Always trust your instincts

[DD75]

Hello Everyone,

Firstly thank you to everyone on this forum and the BLT nurses. You're all supportive so thank you.

I suppose my post this evening is trust your instincts.

In February this year my husband broke his knee and wrist and became pretty much sofa bound until he came out of hospital recently. (Husband has cirrhosis/portal vein blood clot and he had TIPPS in 2022 )

Whilst essentially sofa bound with broken knee and wrist a month in his temperature started to go up then to normal then back up so I arranged a house visit and the nurse practitioner gave him antibiotics and upped pregablin dose (he'd previously been allowed up to 2 a day for neuropathic pain but didn't take it regularly until he broke his knee) also saying if his temperature increased to phone Paramedics as he thought it may be sepsis, but, the temperature went down and antibiotics seemed to be working and husband was alert and eating and drinking fluids.

However, after antibiotics finished things started to change and he wasn't right i couldn't put my finger on it i thought is it the pregablin is it too much since they've highered the dose but I wasn't sure as I'm not a medical professional so I took him in a wheelchair to the GP who said well he's poorly and it could be a combination of pregablin side effects aswell and checked his temperature etc.

4 days later I still was worried and i knew something was wrong more than hes poorly because of cirrhosis and pregablin side effects. I had my concerns heightened when literally overnight he went yellow, looked like a skeleton facial wise and physically and was unconscious most of the time. Panicking I rang 111 who got a paramedic to ring me and they sent Paramedics who took him to hospital.

At hospital they took bloods which showed his electrolytes where all over the place and moved him from waiting room where hed been put due to A and E absolutely rammed. They didn't know why his bloods were like thisso they put him in resuscitation and then onto critical care. It turned out it was suspected sepsis and he was severly dehydrated which was was hard to understand as he always drank water , but they actually weren't sure what it was and despite numerous blood tests they still aren't sure what caused it. Although they think the fall on the beach which broke his knee may have caused an infection, they initially thought he had full renal failure but he didn't(he only has one kidney) in critical care they gave him blood transfusions and antibiotics I'm not sure what else and it seemed to calm down and he was released onto a ward after 3 days and released from ward on 4th day.

Now back at home he's had rifaximin added to his meds and they've stopped the pregablin all together on his discharge sheet for time being probably because it does actually make husband individually very very tired and he sleeps pretty much all day on it.

since being home hes more alert and mobile now thank goodness and broken knee on mend.

I suppose what I'm saying is always trust your instincts I'm so angry with myself for not downloading my concerns to GP when we were there and saying that I thought there was more going on underneath the surface so to speak.

[deanw41]

I totally agree with you, always trust your instincts, your gut feeling, your intuition, that inner knowing!!

[DD75 in reply to deanw41]

Thank you 🙏👍🙂