This blog includes facts from the night of the 27th which includes details from the early hours of the 28th.

Nervousness was abundant on the first night. Michelle was doing her foot-tapping routine. I was very quiet. The first event I recall on the evening was Frank McCaulay (the consultant) coming to see us. He explained the direness of Karen’s situation. He holds no punches and tells it like it is. Things I remember him saying include :-

“We nearly lost Karen on the table because of the massive amount of blood she lost”

I asked for him to be as blunt as possible and told him I am the kind of person who appreciates frankness (no pun intended) and could he give us odds.

“With the pelvic issues alone, she has a 50/50 chance of walking out of the hospital alive. But she also has contused lungs, one side of her heart isn’t working correctly, she has lost feeling in one side of her body, she is at risk from fat embelli (marrowbone from the broken bones clotting in key places) etc…”

It was dire. And he went on to say :-

“You need to be getting ready for the worst news”

At some point later in the evening things got worse. Frank was due off shift at 10pm and stayed on until 4pm the following day to sort Karen out. He is our hero !!! At about 3am in the morning, she underwent another operation to try and stem further bloodloss. Noone knew where the blood was coming from. They suspected the pevlis, but she also had a damaged liver, lungs and heart. Frank did the op with orthopedic colleagues and karen (to our great relief) came out of theatre with a meccano set in her pelvis protruding about 3-4 inches above her skin. This kept the pelvis temporarily pushed together stemming blood loss. Had this not stemmed the blood flow, Karen would have died (according to Frank) and he and colleagues let us know before the op that they were not sure where the blood was coming from. In the last op, they had stuffed loads of wadding in Karen’s abdomen to absorb the blood and they had left her unstitched so as not to put pressure on her lungs. This hadn’t stopped the bleeding. The X-Fix (Meccano Set) appeared to have worked.

Rejoicing all round. We were pleased to be left with a 50/50 chance (at best) of kp pulling through. I think we all were expecting the worst before the op.

End of Day One