Monday, 5 January 2015

No 138. Scary chokes and long nights.

Wow, I'm writing this just a little cream crackered. Chris had a really bad choking episode yesterday evening after taking a rather large swig of his weekly whisky Mac. Slapping the back brought out a large amount of liquid, but it also made him vomit. I telephoned 111 and they said he should get to Treliske within the hour. Well it is a good 3/4 hr journey from here and he needed to calm down first. He did recover and decided he didn't want to go, well it wasn't the first time he has had a bad choke so we went to bed and made sure he slept sleeping upright. He woke about 1.30am unable to catch his breath so I thought A&E it is this time. The problem is Chris can't really cough properly anymore so it is hard for him to clear anything that goes onto his lungs.

Chris was triaged quickly and I had been panicking as I had forgotten to flush Chris's PEG when I disconnected it, (it has to be flushed straight away to stop blockages). I asked the triage nurse if they had enteral syringes on the department and he went off and found one straight away, so I was able to flush it. Chris was then taken onto the department and then we were told he had a four hour wait to see a doctor! His breathing had settled thankfully with just little episodes of not being able to breathe which soon cleared. Everyone was very nice, they were just really busy.

After the usual tests which were all normal they just said his chest XRay showed a slight shadow at the bottom of one lung which could be a bit of fluid and to just watch out for signs of an infection like a temperature.

We arrived back home at 8am. Chris did managed to get a little bit of sleep while we were at the hospital, but I didn't. Trying to sleep during the day in a noisy house with the phone ringing constantly didn't bode well for a day time sleep, so we both gave up on that one.

Maybe it's time to introduce the drink thickeners, I'm not sure Chris is ready to give up on his whisky Mac just yet though, maybe I will have to put it down the PEG instead!