Category: Doctor

Back to Hell

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I was served up breakfast in the morning then suddenly two nurses came in and said “You know you’re moving back to 608 don’t you?”. WHAT??????? No! No one said a thing to me! I was livid. They wouldn’t even let me eat my breakfast in the semi-private room.

Depressed cannot even describe what I felt. I ate my breakfast in silence. At least I had a different area on the room and had a spectacular view, but I was livid. I slumped alone in the chair after breakfast. Three people, including my own Dr. had to go find me and were shocked I was back in 608. Join the club! And, it took me almost all day to finally find out the reason why I was moved back. Apparently I shouldn’t have been moved out of 608 in the first place due to one drug I was on. So it was a mix-up, understandable, but not acceptable to me.

Lisa, the physical therapist, saved my mood by offering me up a shower for the first time since my arrival. I still wasn’t happy about being in 608, but it at least refreshed me.

Brief Escape

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A day or two later I was able to take out the catheter. Ahhhh!! A nice relief, but they were still pumping three IVs of fluids through me, so that didn’t decrease. It was making me get up more, so I suppose that was good. It was just nice to have control over my own “stuff” now.

I saw physical therapy briefly and they explained the pain in my back was due to being bedridden for five solid days. I just felt it was a little bit more than that and it took a few more days to get a Dr. to tell me the blood that was released into my brain needed someplace to go and the spinal chord was a prime area as well…hence the discomfort. Also due to being bedridden, but it made a little more sense now. I needed to get up and move!

I was trying my best to get out of the 608 ward. I was tired and cranky. They finally said I could move to a semi-private room. YES!! At last..maybe some sleep! I’d be sharing with another patient, but hopefully it would be someone nice and quiet. Risky.

I was moved down in the evening, met Brenda, my bunk-mate and her husband and settled in. I was still awakened every four hours for pills, but I DID get some sleep. Brenda and I were both up at 4:00 helping pass our pain together chatting about our kitty cats and homes. I liked Brenda.

608 Ward

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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

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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.