Sh*t Happens...The story continues

Since someone asked, I will tell a little more to this story. How do I remember the details? Because I don't get put down by the drugs for some reason, and I stay wide awake. I'm just a detail oriented person, and one of those who can tell you stuff that's around me when I walk into a new place. I'm a quick scanner, I suppose, and that's something I will miss in the future.

Where was I? Oh, yeah, pulling into the emergency room at the Memphis VA with the two stooges. Once they parked me in a cubicle in the newly remodeled ER there (which is quite nice, by the way), passed my CT scan and Xray films to the doctors, and signed me off, the ER staff began to hover about. First another round of vital signs, then they brought me more blankets, which I did not want, because being the post-menopausal woman I am, I am NEVER cold indoors.

The preliminary forty questions were asked for the third time since I had gotten ill, and then the doctor came in to look over the films. He asked the same questions again, and disappeared outside the curtain. A very swishy male nurse came in, practically rubbing his hands together in glee, announcing that "we" were going to have an NG tube. I told him, no "WE" were not! He looked like I had slapped him, and slinked back out, and I could hear him tattling to the doctor "This patient refuses to have the NG tube" like a little girl telling the teacher that I wouldn't let him skip rope with me. Ugh.

It became a matter of wills at that point. I have had bowel obstructions before. They didn't put an NG tube down my nose then. Why now? I wanted explanations. I got them, and they made sense. A very kindly female nurse came in and talked to me about it. She explained to me how she was going to do this procedure, and was extremely patient and nice about it. Attitude is everything to me. I was not going to let Mr. Nancyboy shove a tube down my nose. He was way too eager.

Before they did the torture routine, the doctor authorized a good dose of Dilaudin and Phenergran, and that gave me a wave of feel good that relaxed me enough to finally give them the go-ahead for the NG tube. True to her word, this nurse had a technique that made it not so bad, and I will remember it if I ever have to do this again, heaven help me. She sprayed a numbing solution both in my nose and down my throat, and that made all the difference. Bless her.

~~~

There was a room ready for me, but it was a semi-private. They wheeled me in for the transfer to the bed, and the tv was blasting from the other side of the curtain. I was on the inside away from the window, and it was hot in the room to me. Damn, usually I had a private room at the VA because there are so few women. I just hoped I would sleep through this dastardly barrage of bad talk shows, Jerry Springer, and Maury.

The roomie had been through a mastectomy the day before, and I thought I had it good compared to her. But she was out of there shortly after noon that day, as they don't keep mastectomy patients very long at all. That is so unfair.

All day long, I had a parade of the Doogie Housers. The Memphis VA is staffed by the medical students and interns from the University of Tennessee Medical School, and I swear that some of these people were fifteen years old. (That's when you know you are getting old, heh.) The good news is that they are eager to learn, very thorough in their examinations, and even though I have to recite my medical history ten times a day, I do feel like I get good care there. Having a female in this facility is quite a novelty for them, so they send everybody in to scope me out, literally.

That afternoon, the nursing administrator came in to do his paperwork with me, and he was a bit of a swish, too, but very nice. After Fred introduced himself, he commented on my watch. I had to chuckle to myself, and handed it over for him to look at closer. It's an old braille watch that I got off ebay, antique-y looking and who knows how old. He was fascinated with its pop-open crystal. Nice conversation starter, that, and he had to finally excuse himself because we got way off the track of my medical history. Fred came back later with some Smithsonian magazines for me to read, bless him. Boredom is my big thing in the hospital, because I don't like to watch tv.

Shortly after Fred returned with my reading material, the staff came in to announce they were moving me to a different room. Oh, brother...now I thought...put me in with someone with forty relatives that trek by me all day. But, surprise! It was a private room with the best view in the hospital, overlooking the main intersection and the fire station across the street. Entertainment value at least.

For the next five days, I would lay in bed and watch the goings-on out that window. The fire trucks would leave the station on the average of a dozen times a day. I could see The Med, the medical center which is the home of the Elvis Presley Memorial Trauma Center, which I could also see from my window. Countless ambulances a day came roaring up to that entrance. It was there that Elvis himself was brought after they found him at Graceland that fateful day. (A bit of trivia here: it was a Jonesboro, Arkansas, ambulance driver who had brought a patient for transfer to The Med who saw Elvis coming into the trauma center that day and called his dispatcher with the news. The dispatcher called the local news station, and the rest is history.)

My ex came the second day, and brought me a bag of my books and some clothes. It was odd trying to tell him where things were in my apartment so he could gather them for me. I did have a book bag with my braille study stuff in it, and he brought that. It was fun to have that with me, as I'd practice into the night with the lights off, and the nurses would come in for vitals or whatever and wonder what the hell I was doing. I had a word puzzle book with me, and they thought I was a little nuts, but let it be. I wished that I had asked him to bring the first part of Harry Potter to me, but that would have been too much to ask for him to find it, even though it was sitting on a bookshelf in plain view. I'm so slow that I might have gotten a couple of pages read.

A friend who works at the VA in research brought me some novels and magazines. I read "The Secret Life of Bees" all in one shot one night, and got caught up on the Newsweek and Time accounts of the London bombings. What horror that must have been. We don't know how lucky we have been in the US. Dana also smuggled in a Dr. Pepper and some pretzels for me. I was supposed to be NPO, but that damn tube in my nose sucked everything back out, so I very sneakily enjoyed the salty treat and left the DP in my water cup to get flat before I enjoyed it too. Nothing harmed, so I got away with it.

The fourth day, the team came in and decided that they could pull the NG tube and get me out of bed. I was estactic. I still had the IV drip for antibiotics, but didn't have to be tethered to it all the time, so bathroom visits didn't involve dragging the IV stand with me. Yay! I told the intern who came in to remove the tube to please not act like she was starting the lawnmower. Someone did that to me once before, and it was awful. She was gentle, and all I had was a slight nosebleed after the fact, and a bit of a sore throat. Not too bad.

Once I got loose of all the equipment, I begged for a shower. The nursing assistant came in and plastic-wrapped my IV port and I went in to shower in the semi-private bathroom that adjoined the next room. I had no shampoo, so I used the stuff in the pump on the wall. My hair felt like glue, and I couldn't get it to rinse out. Stupid me...I couldn't read what it said without my glasses, and it was a lotion-based cleanser. (I read the container later.) Geez, I looked worse than before I showered.

But getting a shower made all the difference, sticky hair or not. I was able to get up and sit in the side chair and look farther down the street, which was nice. There was a storm coming up, and I watched the clouds roll in. At one point, I saw something I have never seen before, and I moved around to see if it were a fluke, but it was a piece of rainbow that curved upward in the sky. It started as a small section, then got longer in the arc, and I leaned over to look toward the 2 pm sun and there was a second section, also curving upward. I suppose had I been in a certain spot, I could have seen the full circle. Very odd. I've seen a double rainbow before, but only curving toward the horizon. I took it as a good sign.

My temperature evened out, and the antibiotics seemed to be doing their job, so the team decided to let me go on Monday. I called my ex to see when he could come across the river to pick me up, and it was going to be late afternoon before he could come. I went in after they pulled the IV port out and grabbed another shower, this time washing my hair in real shampoo that Dana brought me. It took three washings to get the goo out. Nasty. I got dressed in my real clothes, and suddenly realised I was breaking out in hives. Dammit...something had triggered an allergic reaction. They were all over me, from head to toe, and I ran out to the nurses station to ask if they could possibly get me some antihistamine. Lucky me, it was lunchtime. The docs were at a lunch meeting and they had to approve the drug. I thought I'd go crazy itching.

If it hadn't been for another friend that I got on the phone for about an hour, I think I'd have gone nuts with the rash. Distraction is a good thing. That's why I was glad to have a couple of people that I could call while I was laid up. Thank goodness for cell phones and unlimited nighttime minutes.

I was glad to get home to Ringo and Toby. They missed me, I could tell. They don't seem to want to let me out of their sight now.

So, that was the excitement (yawn) of my week from hell. Big whoop.