The Rest

Have you been waiting with bated breath to hear about the rest of my hospital saga, which ended two weeks ago today?

I’m tired of thinking about it. How about I post excerpts from my letter to the physician-in-chief of the hospital and to the CEO of the HMO itself? The writing is more dry and formal than you’re used to seeing here, but let me know if it manages to convey the extreme distastefulness of the experience.

I began by saying a lot of good things about the ER, which I won’t include here since you’ve read all about it.

First Night in the Hospital

The nurses all were friendly, skilled and hard-working, but far too busy… Often my requests went unheard or unmet.

For one example, I was nauseated and vomiting (sorry for the detail here). Because I couldn’t get the nurses’ attention, I had to run to the toilet. The process was difficult. I had to maneuver between bed and curtain to unplug my IV stand from the wall, trip around the bed to the other side where the bathroom was (an act that kept yanking at my IV insertion point) and crash my way into the bathroom. One time on urgent arrival, I found my roommate’s full urine container (which the nurse was going to remove) still in the toilet. Possibly the worst part was not knowing why I was so sick then (I still don’t know) and being unable to get the attention of a nurse for reassurance or help. One did give me an anti-emetic shot, which helped for a little while, and another handed me a small container for vomit and left. But that was all…

I don’t know why blood needs to be collected at 4:00 a.m., but that was the least of my worries.

Surgery & Recovery

[Here I sing praises to my surgeon, but… ] I wish he hadn’t said, post-surgery, that he wasn’t sure why his colleagues had considered it an emergency. That filled me with thoughts such as “Did I just go through an operation I didn’t need?” I talked to Dr. Im the next Monday for clarity on the difference between what they diagnosed and what they found. He reassured me that he still considered the procedure necessary and urgent….

I don’t remember much about the recovery room. Back in my double room I learned I could decide whether to stay another night or not. I was in pain and disoriented, and late in the afternoon opted to stay around so I could be taken care of. That was my big mistake.

Second Night in the Hospital

I very much liked my nurses, most, if not all, of whom made the effort to introduce themselves at shift-change and who seemed to be working very hard, with a lot of pressure for attention from other patients. The care I did get was good. The problem was that I didn’t get as much as I needed (and as I said, I don’t need much: just the basics).

A while after I got back to my room, someone brought me a hearty meal of chicken and vegetables: far from an ideal food for right after surgery. But I was famished, so I ate. Shortly thereafter, the nausea and vomiting returned.

To get to the bathroom this time (in pain and medicated) I followed the same ritual as before, with the added hurdle of trying to figure out how to disconnect myself from the two inflating mechanisms that my calves were strapped into.

Later in the evening I developed a severe headache which probably was a result of the meds and anesthesiology. I rang the bell for the nurse. I waited half an hour. I rang again. When someone finally responded, I requested Tylenol or something similar. It didn’t arrive. I asked again after a while, and yet again. Eight to ten hours later, when I left the hospital, I still hadn’t gotten it. All I’d wanted was OTC painkiller. (The nurse did offer to give me more Dilaudid, but I felt too sick for it; in fact, I’d stopped strong painkillers sometime late Saturday night, I believe.)

Around 12:30 a.m. the real nightmare began when I was joined by a new roommate who immediately turned on the TV loud and woke me up. This roommate, it became clear to a newly awakened me, was addicted to strong painkillers. She moaned and groaned and thrashed and hacked and yelled. Time after time she rang the nurse bell requesting more drugs. She defecated on herself. She took to ringing the bell constantly, like machine gun fire, until she got attention. Again she unapologetically defecated all over on herself. Together, three poor nurses had to clean her up. Just feet away on the other side of the curtain, I heard one nurse gag. The stench was terrible.

Obviously, patients like this aren’t Kaiser’s fault, but I wish her case had been managed so that other patients didn’t suffer. I don’t envy the doctors and nurses who attended her.

After a couple hours of this I requested a new room, and a nurse went to look into it but, as so many times before, never returned.

I was still actively sick. Fumbling my way to the toilet over and over was no fun. But it got worse after nurses had carried stinking, soiled sheets past my bed and shaken them into the toilet which I then had to embrace. They rinsed sheets in the room’s tiny sink where I washed my hands. It was disgusting and unsanitary, and I was too sick to do anything about it. I wonder if there might have been another place they could’ve taken the dirty laundry.

It was a terrible feeling to be alone (without friends or family) in a dark hospital at night, ailing and powerless, without the medical attention I needed.

When my friend came to pick me up on Sunday morning, it was like escaping to freedom. Ten pounds lighter than when I arrived, nauseated and with blinding headache, I felt much more ill than I had the day of surgery. I wished I’d gone home then.

Thus ends my saga… I hope it is not a common one. I would go back to your ER team in a heartbeat (though I hope I never do), but chill at the prospect of returning as an inpatient.

This account leaves out details of my designer-bodied roommate the first night, a very nice woman a little younger than I who a few months ago had had reconstructive breast surgery after a mastectomy. We had long talks through the curtain. This visit she had just gotten her nipples put on. She chose the hue, size and shape; I believe they’re tattooed. And while she was at it she decided to have an elective hysterectomy (uterus and ovaries). She wanted to get rid of all her reproductive bits, even though there’s no correlation between cancer there and the BRCA2-related cancer she’d had.  Oh, and she’d also opted for a tummy tuck, and one other thing that I forget. She must have been a mass of slices.

She finally emerged from behind the curtain the next day, shortly before I was wheeled to surgery. What a work of art. I think she’d had every beauty operation known to humankind. She was perfectly crafted: face lifted, eyebrows and lips permanently shaped and colored. I didn’t see her breasticles but I’m sure they were pert and gravity-defying.

Remember how I accidentally packed a ghillie when I went to the ER? Well, Lulu topped that, and intentionally. She packed my tattoo arms. Slip them on and voilí : you’re tattooed from shoulders to wrists. Good for impressing your doctor. Sadly, I didn’t try them out.