Monday, December 17, 2007
SURGERY DAY 2......
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........
.
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........
.
