...please pay attention, some of this could very
well be on the final exam...
Episode 24 – November 23 – Today pretty much
started the way last night ended. At around 3:30, Stephanie, in the bed across
from me, started to have pain and other issues from her post-op. For some
reason the nurses had to turn on the overhead lights for the whole room. This
woke me with a start and I was never able to get back to a complete slumber. Of
course, it didn’t help that there was a patient down the hall screaming out
random names all night.
By 5 AM I made the decision to go through my bed
exercise routine. I quite often joke about this being my prison cell and when
I’m doing my crunches and pull ups it always brings to mind every prison movie
where the guy in solitary is constantly doing exercises in his cell.
At around 6, my left ankle started to twinge so I
called Rosita. She told me that I wasn’t due for more indomecin, my gout
medication, for at least two hours so she packed the ankle in ice and that
seemed to help.
Breakfast came and went and there’s no point
discussing it any further.
Barb is my day nurse again today. So far she has
impressed me as a bit of an airhead especially being that she has been in the
profession for years. She is the exact opposite of Denise who is probably the
same age and been doing the job for about the same length of time. Denise is
extremely resourceful and knows how to cut corners. I have to explain
everything about my treatment to Barb to make sure it is done correctly. Today,
I had to remind her to give me my blood thinner shot. She was almost insistent
that she already had because she had written it in the chart. I’m pretty sure
I’d remember being stabbed in the gut. She is one of those dim people that have
absolutely no sense of humour.
The best thing about Barb is she is not Sergio. In
fact, I think she’s on our floor to fill in for him because he’s off on sick. I
hope he makes out okay with his struggles but I don’t want him back as my
nurse.
So before lunch, Barb insisted I get up into my
wheelchair. Actually, I promised her I would yesterday when I refused to do it.
Of course, I had to direct the action. There were two nurses, one student and Haney, the nurse’s aide there for the
transfer. The joke is Haney who technically is the low person on the totem pole
was the only one that had any clue about what had to be done. I didn’t even
bother to ask about using the controls because Barb wouldn’t have been able to
make that kind of a decision.
After getting into the chair, Barb asked me “Are
you sure you don’t want to go down to the sun room for a change of scenery?”
The answer in the back of my mind was “Yes, it would be so delightful to go sit
in a corner of a room full of old incoherent sick people and watch The Price is
Right.” No, I think I will be quite contented to stay here in my own little
isolated dream world and escape into my laptop.
Speaking of Haney, I forgot to mention the other
day when her and Rosita were discussing my nails she piped in with “my husband
likes me to do his in purple.” See I’m not the only weird guy out there. And
weird is good any way.
Lunch was pretty decent; navy bean soup and a
potato and tomato frittata.
Being the only normally coherent person in the
room I’ve become the resource person keeping track of the comings of goings of
staff and equipment for everyone. Also because I am one of the few coherent
patients on the floor all the staff that are proficient in English stop by and
chat.
The most helpful people today have been the
Kwantlen and BCIT students along with Haney. Unfortunately none of them can hand
out the goodies and take any direct action.
While still sitting up in the chair, Dr. Haaf
called to let me know he wasn’t coming in today so we discussed making sure my
gout medication was properly charted so I would have it available as required.
Apparently, it was on the list on my chart originally along with the Benadryl
but the surgeon deleted it because he thought it would interfere with all the
post-op drugs and it never got put back on until now. I also spoke to him about
the physio orders and they seemed a bit conservative as well. The other thing
id he had to point the order out to the physios or they would likely never even
looked at all yesterday. While writing this it dawned on me too late that I
didn’t even see a physio at all today.
So when Barb started to organize my transfer and I
kept instructing everyone she facetiously handed me the control and said I
could do the lifting. I did it with ease and she said I should do it myself in
the future. I told her I had already been doing for two weeks and she asked why
I didn’t tell her. I bit my tongue so I didn’t tell her she was too ditzy to understand.
I spent the rest of the afternoon watching another
of the anime movies the Crown Prince brought up “Howl’s Moving Castle” another
Disney/Ghibli Studios collaboration. I quite enjoyed it even if the story line
was a bit strange.
Dinner was a disaster. I decided to order the
baked fish. Not only did it look gross rolled up like a giant snail; the taste
was even worse. They threw in a bonus tonight, red diet jello. I got seasick
just cutting into it. It’s a wonderful dinner when the best thing on the tray
is the chopped spinach.
So Bodi moved out back to Gibson’s. Actually under
different circumstances he would have probably be an interesting person to talk
with because of all his travels.
A new guy, Harry moved in around 7:30 so more post
op chaos; another knee replacement dude.
Rosita was my night nurse again and the first
thing she did was pack my ankle in ice to get the swelling from the gout down.
I managed to read a few pages from my book and let
my evening cocktail take me away.
And someone left the damn tap dripping again!
To be continued...
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