|
Page 2
Two revelations came out of the ER stay - there is such a thing as a bedside urinal (who knew?) and muscle relaxers, not pain killers, make the pain manageable. How much agony could I have avoided if we had known there was such a thing as a bedside urinal?
After the day in the ER, at about 9 PM, I was transferred to a bigger hospital 20 miles away and put in the observation ward. That night was a cycle of rolling over and pissing into the plastic bottle every hour or so, dozing off, have my vital signs taken every couple of hours, peeing again and trying to sleep. Peeing without getting it on me or the bed became a central concern in my life and caused anxiety way out of proportion to its importance. The nurse gave me a towel to use for any small cleanup needed after pissing. My towel was comforting to me beyond all reason.
My surgeon, Dr. Vien, came in the next morning (Monday, Dec 8). He wasn’t sure what was wrong with me and ordered another round of blood and urine tests, another CT scan, and an ultrasound of my lower abdomen. He said he had seen lower abdominal pain after this surgery before. It was an uncommon complication of the surgery, but not unheard of. But he said he had never seen it this bad before. He also said the previous CT showed I needed to empty my bowels before the next one, so I was introduced to yet another humiliation – forced pooping under the watchful eye of a nurse.
Monday evening, I was transferred from the Observation Ward to the Inpatient Ward and it sounded like I was in for the long haul. They piled all my possessions on top of the bed and wheeled me down at about 7:00PM and put me in a room. A nurse hooked up the IV line, blood pressure cuff, and heart monitor wires and quickly asked if I needed anything. I had only been there a minute and didn’t really know whether I needed anything or not. She left me there to “relax” with every light in the room blazing and the IV alarm soon going off. The water bottle for my CPAP machine was on the bed with me and pretty soon I realized it was leaking. I tried the call button, but it did nothing. I tried yelling out the door, but there was no one around, so that got me nowhere. After about an hour of lying there in wet blankets and the damn alarm going off I heard someone in the hall and I threw my pillow through the door. It landed behind her and she didn’t notice it. A while later someone came by and stopped to pick up the pillow and I was able to yell at them to come help me. She changed the bed clothes, plugged the call button into the wall, and shut down the alarm. She was in a hurry because my transfer had taken place in the middle of shift change and there was some kind of complication. I asked her to turn the lights off and leave the bed side rails down so I could pee, but she said she wasn’t allowed to do that. I had to continue to try to pee horizontally into a plastic bottle that had to be held horizontally, which was an obvious recipe for disaster. Plus, they took my towel out with the wet blankets. I spent another fitful, sleepless night of noise, lights, and pissing.
__________________
.
|