MOOMINS M.C.

Day 3
It started with my breakfast not turning up.
It would appear that the surprise wasn't just the menu but also whether or not the food would actually arrive.
After lamenting my lack of sustenance I managed to persuade a nurse to 'look into it and get the kitchen to bring something up'.
The post breakfast shower was an ordeal in itself.
I'd forgotten the ritualised plastic bagging and taping of limbs and involved and just how long it all takes, and how it isn't really waterproof.
The short walk to the ensuite was aided by the nurse and I carried out my morning ablutions relatively incident free.
The pills had worked and Sister Morphine's school bus turned from solid to liquid like Audrey Tatou turning to water in the movie Amelie.
I managed the shower by myself apart form having the nurse do my footsies, but noticed a lot of blood collecting in the bag around the left leg, figured it was just all the bandages getting wet and the previous two days bleeding slowly seeping out.
With the plastic bags removed we could feel that the left leg had indeed received moisture and a change of dressing was in order.
I'd had the right leg redressed the day before with some funny clear super sticky dressing I've not seen before which was to make its presence very noticeable some time down the track.
So after bleeding all over the floor on my way back to the bed the crimson bandages were swapped for some fresh ones.

Some time later a physiotherapist strolled in with walking frame.
This enabled me to shuffle around by myself, butt cheeks once again flying the breeze and afforded me a little more freedom, not there was much to see or do around the ward, but at least I was mobile again.

Some highlights from that day were a visit from the girls, with Snorkmaiden visiting later again after some shopping and putting on an impromptu fashion show for me, very nice, I like.
The phone rang and a non familiar number appeared, area code from South Australia according to Snorkmaiden.
Who the hell could that be?
Last thing I wanted was some telemarketers calling me in hospital.
Turned out to be Jeff, who so kindly let us camp next to him in Blanket Bay, just calling to see how the surgery went and wishing me all the best.
Loving old bloke he is.


Day 4
Once more, the surprise breakfast didn't turn up.
I was feeling heaps better and the end of my stay in hospital was in sight.
All I needed to do was to hassle a lot of staff repeatedly to get things moving.
Whilst waiting, I decided to write some notes about last few days and found the nerve damage to my right thumb had given me the ability to write like a drunk man, I'd lost a bit of strength and control in that area of my hand, time would tell how much I get back.
Sometime in the early afternoon I was finally discharged, so I wandered down stairs and hopped into a cab with my newly acquired walking frame.
The frame lasted a day and was swapped for crutches pretty quickly.
It now serves a very useful purpose as a towel rack in my room.
Although not totally sorted I was glad to be out and Snorkmaiden had kindly taken a couple of days of work to give me a hand around the house.
Managing all the day to day tasks would have been possible if not very slow, but it was so much nicer and easier having her around.

1 week later
I managed to jump on a tram and walk the half mile or so to 'the place that sells bad beer' for Friday night drinks, albeit with a crutch for support.
This was the same route I took 8 months ago when I was just starting to walk unaided again.
It was difficult and I could have murdered a beer by the time I got to the pub.
My recovery was progressing well, although I had noticed that my right for had dropped since the surgery.
I'm unable to lift it up and it sort drags if I don't raise my leg high enough.
Makes me look like I'm trying to walk through the water with one flipper on.
I'm hoping this nerve damage or whatever it is will come right over time.

Not realising it until I started writing this post, this 1 week after the surgery marks 1 year since I got my walking licence back!

Week 2
Hit a wall on Sunday and Monday, feeling very sore, lethargic, yet couldn't sleep much.
Tuesday I had an appointment with a specialist surgeon for a medical assessment, why I don't know as I was in no state to be physically examined for my work potential / incapacitation.
On the way home through the city the opportunity arose to do some Christmas shopping and as tired and sore as I was I figured wearing myself out would enable me to finally get some sleep that night / evening, or even resort to a nanna nap!

The staples were starting to give me the irrates and after driving my car to the local medical clinic, itself a challenge, I asked to be seen by the nurse to have the offending little metallic mites extracted from my skin.
Upon removal of most of the dressing we noticed that the incision on the inside of my arm was inflamed, as was part of the incision on my neck, but the staples were well ready to come out.
The doctor gave me the once over and the nurse received the thumbs up to remove the staples.
It was going ok with a couple of the staples being a little overgrown by flesh, until we got to the right leg.
Remember that funny clear dressing?
Well it was totally inappropriate as not only was it sticking to the staples as the nurse was trying to peel it off but also had the same effect as having your leg waxed millimetre by millimetre.
The last part was by far the most painful and accompanied by grunts, red face, bated breath and completely overshadowed any pain from the actual staple removal.
Had I not suffered enough already to be put through this ordeal? *raising back of hand to forehead, whilst tilting head back and to the side like some precious thing from a British period drama*
107 staples later ( I counted and felt each one as they were removed and the nurse counted them later ) I was given a script for antibiotics and sent home to chill out.
I'm to see the doctor again on Thursday to check if the inflamation has died down.
At the end of it all it's been a relatively incident free surgical procedure and recovery, here's hoping it continues like that.

This weekend Mick D. and I are off about 4 hours drive to Swan Hill way, for David's wedding.
Those who have been reading this blog for a while will remember him as the chap I met in rehab in August 2006, who like me was involved in a motorcycle crash, but unlike me had last an arm.
He asked me to be the best man some time ago and I was a bit worried the surgery might have rendered me incapable of attending, but I reckon I will be alright.
I may not post much over the Christmas period so I would like to extend all the best wishes to you for your festive period.



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Day 2
A fairly uneventful day really.
Spent most of it in bed listening to the radio, reading when I could and bleeding from my knees / legs all over the pillows underneath.
I did get a wash in bed and the only bits I needed help with were my back and feet.
Still rather sore and still making use of the morphine pump.
There was only really one goal for that day and that was to walk to the toilet unaided and see if Sister Morphine had managed to reverse park that school bus in my colon.

During the course of the day I managed to check out my other roomies.
Apart from Amanda there were two others: an old Indian bloke who wasn't big on conversation, but was big on making unintelligible noises every once in a while and the Russian bloke next to me, whose curtain was always drawn and I only knew him by his heavily accented and drugged conversations with the nurse and relatives.
He reckoned he used to be in the Russian special forces, but that could've been the drugs / surgery talking.
From what I could gather he had part of his skull removed, the reasons for which I couldn't work out but it must have been fairly serious.
I mean, they don't just remove part of your noggin for some flippant reason.
His wife was treating it very seriously and the poor chap was on the receiving end of fairly regular tirades, in Russian of course which made them sound even more intense.
Not quite sure if this was helping his recovery.
She had a funny habit of walking past my bed and staring out of the corner of her eye at me and my visitors, like I was up to no good planning some revolutionary activities and she would have to make a call to the KGB regarding 'the strange foreigner in the bed next to her husband'.

As far as the food goes, I was relatively surprised at the fact that I could recognise it and how edible it was.
This was a huge difference compared to the last time I spent time in the Alfred hospital.
At lunch the girls ( Ma, Sis and Annemarie ) arrived bearing more tasty goodness, namely rye bread, beautiful ham, luverly bits and pieces from the bakery.
We had a good old munch out and the rest went to the fridge for ron.
Looking back I don't think I ever actually filled out any kitchen menu and received the meals as indicated.
This was fine by me as each meal was a surprise in itself, and as I mentioned before, being quite edible helped in actually stuffing it down my throat.
After lunch the nurse came to redress my legs and remove the drain tube from the right knee / muscle graft area.
This one came out fuss free, unlike the two I had removed post pelvic surgery in November last year.
Gino and Mel popped in for a visit as well, nice.

Only other thing of interest was a trip to radiology to get all my surgery related sites blasted with x-rays once again.
That x-raying itself took 3/4 of an hour.
I'm hoping to get a copy of the cd's when I go back for a review in early January.

Later that evening, after a few more Russian tirades and a surprise meal, the young nurse informed me that there was a neurosurgery patient coming in and seeing as I'm the only trauma patient I would have to get shifted to another ward.
In preparation for the move I decided to see if I could get up out of bed and visit the toilet.
After a hit from the morphine pump I was helped out of bed by the nurse.
I couldn't bend my legs due to the swelling and the staples on my knees, so I had to swing them out of the bed and then lower them to the ground until my feet felt the cold hard linoleum surface.
I then stood up, well more moved forward and stood stooped like an old man, unable to straighten up.
From there all I could manage was to shuffle my feet slowly and complete a 90 degree change of position in order to lower myself into the commode chair ( wheeled toilet chair ).
I asked the nurse to get one ready in case I couldn't manage walking, turned out to be a wise move on my part.
After failing at the first part of my goal I was wheeled into the toilet and proceeded at failing on the second part.
It appeared that Sister Morphine had managed to reverse park the school bus, what's more she was an expert at touch touch parking, leaving no room for anything to move in or out.
After some time I gave up, asked to be wheeled back to my bed and requested a dose of whatever was going to shift the blockage.
An hour or so later I was in a wheelchair being rolled down the corridors towards the new flash short stay ward, where I was to spend the remainder of the time in a room all to myself.
We entered a very long corridor linking the main building to the new one and it seemed to stretch forever, with no visible doors on either side.
It was at this point that I had to ask the orderly if this was where they take the patients for organ harvesting.
I took his answer to be true, or at least something to put me into a false sense of security, I imagine calm organs are preferred to stressed ones.
Thankfully he was telling the truth.
This new ward was a bit quieter than the other one and generally pleasant enough, but I still couldn't get much sleep.
So far so good.


to be continued........


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This was the last photo I took before surgery.
The night before the surgery we had a little barbeque at my place, mainly for family and a couple of the housemates.
Marinated chicken and sausages with onions and mushrooms cooked over charcoal along with some fresh bread rolls and salads.
All fantastic grub I must say and just the thing to fill my tummy before that night's fasting.
I had learnt of a photographic competition that day and my only opportunity to do anything about it was that night.
So after the dinner Snorkmaiden and I took off to shoot the Bolte Bridge as that was the subject of the competition.
I soon relaised that my tripod attachment was on Teh 'Hoff and that was being serviced in the shop, so I had to improvise by shooting from the roof of the car and various structures like pylons and the like.
After driving around the docks we found some prohibited areas with container trucks being unloaded by forklift trucks.
I snapped off some shots and returned home where I spent some time reviewing the photos then picking and editing the one shot I could enter.
Not sure when the results come out, but hey at least I had a crack at it.


December 7th, 06:45 I arrived at the hospital and checked in at the appropriate ward.
A nurse came and took my blood, man I thought she was digging for gold or something, jab jab, stab poke and she finally got some of the precious crimson liquid.
After some preliminary interviews I was seen by the surgeon to be assisting in my operation.
All went well until he flicked through the notes and suspected that there was no plastic surgeon booked to lift the muscle graft on my leg.
For a moment I thought that the operation might be cancelled due to the lack of this crucial medico, but after a while I was informed that a plastic surgeon had been roped in at the eleventh hour.
Phew......

08:45 I was issued with an arseless gown and pointed towards a room and told that theatre was calling for me and that I need to get changed pronto.
I shut the door and stripped off everything including glasses, my earing and my grandfather's wedding ring and once again felt the sailcloth like starched material of the gown on my skin.
After a while a got up off the chair and went for a look through the window, not much to see there but some roof, rain and pigeon shit.
Still no one came.
Eventually I was pacing the confines of the 4x4 metre room, bare feet, butt cheeks flying in the breeze like some psychiatrically defective baboon extra from One Flew Over A Cuckoo's Nest.
I opened the door to see if what was going on and shortly an orderly turned up with a trolley / bed for me.
I hopped on and we took off to the familiar recovery room.
There I was met by my main orthopaedic surgeon and an anaesthetist who'd worked on me a few times previously.
The surgeon informed me that the plan was to removed the plates from the clavicle, tibia, radius ulna and the rods from inside both femurs.
He would attempt to break my ulna with his hands, if it didn't break he would leave the plate off, if it did then a bone graft and replating would take place.

09:30 I was rolled into theatre.
There I was placed on the operating table and attached to various machines that make all those beeping and pinging sounds.
The anaesthetist attached a line to me, gave me a shot of morphine and I once again felt the metallic taste in my mouth and was half way to having the nods, like I'd felt many times before.
Pretty soon it was on with the oxygen mask, a dose of the sleepy juice and I was out of it like a date rape victim.

12:30 I awoke from my artificially induced slumber fairly abrubtly as I was still being wheeled from theatre to recovery.
I was absolutely freezing!
Shaking like a dog shitting tacks I was, no worse, downright convulsing on the trolley.
Pretty soon I was in recovery and blanket after blanket was being piled onto my spasming body.
Eventually my body core temperature rose whilst a nurse administered doses of morphine for the pain that was beginning to make its presence felt more and more as my mind was becoming less distracted by the cold.
I lay there for some time with regular checks of my vitals and had a fantastic conversation with my nurse.
The surgeon paid me a visit and gave me the good news: all metal removed, no bone graft necessary.
Woo hoo!!! The only piece of metal left was the one in my pelvis but that's not coming out.
After some time I began to wonder how long I would be spending there and was informed that they were trying to find a bed for me.

17:30 I was informed that a bed was finally available and that a nurse would be coming down to grab me.
Funny thing was that as soon as he set foot in recovery my blood pressure started decreasing.
After a check with the anaesthetist on duty I was administered a glucose solution to increase my blood volume, as I'd lost a fair bit in theatre.
I lay there watching and willing my pressure to go up and with each automated measure it would go up a bit, then down a bit, then up some more, then down a bit until it was relatively stable once again.

19:00 I was finally transported to the ward.
Watching the signs on walls I noticed we may be heading towards the neurosurgery ward.
I was a mildly suspicious and asked the nurse what other parts of my body were operated on and he told me that the only bed left was on that ward.
And so I came to be on the brain surgery ward, where I mum, sis and Snorkmaiden were patiently waiting.
Luckily I'd placed and order for some soup with Snorkamaided earlier as I knew I would be ravenous and there was not much hope getting something from the kitchen.
I felt pretty good really, a little tired and sore, but I had my old friend back.
The morphine pump.
This time I vowed not to abuse it as my arse still remembers the little pump's ability to put a halt to my normal digestive tract functions and park a school bus in my colon.
That night I spoke to Amanda diagonally across from me.
She was a 31 year old mother of three who had suffered a brain bleed rendering her right side paralysed.
It was a condition from birth and there was a possibility it would happen again.
She was slowly regaining motor skills in that side and as plucky and stoic as she was I still heard her crying at night.
I got off lightly I reckon.


to be continued.......



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As promised, here are some photos from the trip to Blanket Bay:

About this time last year I made sure I got one last decent camping trip before the next surgery.
This year was no different with Snorkmaiden and I managing to get away to Blanket Bay for a couple of nights one week out from the scheduled surgery.
That place is always awesome and I feel a certain affinity with it.
We got away about half past four on the Friday, thinking that we'll beat the weekend traffic jam out of Melbourne, especially the one in Geelong which never fails to annoy the hell out
of me.
I managed to stick behind a truck that was the same year and model as the original Optimus Prime from Transformers for a good portion of the freeway.
Being a professional driver with a much higher view of the road, the humble truckie can pick the fastest moving lane and spot obstacles from a far greater distance than yer average road user.
If there is any trouble up ahead you can always brake faster than a truck, if things get really nasty then you can expect the truck to clear a path in front of you as it bulldozes its way through people's cars and lives.
Funny that I was able to use to my advantage the very thing that had put me in this position in the first place.
It wasn't so bad on the motorbike, I would slice and dice my way through the hordes of metallic hulks like yet another one of those fangled slicing and dicing machines you see being flogged to death on tv infomercials.
It was inevitable that the Geelong bottleneck would slow us down and so we trudged our way through it along with all the other cars, not unlike some herd of sheep with glazed over eyes slowly making their way through the yards towards the shearing shed / transporter / slaughter house.
Only difference being that the people in their vehicles were a little happier than normal, probably because it was the end of the week or they were heading off to a weekend away somewhere.
I've called my car Eleanor the Emo, because Eleanor was the name of the yellow mustang which gave so much trouble to the thieves in 'Gone In 60 Seconds' ( the original not the rubbish remake with Nic Cage's wooden acting in it ) and Emo because it seems to have a habit of breaking down.
Thankfully it hasn't taken to cutting itself.
I've had a few issues with it which could have been rather costly but in the end turned not too badly.
Much like emos, the problems weren't as dire or catastrophic as they make them out to be.
Anyway, Eleanor performed flawlessly and we made good time, arriving about three and a half hours later.

Just short of Blanket Bay is the little section of bush where I camped earlier in the year, the one full of koalas.
As we rounded a corner I cautioned Snorkmaiden to keep an eye out for the little grey bundles of tourism attraction due to their rather prevalent numbers and sure enough as we exited the corner onto the straight there were two of the stoned looking blighters sitting smack bang in the middle of the road ( if you've ever seen one you'll relate to how the hours and hours of chewing on gum leaves gives them that out of it look).
Eleanor stopped just a few feet from them and we ooohed and aaahed at the marsupial's clear indifference to the one and a half tonne of metal, plastic and flesh that could well have been the last thing it saw in its short stoned existence on this planet.
I revved the engine.......... nothing.
I beeped the horn.......... still nothing.
I flashed the lights.......... still more nothing.
I revved the engine, beeped the horn, flashed the lights and pleaded with the critter to get off the road, yet still the arrogant and stubborn mongrel of a thing would not budge.
Finally I decided that I will take a photo of it as a keepsake and proceed to drive around it.
As I stopped next to it, I opened the door to get an up close and personal shot and what do you know, it didn't like the flash of the camera!
As soon as I started clicking away it walked away!
Cheeky little thing.

We arrived at Blanket Bay proper only to find that a geriatric bushwalking tour had taken most of the camp sites.
There were literally no spots left!
We drove around a bit, with me cursing and voicing my displeasure at this commercial enterprise spoiling it for the greater camping public.
We were just about to leave when we decided to explore a little side road, which I was sure contained no spots and led back to the main camp loop road.
Sure enough it did exactly that and as were once again first geared our way through the camp site an older man, probably in his sixties, motioned for me to pull over.
He asked if we were stuck for a spot and offered to shift his camper van so we could pitch up behind it.
His act of camping kindness towards a couple of sundowners more than made up for the herd of geriatrics who had invaded and occupied the place like seagulls at the rubbish tip.
Turned out he was touring with his brother and his wife, who had an almost identical camper of their own, and they were heading off the next day.
He was a lovely bloke from South Australia with whom we shared some interesting conversation that night.
Turned out he also had a metal rod in his femur, but it was put in about 30 years ago and was still in there due to failed attempts at removal.
The screws had fused to the rod and were immovable, which is exactly the sort of problem my experimental tibial plate is supposed to overcome.
As a result of all the carry on, Jeff had spent six months in hopsital, in a bed!
My initial stay in hospital was seven months, two of which were in a bed.
I could not imagine what it must have been like to be laid up for 6 months, not being able to set foot on the ground!!!
The next day we exchanged photographs and Snorkmaiden worked out how to enter my number in his phone on his request.
I received a phone call from him a couple of days after my surgery enquiring as to how it all went. ( more on that later )

The rest of the time we spent going for walks, taking photos, swimming in the ocean, all that relaxing sort of stuff you go away to these sort of places for.
My right leg had been giving me a lot of trouble in the week leading up to this trip and I suspected it was all to do with the metal in there.
It was really wearing me down physically, but luckily it had come just about right by the camping time, bit still stopped me from doing any longish walks.
I made another stone sculpture in my favourite sculpture spot, although this one didn't seem to last all that long really as the next day it had toppled over.
That night we went to one of the communal fire / barbeque spots and joined a group of people about our age for some fine dining, drinking and with the help of my guitar some rather drunken singing.
It was really nice sitting there eating our barbequed meats and salad with a view of the coastline in the sunset, it doesn't get any better really.
A couple of bottles of wine later and Snorkmaiden and I were ready to hit the tent.

The next morning after a sunrise seaside photography expedition, we cooked breakfast and were assaulted by countless flies.
The annoying shits were getting into everything and in the end we resigned to sitting in the car to finish off our food.
Even then there were still a half a dozen that managed to get in the car.
After breakfast we went for another swim, although being earlier in the day that water was a bit more bracing than the the afternoon before.
We broke camp and headed back to Melbourne via The Great Ocean Road this time.
Normally I would avoid it like the plague due to the number of tourists and other people who can't drive that seem to fill this well scenic but, normally overpopulated drive.
For some strange reason it was relatively clear this time around and we actually managed to enjoy the trip rather than bitch and moan about that tourist stopping in the middle of a blind corner to take a photo, that old upper class toff in his Range Rover loafing around like some motoring equivalent of Jabba the Hut, the European backpacker driving on the wrong side of the road ( there are actually signs on the road stating which side we drive on in Australia specifically aimed at them! ) or the massive tourist coaches coming around corners on your side of the road.
Once again I stopped at Anglesea and we munched out on some luverly fish and chips before heading back through Geelong and into Melbourne proper.
All that was left was 4 days at work and then surgery on the 7th December.
It all went well and I will post more on that in the next few days along with some photos from the trip which I'm having trouble uploading due to my current ( hopefully temporary ) downgrade to a dial up internet connection.

:)


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