The Smallest Room

I woke up on Saturday morning with a strange realisation... I had slept.  Ah.. the benefits of a private ward!

Fair enough, it was still so early that the morning shift nurse had not yet arrived, but the relief was a godsend.

I'd gone to sleep despite the dull mechanical roar of air con units outside. The window was open and I'd been too confused and tired to work out that closing the window might reduce the noise level. I feared having to put up with the background nuisance for several days.

It was snowing outside. Turning on the TV I discovered that I had missed the last four days. The Arctic had arrived in southern England., and the world was coming to a halt whilst I'd been elsewhere. Nevertheless the window was too high for me to close, and only the fact that the heating system was burning money was keeping me warm.

Then the heating broke down.

All my clothes were shredded, having been cut off me in A&E.  The nurse checks for pyjamas but can't find any. I was getting cold.

I use the alert button to call for help. This is a MAJOR improvement; a 5 second response time (compared with 35 minutes in the public ward)! On several occasions I hear alerts from other patients and immediately hear the footsteps of someone moving quickly down the corridor. I also hear the same quick response to monitor alarms.

I asked the nurse if we could close the window... It was way above her limited reach and she wasn't prepared  to climb onto a chair. She produced a small electric heater which was to save my bacon over the next couple of days.  Other people in the private ward were not so lucky. Eventually I precariously tottered below the open window and managed to close it by using my crutch as a lever. This amused me by baffling the nurse. She couldn't work it out.

I stayed in the Guthrie Ward for 3 days. Saturday and Sunday were phenomenally boring. The snowy view from the window includes the corridor into several of the operating theatres (and so I see faceless blue-green clad people walking up and down) and down onto another ward which I initially mistake for some sort of factory floor. There were no staff other than the basic weekend duty team. ...Something like being in limbo. Imagine day-time TV programmes in the run-up to Christmas; just how many ancient repeats is it possible to show?  Guns of Navarone, Navarone the Sequel, Navarone part III, Navarone Returns....  zzzz.

A nurse came to remove the catheter, a highly desirable event which he assures me will not be painful.  Donning rubber gloves, he uses a syringe to extract the water from the internal balloon and then without warning pulls the tube out. I scream as I feel my guts being extracted from the inside. For the next three days it will be painful to take a pee. I became extremely worried about the possibility of having to have another catheter fitted, so I pee at every possible opportunity. When the nurse returns later that day he glances at the two urinal bottles by the side of the bed and says that we might need to refit the catheter. (Oh no!)  I point out that the bottles are both full. A trick of the light has made him think that they were empty, but he still managed to scare me witless.

The room has an "en-suite" toilet. Well, more accurately it's a broom cupboard with a toilet in it, but they don't seem to have any brooms.  It's so small that I have problems getting in through the door with my frame on my leg.  I have to get the crutches inside first, then hop carefully around the edge of the door to get my left leg in, and then manoeuvre the frame through the gap.

The ward room is filled with furniture. Given that I have;-
(a) a bed
(b) a toilet
(c) only one visitor
(d) no drinks,

...it seems odd to provide;
(a) 3 chairs
(b) a commode
(c) a small fridge.

There is also a wardrobe and drawer units which could possibly hold my clothes if they were not shredded and in plastic bags.

Maz paid me a visit on Sunday. It's nice to talk to someone, and I realise that I'm losing the ability to communicate. She was perhaps suffering from the previous nights party, and probably would have preferred to stay at home if she hadn't already said she would visit on Sunday, and so gratefully welcomes the opportunity to help me with consuming my lunch. (The food is much better here in Guthrie, but the menu is the same for lunch and for dinner.) Maz brought me oranges, shaving foam, and a book. I used the hospital-issue razor with shower gel that morning, and resemble someone who dived face first through a thorn bush.

By Monday I am planning my escape. If I can't knot my sheets together, maybe I can tunnel out through the loose floorboard in the tiny toilet.  Everybody who comes in (there is a stream of nurses, doctors, physios, etc) has to hear my plea to let me go. I'm shown how to go up and down stairs with crutches (quite scary the first time you try it). I demonstrate how well I can move my leg and how conscientiously I'm doing my exercises.

Eventually I am told that I will be allowed to go once Debbie (the limb reconstruction specialist) has redressed the pin sites.  I call Natalie and ask if she will pick me up.  Debbie must be the busiest person in the hospital. Most of the staff I see are wandering around, having a chat, ambling from one adequately performed task to the next. Debbie rushes from place to place, talks quickly and succinctly, and clearly has a lot to do because she always ( errr.. twice) arrives much later than I'm led to expect. In just a few minutes she shows me how to dress the pin sites, hands over a large plastic bag of wound dressing kits, swabs and sterile water sachets, and  gives me a bag of split-seamed shorts left behind by previous patients.

Luckily Natalie has been to Pete's house and collected a T shirt, sweat shirt etc.

A porter is called to wheel me out to the exit, Natalie pulls up in her car, and I suddenly realise how frightening it is to be weak with an injury, and attempting to negotiate icy pavements on crutches.

A short but painful ride home is followed by a proper curry. It's great to be home!