Friday the 13th....
So we’ve all heard the saying that Friday the 13th isn’t a very good day and that supposedly many “bad things” happen on this day. Today I woke up quite late, around 12 I’d say and I got out of bed. Ate breakfast and all (It’s part of my routine now to eat and drink something as soon as I get up, since i have mentioned before that the pump is dependent on liquids, I need to drink before getting out of bed to prevent an LOC from happening). Was relaxing outside and today it was only my sister and myself at home. Everyone else was out. After a while, we sat down to eat lunch and I felt like eating spicy food. I took out the chillies and put a whole load of them in my food ( you may think like woah, thats not such a great idea but I didn’t think that because it doesn’t really say to stay away from chillies in my restrictions list). I ate the food and lets say I put around a table spoon and a half of red chillies in my food. NOT SUCH A GREAT IDEA.
Before I could even get to the sofa I could feel my stomach exploding, a little less extreme in comparison with before I was diagnosed with Heart Failure. I felt weak, couldn’t move and I started to sweat a lot. My clothes were drenched and it looked like I went in for a shower…. I sat on the sofa, my sister and helper worrying about me. They got on the phone with my nurse and she said to bring me back to Hospital. I felt so weak that I thought I was going to pass out… I couldn’t really move much at all and my eyes were starting to close. I FELT SO SICK. Suddenly I started to vomit everything out (sorry, you must not be imagining some nice stuff right now) but I vomitted a lot. After that the stomach pain got slightly less intense. We didn’t take a chance and my sister took me back to hospital. I reached the hospital and there were no beds. They sat me down on a chair and told me to wait to see the doctor. They eventually gave me a bed and the doctor came to see me. He looked at me and said - “Chest X-Ray, Stomach X-Ray, Blood Test and then we see whats going on” I replied to him by saying “Does that mean I’m staying here tonight?” and he said “Do you think im going to let you go home if you’re sick? you could potentially have a problem with the pump” my face dropped and my mood changed. A short while after, my head doctor showed up and she saw me and said “Go home, you’re completely fine” without having to do any of the other things the doctor had said….
The head doctor warned me to stay away from very spicy food which caused the stomach to hurt and all that vomiting! I need to always remember that i can not do or eat like i did before. But hey, that doesn’t mean that i can’t enjoy a lot of the other foods that i did before :)
Overall, it was just a bad stomach ache ( If you’re and LVAD patient and you’re reading this, I think we have to remember that we shouldn’t over react about small issues but its always better to be safe than sorry)
Hope this day brought no bad luck to you guys! I can safely say that this Friday 13th taught me a lot. Avoid chillies, do not over-react to every situation, even though i have an LVAD it doesn’t mean i’m not going to get sick like normal people!
If you want to read the next part of my story, click the link below -
