad about that I certainly dont want to pee anyone off but I do struggle to cope and carry on regardless my with arthuritis??

You have more than Arthritis to contend with and that's the big difference. Unless in the unique position some adults found themselves in as kids it's very hard for some people to understand. Remember though, upset makes your pain worse, that's why I try my best to be positive. But as you will maybe have saw a few weeks ago, I have had a relapse since being diagnosed with the Arthur, it was just in there somewhere waiting to unleash itself. I'm seeing the Dr tomorrow with a view to restarting my sessions. The good thing is, the past is pretty much dealt with, it was the diagnosis and the fact it was caused by the Hospital in the first place I need to get my anger out over.


PS - Don't feed the Trolls

noeltone

PS estar I think they feed themselves quite well on thier own diet but they might get indigestion though if they over eat on my long message????

babette

Hi Noeltone

I have been reading this thread since you first posted your memoir. I think you have been very brave to expose your feelings and memories in such a public way for all to read and pass comment on. I can't believe the nerve of ms wren, who does she think she is to presume to speak for everyone who is reading your posts. They certainly did not pee me off! What a sanctimonious and patronising tone to take, advice of that kind is best given a very wide berth (it's not real advice, just a chance to pontificate on her own self worth).

Take care

B x

noeltone

Hi babette thanks for that I thought my recall might be useful to ascertain what happened then and what happens now with treatment by the NHS glad I dont pee you off I am trying to ignore comments troll or not