Category: Doctor

608 Ward

Published on by heiditeaLeave a comment

On Monday or Tuesday, I was then moved “up” to the sixth floor to an open ward with six or seven other beds for special care patients. Most of them were all some kind of head injury. Most were pretty severe, so I saw the ugly side of brain injuries as well. Again….I’m VERY lucky.

This room was not my favorite. SOOO noisy and certainly not conducive to resting. I had to get medication every four hours, I had to have my catheter emptied every shift, if I needed to have a BM, I had to have a bed pan placed under me which was horribly uncomfortable.

I got very little sleep and nothing else remotely close to rest in that room and grew to hate it with a passion. Not the staff however. The nurses were wonderful and worked very hard in a difficult situation. Dealing with brain injuries present many different issues and they handled it amazingly well. The were a few bad eggs, like the one who insisted on trying to get a new IV in me four time before deciding to use my hand. Grrrr…. And the nurse who gave me a sponge bath who just didn’t have a clue. Not pleasant.

One night, I got paranoid. I can only chalk it up to not sleep and the brain injury. I overheard one of the nurses say that a new patient who had just been brought it may have menegitus. I thought it was contagious…first misunderstanding of the night.

Then there was a lot of activity surrounding some of the other beds. The doors were closed. Several EMTs with trays were brought in. Lots of whispering. A lot of “she is this”, “she is that”, “she’ll have to be transported”…etc. I thought they were discussing me…talking about transporting ME to another hospital because of the menegitus scare by this other patient. I got paranoid and angry that these nurses were not telling ME anything, so I blew up and wanted to know what was going on. They said they couldn’t tell me. Not a good answer for a patient in an agitate state with a brain injury! LOL

They blew me off. I got more paranoid. I actually told one of the nurses (ironically the one who stuck me with needles five times that morning) that I just didn’t want her near me. It wasn’t pretty. Not one of my best performances. I actually made one of the nurses call poor Dave at 2:00 in the morning to get down to the hospital to see me. So, he wasn’t sure what was going on, I just knew I needed him there and God bless him, he drove back down.

It wasn’t until one of the nurses slipped me a mickey in my IV and I calmed down, that I realized the nurses were discussing the female patient who had been brought in that night. I felt so stupid and embarrassed. The one nurse came in to check my vitals and I tearfully apologized. She was amazingly calm and tried to ease my mind. I was still paranoid after that, but not as much. I just new the nurses were still talking about me and my very inappropriate behavior. I was totally thrown by the whole episode.

ICU

Published on by heiditeaLeave a comment

The next four days were spent in UCI at SCU3. I could not get out of bed. I had a catheter, wasn’t eating anything anyway, but had a ton of fluids going through me to flush out any access blood in my system. That blood was the main concern. If I had a spasm or a possible stroke, it could have been far more dangerous, so I was constantly monitored.

Since I was able to do nothing to but sit and think, I THEN started to think about what had just happened to me. Emotions take over quickly as I even have the slightest thought of the life/death issue. My family, my friends, my co-workers and of course Dave. How lucky I was to be here at all. It was almost too much to take, so I’d try to quickly avoid it. I think it WILL hit me the second I get home though.

Emotional issues are also a problem with recovering from a brain injury. Strange things happen, either because of the type of injury or other things. I had strange things happen in the ICU. I knew one room in the ICU was being used to administer last rights to someone during one day and perhaps that made me think of the following.

Considering I’m very isolated in one glass-walled room, it can be quite lonely at night and perhaps my mind just played tricks on me. I saw my co-worker Di. At least I could have sworn it was her. Then I heard, what I believed were, body bags being opened up for people in that room to identify. I heard someone say “Di just threw up”. Then I heard crying, then I heard someone say “what do we do about the wedding ring”? and I heard Di say very strongly, “I’ll take care of the damn ring!”. I heard a woman crying, then when it was all over, the “bodies” were taken away out a back door, the curtains were opened and all was done.

I was so upset. I knew Di’s only daughter was getting married this month. Not that there was anything I could do about it. I was bedridden, but I just really needed to know. I called in the nurse and asked her about it. I was having an anxiety attack for sure. I told her what I thought had happened to my co-worker. She assured me there were no bodies being identified there that night. Of course, I didn’t believe her and the mystery continued. I had no contact with anyone at Johnny’s to ask if something had happened to Di’s family. Frustrating.

It wasn’t until a week later when I finally asked someone at work, that I found out nothing had occurred with Di’s family. THANK GOD it didn’t, but that meant I imagined the entire thing. I still cannot believe that. Very, very odd and very, very real.

Surgery

Published on by heiditeaLeave a comment

I don’t recall much about the day of the surgery. I remember being wheeled down the hallway to surgery mostly because it is painted with giant flowers. I remember being shaved in the groin and getting a shot there and that’s it.

Dori and Dave comforted each other during the surgery which lasted 2 hours. They visited the chapel and prayed for me and were greatly relieved to see Dr. Kwan come out of surgery with a smile on his face saying things went well, then to see me being wheeled out of surgery with my hand on my chin already complaining about the tape gunk on my chin from the feeding/air tube they had to insert for surgery.

Apparently, my post-anesthesia comedy show was a hit. I complained that Ashley from the ‘Dancing With The Stars’ television show was losing her microphone. Which is odd because they don’t sing anyway!

Then I said “The Care Bears are drowning”. Dori asked me if I wanted her to save the Care Bears, or if I wanted to do it? I then said with great disdain “Screw the Care Bears!”.  Comic relief. I was told nurses laughed as well. I’m glad I entertained! LOL I don’t recall a moment of it.

I vaguely recall the rest of that day and night because I got pretty sick. I could not stomach morphine, then they wanted me to swallow these massive horse pills called Nimodipin which were vital pills for me to take as they prevent vasospasms.

The Day It Happened

Published on by heiditea8 Comments

The morning of October 5th began at 4:00 a.m. I was NOT happy that the kitty cats were up at this hour playing. I got up, visited the bathroom and climbed back in to bed. This is where the day changed dramatically.

I had a horrible pain in my head and the base of my skull in the upper part of my neck. Something like I had never experienced. I could not get comfortable. I was short of breath. I tried sitting up, I tried standing, but was brought to my knees due to be unbalanced…nothing helped. I knew something was wrong, but didn’t know what is was. I awoke Dave simply saying “Something is wrong with me.”. He called 911.

As Dave was on the phone describing my symptoms, both hands went completely numb. I thought for sure I was having a heart attack. I have never experienced anything like this. Very scary. He hung up from 911 and we waited……and waited. 20 minutes later the EMTs arrived.

By that time, I had calmed down, the pain wasn’t as severe and once they took my vital signs, the distress wasn’t nearly as much as it was before. I didn’t know what was happening, but still knew something wasn’t right. The EMTs left it up to us if they wanted them to transport us to the ER to be looked at, or if they wanted to call ahead and let us drive over. We decided on the later, but even that was a question. One of the EMTs said that if I felt is was something so unusual that I SHOULD get it checked out. Thank God we did.

Dave and I drove to the Augusta Medical Center emergency room. No one else was there, so at least I wouldn’t have to wait, but I wasn’t feeling good that’s for sure. Very weak, headache and neck ache. We got right in to see a Dr. and thankfully, he had an inclination on what I might be. He ordered a CT scan.

I was given something to calm me down..not sure what. I just know when the Dr. came back into the room with the results of the scan, I was numb….literally. I assumed because of the way my heart races, my arms when numb and other things, that it was all heart related. I was completely unprepared for the Dr. to say I had had a ruptured brain artery or aneurysm! I knew this was NOT good and could be deadly. I was still numb, not really able to completely take I what I was being old.

Portland Maine Medical Center and within 15 minutes it was there and ready to go. It was all a whirlwind at that point. All happened so quickly, and thankfully so. Dave didn’t ride down in the ambulance with me, but wanted to stay back and speak with the Dr. a moment while I was transported. It was the quickest trip to Portland I’ve never made in my life. Close to 30 minutes. It’s normally an hour or so away. Dave followed behind and must have
been driving very close to the ambulance speed because he was right there after I arrived at the hospital.

I was still pretty out of it. I don’t recall a lot of my arrival at Portland Maine Med. I knew I was in SCU3 or special care unit 3 (ICU). I recall having more scans to fully determine the extent of the damage. They reconfirmed it was a ruptured aneurysm, but luckily, one that hadn’t bled too much. It would still require surgery and quickly. The best guy to do it there at Maine Med was Dr. Eddie Kwan. He was expected to be on vacation. If they could get him, I could have it done right there…if not, I may have to go to Boston. Ugh!

Thankfully, Dr. Kwan either cut short his vacation, or hadn’t left town yet, and was able to perform surgery the next morning.

During this time Dave called Dori and she immediately made arrangements to fly out to be with Dave. I’m so thankful she was able to do that. Not only did I need to see a familiar face from back in NY there, but Dave really needed someone there as well. I wasn’t “experiencing” much at that point, other than pain and discomfort, but Dave and Dori and the rest of my family must have been so frightened. Dori flew in Thursday afternoon.