Episode 49 – December 18 – Today was the ??th birthday
of one of my most loyal followers, my cousin, Colleen. Happy Birthday Cuz! Drop
by if you come into town to visit your grandson over Christmas. I’m sure I can
pencil you into my busy schedule.
Last night was one of those bad nights for sleep.
At about 3:30, the IV alarm went on the woman across from me, Anne’s IV
apparatus and it sounded like everyone on the floor attended to it at once.
After that settled down, there was a hallway placement, a woman with dementia
having a wonderful and loud conversation with her non-existent friend for a
good three hours. The trick to putting disruptive patients in hall at night is
to make sure the doors to the wards are closed but that usually only lasts for about
ten minutes because the next time a nurse comes into the ward, they don’t close
the door behind them.
Of all the ward mates I have had in the past seven
weeks I have to give Cheryl the first place award for quietest sleeper (no
snoring or talking in her sleep) however there has no second place to date.
Actually all my roomies are lucky I’m using the Bipap machine or I would have
outdid them all. I think Lorraine would have eventually smothered with a pillow
if I didn’t do something about my apnea.
Barb was my day nurse today but after Maggie
anyone seems great.
The hospital is probably one of the few places
where you still see pagers being used in any significant amount. I’m not sure
why because the different service departments also use two-way radios and
everyone carries cell phones. For some stupid reason there are still signs
everywhere saying “Cell phones prohibited”. For starters there never was any
problem with cell phones interfering with equipment. The radio frequencies that
medical equipment use will more likely interfere with cells. I would not have
been able to survive the first few days without my phone. It was my only link
to the outside world.
A new physio, Kirsty, showed up for my treatments
today so I had to instruct her how to set up my leg lift. As usual it went
well. The unusual thing about her was her faint accent. I asked her where she
was and I was surprised she was from Scotland chiefly because traditionally
once a Scot crosses the pond their accent tends to thicken. I believe it’s
caused the change in the gravitational pull in North American. But then she
used the word “wee” three times in two minutes it gave her away.
Considering that Dr. McConkey claimed that the condition
was so rare that there was no protocols on treatment for bilateral quadricep
rupture they better write this up in The Lancet or the New England Journal of
Medicine and I want full credit as Patient D.
Alex checked out just after lunch and they filled
his spot with a young lady, Loren, with another knee injury, torn tendon. My
guess is a ski accident considering her two friends are speaking Australian and
to make it even less intelligible she’s Irish so no English is spoken here.;-)
My bet is that the hospital will charge the Irish
insurance company a lot less than they charged Katherine’s American insurance
company yesterday.
So far I’ve received a couple of ideas for good
stories to explain the ladies about my scars while sipping mojitos by the pool.
Kevin suggested an attack by two great whites while surfing off the coast of
Chile but that’s too farfetched so maybe pare ir down to one shark but for
good measure I’ll need a large shark tooth pendant as a prop possibly with a
blood stain on it. The football story could be embellished to the point of
preventing the winning touchdown by making a diving tackle. I don’t have to
embellish the parachute one I just have to imply that the mission is still classified
and saying could get us both killed.
My favourite so far is still Katheryne’s idea .While
working as a volunteer for Search and Rescue I lost my footing and landed badly
while rappelling down the side of cliff rescuing a fawn who had fallen onto an
outcropping. An adrenalin rush still enabled me to get a sling around Bambi before
I passed out from the severe pain. So all was good in the forest!
My night nurse was Sandra but a different one from
the Sandra I had a few weeks ago but just as friendly and efficient. By
coincidence the first Sandra was assigned to the two post-op patients in my room.
It was the first time I had seen her since she was assigned to me last time and
she was thrilled to see what progress I had made and excited to hear that
Friday was going to be my first attempt at weight bearing.
As per usual, I concluded my night with an orange,
a cookie and a bed time story from Rachel Maddow.
To be continued...
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