Hospital Stay

This has been my bed for the last 4 nights...

not so comfy...

Turns out our daughter didn't have torticollis at all - when her neck didn't seem to be getting any better, and in fact was more swollen and red, I took her to the doctor for a second opinion on Thursday morning. He sent us straight to A&E! Poor little girl was so brave, she ended up having general anaesthetic for them to drain the abscess on Friday morning, and then Saturday morning they discovered one of the nasties in her neck was Strep A so we had to be moved to a side room and she was only allowed to leave it to go across the corridor to the toilet...she was so bored! We had hoped to get out last night but her neck drain was still oozing, she finally had it taken out this afternoon and we made it home just in time for dinner.

Anyway, this is a food blog so on to the food - apologies if it gets repetitive!! I was very glad that I'd followed my porridge craving for breakfast on Thursday - cocoa porridge topped with peanut butter...

luckily this kept me going as with all the waiting around to be seen in A&E, I didn't get to eat again until 4.45pm! By then I was starving...I gobbled down this egg mayonnaise baguette with crisps added to it...

I have eaten a lot of bars the last 5 days. I won't bore you with details of exactly when I ate each one but let's just say they often counted as "breakfast" and occasionally "dinner" - Liam visited as much as he could - our families were great with looking after the baby so he could visit - but when I was on my own I didn't want to leave daughter, especially as we seemed to spend most of the time waiting for Drs to visit to take blood/change cannula/remove plastic pipes from neck etc...all of which most definitely required her to be sat on her Mummy's lap whilst screaming the ward down!! :( Anyway (I feel this post is going to have many off-track rambles - sorry!!) these were some of the bars I enjoyed...

Liked the dark chocolate in this - shop didn't have any in stock after I bought this one though :(

This was breakfast one day - strange after-taste

Really tasty, although very sticky from all the honey & glucose syrup!

My favourite - full of sugar again, but also lots of big chunks of almonds and brazil nuts, yum...I had lots of these!! :)

I also managed to escape to the canteen on quite a few occasions when Liam or my Mum were there to look after daughter (and no doctors were due to visit!) I drank many many lattes (with 3 white sugars in each, oops!) over the last 5 days, plus some food - mostly covered in stodgy cheese sauce, bleugh.

A scone and a latte mid-morning on Friday with my Mum whilst Liam spent time in the playroom with daughter and baby...

Lunch only 1.5 hours later whilst daughter was in theatre - had to grab food when we could! Sweet potato with salad from the salad "bar"...

This was really nice but unfortunately I didn't spot sweet potatoes in the canteen again, sad times!

A latte and a carrot cake muffin on Friday afternoon before Liam headed home - we'd wanted to take daughter to the canteen as well as she was really chirpy after her op, but the nurses wouldn't let her off the ward to be on the safe side...she was really irritable and wanted to stretch her legs!!

This muffin was really tasty and it was good to have a little bit of time away from the ward before the night ahead of me - the first 2 nights were really hard going as not only was I woken up when daughter had to have her antibiotics drip at 2am, but I was also woken up whenever anyone else on the ward was seen by the nurse...and the Mum in the bay next to me (seperated by a curtain) thought it was acceptable to chat noisily, on a children's ward, until 10.30pm until a nurse came and said they were trying to quieten the ward...grrr!! We got more sleep once we moved to a side room for Saturday and Sunday nights - at least then it was only my own daughter keeping me awake!

On Saturday I experienced the first of the "cheese sauce meals" for lunch - this one supposedly had cauliflower in it - but you had to look hard to find any!!

It was basically stodgy cheese sauce with lumps - there weren't many meat-free options around!! Part of the problem was that I was eating whenever I had the opportunity, not necessarily traditional meal times, so I usually missed out on baked potatoes etc and had to eat from the self-serve hot food that had been sitting around since the last proper meal time...nice(!!)

I had a second cheese sauce meal on Saturday - an early dinner of mushroom & herb pasta bake...

this was actually quite nice...I was pleasantly surprised!! :)

Sunday lunch was the worst of the cheese sauce meals - we'd been waiting all of Sunday morning for a Dr to visit, and whilst Liam was there, we were hoping the Dr would remove the neck drain (she decided it wasn't ready to come out in the end) so I didn't want to leave daughter. I gave up on getting lunch about 2pm and made myself a couple of slices of plain buttered toast from the parents' kitchen (the only food we had access to) and of course the Dr turned up as soon as I'd finished eating it! So as I then wasn't hungry for lunch, Liam went to the canteen and had carvery. I eventually went to eat at 3.30pm so this had been sitting around on the hot plate for a while...a big serving of cheese sauce with soggy cauliflower and broccoli in it...

this was enough to put me off eating any more hot meals in the canteen!! Luckily I did stock up on the yummy nut bars :)

I did make one more trip to the canteen - this afternoon when Liam was packing up the room and we were waiting for paperwork to be filled out - I had a major headache so a latte and the cake that has been tempting me all weekend was needed - Dime Bar cake...

this was so yummy - a layer of cake, topped with caramel, peanuts and chocolate...

Yum, this almost made up for the fact that I didn't have peanut butter the whole time we were in the hospital - a tiny jar of bog standard pb cost £2.49 in the shop!!

Luckily, to counteract all the stodge, I have also had some nice food brought in by relatives. My Mum sent a delicious fruit selection in on Saturday...

daughter and I shared most of this on Saturday afternoon, then I polished off the leftovers at 10pm whilst waiting for the Dr to (eventually) turn up to change daughter's cannula and take blood...poor child was so traumatised to be woken up for that experience - both nights since she's been tossing & turning and shouting in her sleep :( the fruit was nice though (!)...

I never thought I would crave fruit and veggies so much! Not surprising though - I failed to find any vegetables (except salad) that was not over-cooked beyond recognition, and the only fruit available were apples and bananas. Healthy cravings also probably amplified due to the over-consumption of chocolate - every visitor seemed to bring daughter a box of Thornton's chocs, many of which were sadly consumed by me!!

Back to the healthy stuff though...my Grandma & Grandpa visited yesterday afternoon and brought with them a welcome gift of food from Marks & Spencer...

My Grandma, unfortunately, spends a lot of time in and out of hospital so obviously knows what type of food would be welcomed! The egg sandwich and (amazing!) lemon curd yoghurt served as last night's dinner, and I had the fruit salad for breakfast this morning...

much better than the leftover cold toast I've been eating from daughter's breakfast tray the other mornings!!

As I said, we did finally make it home today :) the doctor came round to look at daughter this morning but he felt her drain was still oozing so much, so he came back about 3pm and luckily decided it was ok for us to come home. He had to first take the drain out of her neck though - this was horrible to watch - she was already traumatised by the doctor's visit on Saturday night, so she started screaming before this doctor even touched her. In the end 2 nurses had to hold her down on her bed while the doctor pulled the drain out, my poor baby! :( She soon bounced back though and packed up her stuff ready to go home, I'm hoping she's young enough to forget about the more horrible aspects of this experience!

When we got home, we were all too tired to cook! Liam and daughter ate ready meals - spinach & ricotta cannelloni and macaroni cheese respectively - both too stodgy and cheese-sauce filled for me! I had the same thing I'd eaten before all this started - cocoa porridge (this time with banana in) topped with peanut butter...

I missed my porridge even more than fruit & veg I think!

Phew! I hope to get back to more interesting food soon - can't wait to start cooking again! As if staying in hospital for 4 nights wasn't enough, on Friday I got a phone call from our landlord's brother saying he'd be in at 8.30am Monday morning (today) to re-do the bathroom and paint most of downstairs...was meant to be done a week ago but they got held up. Our bathroom currently has a toilet but no sink or bath (these will be put in tomorrow but we won't be able to use them the bath/shower until Wednesday) and for at least the next 2 days the house will not be very baby friendly...Liam has to go back to uni tomorrow but I'm planning to spend most of my time at my Mum's house round the corner - daughter can recuperate and watch TV in my Mum's bed and I can do my best to entertain the baby!!

Right, this post is nearly over - I need to catch up on some sleep! I hope this hasn't been too dreary or dis-jointed, I'm so relieved that daughter is ok - being in hospital has been really boring and at some times pretty miserable, but it has also made me realise how lucky we are - at least our daughter will make a full recovery and just be left with a little scar, some of the other children in there won't be so lucky :(

To end on a brighter note, the main thing that kept us sane was our visitors, in particular my Mum. She did her best to give me a break and keep daughter amused - one of those ways was by making fruit faces...I'll leave you with a fruit smile...good night!