25 Years ago today .....

Twenty five years ago today, my life changed completely.

I was twenty-two years old, still living at home in a small North Nottinghamshire village with my parents and my younger brother.  I was engaged to Ady, we'd been together since we were at school and were making plans for our wedding which was booked for April 1989.  We'd just bought a house, in a village nearby and were spending most evenings stripping wallpaper and trying to get rid of the awful red gloss paint that the last owner had thought looked wonderful on the radiators.

I was working as an Accounts Assistant at a firm in the nearby town of Retford.  I was an ordinary girl. I loved reading, music and clothes.  We didn't have much money, we went to the pub or visited friends - nothing out of the ordinary.  I was happy and healthy.

That evening we were at our new house.  Ady was stripping the bathroom walls, I was downstairs looking at the guest list for the wedding.  Then, out of the blue, all of a sudden, with no warning I got a pain.  It was a pain like nothing I'd ever felt before, and it wouldn't go away.  It was in my stomach, I felt sick and my tummy started to bloat.  It wouldn't go away.  I was scared and it hurt, it hurt a lot, and it wouldn't go away.

Ady bundled me into the car and drove me to the hospital, the pain was getting worse and I kept being sick. My tummy was so huge that I couldn't do my trousers up.

Most of that night is a blur.  I remember being asked lots of questions, I remember that it hurt and I remember that the Doctor thought I would be OK in the morning, but that they would keep me in overnight. The pain got worse during the night.  More Doctors and more questions and then in the morning they decided that they'd have to open me up and take a look to see if they could work out what was happening.

Mum and Dad arrived and I was whisked off to theatre.

I don't remember much at all about the next six or seven days.  I vaguely remember that it was my Dad's birthday, and I was worried that he wouldn't have his present.  I vaguely remember someone dying in the next bed.  I was in the Intensive Care Unit, I was hooked up to machines that made dreadful noises, I had tubes coming from all parts of my body.  I was very poorly.

My operation had taken hours.  When the Doctors told my parents what had happened, my Dad fainted.

When the Doctors opened up my stomach, they found that my small intestine had died and gone gangrenous. They had removed most of my small intestine, I only had nine inches left.  That's a lot of intestine to remove. Nobody knows why it happened, but my intestine had stuck together and formed adhesions which had cut off the blood supply.  Nobody really knew what would happen next, or if I would get better.

It felt like I was in hospital for a very long time.   I wasn't a very good patient.  I cried a lot and I felt sorry for myself.  I was in a ward with lots of elderly people, who were very sick, and they kept dying.  I wanted to go home.  I lived on orange flavoured ice cubes and the Doctor wouldn't let me go home until I ate some real food.  So I did, I stuffed myself and then I was sick.   They let me go home, it was the day before Christmas Eve.

Twenty five years later I am still here.    I went back to work two months after getting out of hospital, and got married two months after that.  My marriage didn't last, but I did.   I've travelled a long and rocky road over the last twenty-five years.  Thank goodness I didn't know back then how much I would be affected by that operation.    My bones are crumbling, including my jaw bone, so I lost most of my teeth.  I have osteoporosis and pernicious aneamia, I have d-lactic acidosis and fibromyalgia.  I am tired most of the time and I spend a lot of time in the bathroom.

The pain never really did go away, but I'm here and I am happy.  I have the most wonderful husband and best friend in Martin.  I work full time, I also do a few hours work for the local Parish Council, I do some volunteering.  I love blogging, I love receiving so many pre-publication books, I love going to publisher parties and book launches.   We have great holidays, I have the most fantastic family including a scrumptious nephew.

My life changed completely 25 years ago, but it didn't end, it just changed.