How I Spent My “Fall” Vacation – Episode 47

Episode 47 – December 16 – I was up 6 after another good sleep of about 8 hours and began my routine of abusing my muscles. It seems that more things snap, crackle and pop during exercises than the other three sessions during the day.

My wireless provider was still not functioning and initially I could not find that stray signal to piggy back off of this morning. The biggest problem with the borrowed signal is its strength so I cannot stream any videos. In way it was partly a good thing because I would have tuned into Rachel Maddow and most of her show that night was about the Sandy School. That would have just made sad and angry at the same time.

Once again my winning streak with nurses was broken and I had Maggie back. She is the only nurse that asks me if I know where I am. She is so dense I felt it was best just to give the straight answer rather than “Dante’s eighth circle of hell”. She took my blood pressure the first time and it was 119/66 but didn’t bother to look or record it and reset the machine because my finger was aligned wrong on the oxygen efficiency clip. For some reason the next BP reading came up 96/56 and she was concerned that it was too low. I suggested that it could be an anomaly (didn’t use such a big word with her) and she should try again later. By later, I meant after breakfast, she took it immediately instead and it did come up a bit higher at 110/60. She was then going to check my glucose level but I told her that Layla already did at 6:30 and it was 5.7. She kept insisting that it had to be done before breakfast. Rather than argue I was just going to let her jab me again. She finally decided that if was taken at 6:30,it should be okay.

As I have said before Sundays really suck around and it’s worse when you have a lousy caregiver. I had to convince Maggie that I did not want to go into my wheelchair because I had serious seating issues on Friday and some on Saturday. I did not want a repeat and it could have been worse today because they are always understaffed on Sundays. The matter could have been worse because one of the floor nurses went home sick and two senior RNs Sonya and Ruby that don’t normally do day to day care of the patients had to fill so that the floor nurses could get meal breaks.

Ruby was even lucky enough to draw bed pan duty. The bed pan takes lack of dignity to another level. It’s bad enough that you have to wait for someone to bring it, then you have to use, and eventually a nurse has to clean things up. However the worst part of all is that long wait after finishing then hitting the call button for the nurse. It always seems like hours.

My friend, Janice, just happened to drop by during the process and called through the curtains. Having worked at a hospital for years she wanted no part of this but did reach through the curtain and placed a bag of oatmeal chocolate chip cookies on my table. Thank you, Janice. :-)

After waiting since Thursday night, the porter finally arrived just before noon to take Alex in the next bed down to the operating room to get his ankle repaired. We were all getting a little anxious that he was going to get bumped again. They told him yesterday morning he was second on the list and told him the same this morning. He had told the nurse in charge of the floor that if he didn’t get in today he was going to check himself out and go to another hospital. He didn’t quite seem to understand that he would go to the back of the queue elsewhere. He returned from surgery just after four.

To my great surprise, I actually received some physio this afternoon. Dal, one of the rehab assistants had me doing some more active leg work that I hadn’t done previously. Not knowing my capabilities, she kept trying to assist me until she realized I was several steps ahead of her.

We got a new roomie this afternoon, Katherine, pre-op in for a fractured wrist. They took her down for surgery at 6 PM. It turns out she lives in San Francisco. This of course, makes me wonder what the cost of this will be here to her insurance company compared to similar care at home. I would love to know what my care would be costed out at in a US public hospital.

Earlier this afternoon, I attempted to trust that twit, Maggie to bring me 50 mg. of Benadryl which is my normal dose. Sure enough when I looked in the pill cup there was only one capsule she did the same last week. I just let it go. I’m so hoping they send her to another floor tomorrow.

Okay time to go off topic and climb onto my soapbox. Today’s topic is the made up controversy of “Merry Christmas” versus “Season’s Greetings” or “Happy Holidays”. First off it is nothing new, it has been a common practise since the tradition of companies sending out cards began. Both Christmas and Chanukah occur roughly at the same time of year and large companies in the US had both Jewish and Christian clients thus they made the cards inclusive. The current crap is not the fault of the “politically correct” but contrived and expanded upon by the “Religious Wrong” and whacky newscasters like “Fox News” to further their cause. It’s a typical propaganda move if you tell the lie enough times naive people will start to believe it. It’s called “Crisis Management” create a crisis and then manage it to your point of view. What would these people do if someone wished them a Happy Diwali or heaven forbid, Happy Eid especially if they said it in Arabic? Do not get fooled by these hatemongers. I don’t deny there are some whacky “politically correct” people out there but no one ever listened to them. Okay, I’m done and I’ll begin to breathe again.

Maggie finally came in around 5 and decided it would be a good idea to make sure I wasn’t having any issues with low blood pressure. It showed up at 126/66. Boy, I’m sure glad there was nothing seriously wrong with me because it only took her eight hours to investigate.

I finished the evening with a little reading, an orange and one of Janice’s cookies while waiting for my nightly fix.

My night nurse, Judith didn’t even come and check my vitals until 9:30 not bad considering her shift started at 7:30 and even then I had to use the call bell because I was waiting for my sleeping pill.

For the first time in seven weeks, I was the first one in the room trying to get to sleep but that was quite difficult with Alex still dealing with post-op pain issues and Graciela trying to hork up a lung. How much phlegm can a four foot six woman have? Then just as things were about to settle down they brought Katherine back from the OR. That’s another half hour of chaos.

To be continued....