Thanks everyone for your thoughts and replies. on christmas day my husband was given 2 hours gate leave so he could attend the restaurant lunch he demanded. luckily the restaurant is only 5 minutes from hospital.
he only ate a couple of mouthfuls of food and then said the food was too stringy and that he didn't like it. it was a christmas buffet with traditional and modern christmas food and extra gourmet foods too. he said he was too unwell to get his own food from the buffet so i said i would get it for him if he told me what he wanted. i got the biggest exercise workout i've had for a very long time when he kept me literally running back and forth to the bufffet getting all the foods he asked for which he looked at and then rejected except for a couple of bites of fish. i also got up and down to refill his water glass constantly.
after about 1/2 an hour of that i told him i had to get something to eat and drink for me. he put his head in his hands and leant on the table. i got the food i wanted and sat down and ate it. it was very nice.
he told me to have champagne but i don't know why he said that because i don't drink alcohol. i reminded him that i don't drink alcohol and i was sticking to water. he looked puzzled and asked why. instead of going into explanations or engaging with his attempts to draw me into this weird dialogue i simply said that as i was driving i would not risk drinking alcohol. he accepted that and then told me to get him pavlova from the dessert buffet. i got it for him and he ate all of it.
i took him back to hospital where we reported to the nurses station that he was back from his 2 hour gate leave.he said "you can leave now'' so i did.
on boxing day he was like a different person. he was saying how happy he was that the doctor told him he could go home the next day. today when i went to pick him up to go home he said they wanted to keep him there for at least 3 more days. when i asked the medical staff what was happening they said that is what he told them and that they were expecting to discharge him today as planned since all his routine tests were normal.
they told me that he demanded additional urine tests before leaving hospital, they told him these were not needed. he told them he was insisting on more tests and that his private health fund would cover the costs. more tests were done. all of this happened this morning while i was finally getting a few hours sleep because i needed it before going to collect him to bring him home as originally planned for 2pm today. i had to piece together the snippets of information he told me when i got to the hospital this afternoon. i had to try to make sense of all this in combination with what the nurses and doctor told me.i have had a few hours sleep over the last couple of nights which although not much is still better than nothing.
Later today nurses told me the test results came back from the hospital pathology service just before i arrived at hospital thinking that i would be taking my husband home as planned. the new urine test results show multi-drug resistant e coli. Now they are keeping him there for intravenous antibiotics for a few more days to treat this infection.
he seems to be very much enjoying having the cannula in his hand and watching the drip of antibiotics which they started him on this afternoon. they told him that he has to try and drink more fluids and if he cannot drink more water then they will put a separate saline drip through the same cannula as the antibiotics. all of his obs are still normal. there are no signs of infection and no symptoms. perhaps he is asymptomatic.
i am not surprised that something came up with him just immediately prior to what should have been his hospital discharge time. i don't know how the e coli got in his urine but i suspect that he deliberately contaminated the specimen jar they gave him for providing the urine sample for the new test he demanded, or maybe he deliberately contaminated the urine sample. i have caught him doing this in a different hospital once before, a few years ago. when he did it last time he said he had to do it to get antibiotics. he is obsessed with antibiotics most of the time. he loudly insults any doctors who won't prescribe antibiotics for him and then he doctor shops for a different doctor. i often hope that something can be done to keep better records of this type of thing so that doctors can look up these patterns of behaviour and be made aware of them. at present the privacy laws make this difficult when a person denies their mental health issues and refuses to acknowledge their situation. it makes it very difficult for me to try and tell the doctors and nurses because if i do that he starts yelling at me and calling me a ''meddling .....'' and saying ''you have to be punished''.
i sometimes think of a different life .... but not for very long because he is all consuming.
i had a very good and understanding gp until the end of 2012. he knew me and my husband and he understood what i was dealing with. unfortunately he left our medical centre and has now gone to work overseas. he has not been replaced at the medical centre. they cannot attract any doctors here because of the semi-rural location which is a long way from city resources.
it is so time consuming dealing with my husband's illness and living in this strange situation.
i told him that i would take his dirty washing home and bring him clean clothes and anything else he needed tomorrow. he loudly demanded that i go home and get him additonal deodorant and additional newspapers and return today. i said ''no, i don't have enough petrol for that just now. i'll go home and do the washing and bring you clean clothes and more deodorant and newspapers tomorrow. i'll get more petrol in the morning after i have some rest.'' he already has plenty of deodorant and newspapers with him. he gets a new paper every morning at the hospital and his deodorant is still virtually brand new.
washing and other household chores are done now. thanks for this forum. typing this stuff is helping me to process it. sorry for the bad typing and typos, that is just due to exhaustion. i hope this makes sense.
my husband's dad keeps on ringing up and leaving messages on our answering machine. he just left another one while i am typing this. i cannot deal with him and his messages because he is just like my husband only 30 years older. i just ignore the messages but save them on the machine for my husband to deal with if he ever comes home.
i definitely am thinking of planning a few days to myself in the lead up to christmas 2015. thank you for that idea.i have wanted to do that many times over the years but i never actually do it because i just don't want to come home to whatever my husband escalates, creates. destroys etc. if i go away.
i am getting past caring about that now...but practicalities mean i will still be the one who has to deal with my husband's sabotage whether deliberate or sort of accidental..as part of his illness.....it still has the same effect of destroying any tiny bit of normality and enjoyment that i ever get and it makes a huge lot of time consuming things to be cleaned up and sorted out.
today a nurse asked him if he needed any pain relief. he said ''no, i quite enjoy cannulas''.
the expression on her face seemed like she was stunned. i was glad she seemed to recognise what a strange thing it was for someone to say. it is good to see someone who recognises this stuff. i have grown accustomed to his strange behaviour and statements over many years.
i am seriously thinking about skipping a visit. that sounds like an excellent idea. he can enjoy his cannula and i can enjoy not visiting. i just have to come up with something he will accept as a reason for me skipping a visit. although he often orders me to go home when i visit he also contradicts himself and tells me he wants me to stay. i think i'll drop of his clean clothes and demanded additional deodorant and newspapers tomorrow and then say something like ''here are the things you asked for, i'm going now, i'll see you in a couple of days''.
