Interview 15
Age at interview: 38
Brief Outline:
Was admitted to ICU three times in 2004 and spent, in total, about 1 month in intensive care. Spent several months in hospital, in different wards and had a hospital transfer. Was diagnosed with Crohn's Disease and, shortly afterwards, had an ileostomy.
Background:
Occupation: finance officer. Marital status: divorced. Number of children: 1. Ethnic background: British-Caribbean.
More about me...
She was adamant about being taken outdoors as she'd been in hospital for so long.
She was adamant about being taken outdoors as she'd been in hospital for so long.
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She was happy with her care but advises nurses to remember that patients are intelligent people...
She was happy with her care but advises nurses to remember that patients are intelligent people...
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The only advice I would really give is probably to nurses in there is that we may be temporarily, you know, invalids but that doesn't mean that you don't have a brain and I think they should be aware of that. We don't, before we became ill and, you know, incapacitated, it didn't mean we were stupid. We're still not stupid because we're lying here and unable to move. That's the only thing but oh, I don't know. For me I just needed that time away.
She asked her family to find out more about Crohn's and looked on the Internet when she got home.
She asked her family to find out more about Crohn's and looked on the Internet when she got home.
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The only problem was with the Crohn's, I think because it's such a hard disease to explain, that's the only thing, the problem that I had. You know, you asked certain questions and they're still not answers that they can give you so'.
Did you look for any information once you got out of the hospital?
Yes, I did, went up and looked on so many different sites. Crohn's you know, I think, and even I found that it was just as confusing. I think going to look for it was just as confusing as when I was in hospital and they were trying to explain to me what was going on. I did look up sites. My sister, my family looked up sites. I mean it's weird, once you have symptoms of something, you look it on the Internet or whatever and you compare your symptoms to other things and I think you always go for the worst thing that's there. So we probably, we thought was it bowel cancer you know, things like this so.
Although she no longer looks at her diary, writing it all down when she was recovering helped her...
Although she no longer looks at her diary, writing it all down when she was recovering helped her...
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Kind of make sense...?
Yeah, make sense of it, yeah because I think ICU makes you not in control of your life, you know. So I suppose for me, to gain control of my life, I needed to know what happened. And what, you know, how, and that's yeah, basically it, really.