A FUNNY THING HAPPENED ON THE WAY TO MY STRESS TEST (3 page)

“Are you up there all alone”? asked Bronwyn.

“Yeah, I’m okay,” I replied.

“I’ll be right there…I’m already in a cab,” Bronwyn retorted.

Twenty minutes later in she strolled with her tinted glasses, a little box of pizza and two bottles of water. I was never so happy to see someone in my life. I didn’t really realize what I was going through all alone and I’ll always be grateful to her for doing this. She got my mind off things and we watched the clock together. I kept sneaking out into the hall to see if I could see anything. The CCU door kept swinging open and I would say, “How’s my husband? Brian Gari?”They just looked at me. Finally, the nurse practitioner came out and told me I must wait in the designated waiting room. I kept peeking out the door.

After she left, I put a chair between the doors so I could see if any action was happening. I went out again and saw a sweet looking nurse who told me they were just closing Brian up. Oh my God, he was okay? It had gone well? He was okay.

Suddenly, the elevator door opened and I saw his face; they were bagging him (a hand-held device used extensively in the operating room to ventilate an anaesthetised patient who is not breathing on his own). Bronwyn and I just stared at all the people surrounding his gurney as they maneuvered him to CCU. The table was surrounded by exhausted looking surgeons, nurses, physician’s assistants and anesthesiologists. I said “Is that my husband?”

They said, nicely, “we’ll let you inside in about 10 minutes…we just have to clean him up.”

I was so relieved; Bronwyn and I hugged. It seemed like hours went by and no one was coming to get me. Bronwyn and I went out into the hall. I nervously stood there as Bronwyn hit the button on the wall causing the doors to CCU to open, and she pushed me in. Thanks Bronwyn...good move, because there was my Brian.

He was lying motionless in the bed surrounded by countless monitors and IV fluids with names I had never seen before. He must have lost a lot of blood because there was a full liter transfusing him. I was dazed by the monitors, the beeps and the ventilator. As a nurse, I tried to take it all in, tried to figure it all out. I have never ever seen anything like this in all my years of nursing. It was incredibly frightening. I looked at Brian and he looked so peaceful. They told me he would not be breathing on his own for the entire night. That thought frightened me even more. I kissed his forehead; he felt warm and didn’t move. I just stared at everything as I felt Bronwyn’s hands on my shoulders pulling me away. I didn’t want to leave him, but she was right…it was time to let him sleep. It was so hard to leave. As I hesitantly walked away from him, a nice nurse gave me her number and said I could call any time of the night. I called when I got home, when I woke up in the middle of the night and when I awoke that morning. She was wonderful; each time she said he was sleeping. What a relief.

7.

Two Thumbs Up?

I looked at the big clock on the wall and it said 8:20. I was completely aware that it was the morning, what I had been through, where I was and what exactly was stuffed down my throat. I tried not to panic. I must say the nurse (whoever she was) was right on the scene and knew what I needed. She told me she’d get the doctor and he’d be here within ten minutes. I knew I had to be patient and although ten minutes was seeming like hours, I also knew there would be relief very soon. I remember so little about this time, but I do know the doctor arrived right away and removed the tube from my throat.

I was assigned a nurse and I did not start off with a chip on my shoulder (actually that was about the only place there wasn’t something uncomfortable attached). I tried to begin with a good attitude toward my supposed caregivers. I was, however, in immediate agony in my back. What they don’t tell you after surgery is that if you’re flat on your back on a cold slab with your arms restrained for over four hours, you are going to have severe back pain. I was on morphine through an IV but it was not doing the trick. Some years earlier when I was hospitalized for herniated discs, they had me on morphine and it didn’t do much good then either. This nurse had no concept of what I was feeling. The only words she had for me were “on a scale of 1 to 10, where is your pain?” I described to her that it was my back, and all she kept saying was “on a scale of 1 to 10…” Arrogant does not accurately describe this witch (a friend asked me not to use the b-word). She also made it clear that I was going to go from the bed to a chair very shortly. I couldn’t even conceive of this movement given the amount of pain I was in. She was very quickly becoming ‘Nurse Ratched.’ (If you don’t know who I’m referring to, go rent “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.”) She asked me to come to the side of the bed and pull myself up and stand. I could barely move. She wasn’t about to hear that. She practically dragged me to my feet and I was in major pain. Forget the fact that my chest had been torn apart, my back was killing me. I got to my feet and almost collapsed into the chair where I stayed for the next seven hours. I couldn’t conceive of reaching the bed again.

Jeanne arrived a short time later to see me sitting in a chair. She thought it must have been a miraculous bit of progress rather than a major car crash. Jeanne kept me up to date on all the wonderful Facebook get well wishes I was getting. It was so touching. I responded by saying “I’d send photos but I look like hell and I sound like Walter Brennan.” I thanked everyone and also plugged my audiobook which I had just completed right before I landed in the hospital.

There was a TV in the room but no remote. Brilliant. What was I supposed to do? Jump up and change the channel while attached to an IV? They finally brought me a remote which didn’t work correctly. It was a Zenith remote for a Panasonic TV. They said people steal the remotes so this is all they have — one that couldn’t mute or change the channels. It did, however, turn it off, which is what I did with it most of the time. You can’t believe how bad television is until you’re stuck in the hospital. It’s all Jerry Springer all the time.

I finally got back onto the bed at around 5
PM.
It was sheer torture and Nurse Ratched wasn’t helping. She went into her “on a scale of ” routine, and Jeanne witnessed it this time. She asked the doctor on duty if my pain medication could be switched to Dilaudid. Ratched changed it over at which time I got immediate relief…three hours worth! Jeanne knew from whence she spoke. I felt the medication drip into my IV and splash down the inside of my back in a beautiful calming cascade. I finally could cope with the aftermath of this operation…well, at least this part.

The bed was horrendous as well. I am fairly tall and these beds must have been designed by midgets. Not only did my feet go over the end of the bed, but they ended up resting on the steel end railing hurting my already sore bones. They also have buttons to raise it up and down but there is no way to reach the buttons from the angle one is placed in. To move one’s arm to get at the inside buttons, you have to stretch your arm which is pulling on your painful chest. I couldn’t do anything. AND to top it off, the button for the nurse was also dangling over the side so I could barely reach that as well!

Nurse Ratched went off duty (thank God) and was replaced by yet another nice male nurse. (Okay, would I like Heather Locklear as my nurse? Of course, but they don’t exist so I’d rather a male nurse anyway if they end up being kinder than Ratched.) This guy was so understanding especially when he told me what I could expect for the next eight hours when I wanted more than anything to sleep. They were going to wake me almost every hour all night long. What is it about these hospitals and not allowing you to sleep? First of all, I was hooked up to a system where they can monitor you constantly but they still wanted to take your temperature, your blood pressure, your sugar, give you pills, feed you (and it was a boring liquid diet at this point anyway) AND even a sponge bath. I asked the nurse when they planned to do that. He said at around 4
AM.
Well I hated to disappoint him, but I explained I had taken a shower the day before and I would clean myself so there was no need for the wake up bath. He allowed me that pass and we worked out a little combination of some of the other interruptions. He was a gem.

As I tried to sleep, I was awakened every ten minutes by a loud crash. It seems that even though I had a plastic garbage can in my room, the room next door had a steel one creating a huge clang every time the nurses tossed out an empty can of soda. And if that wasn’t enough, at about 8:30 one of the male nurses ran into some visitors he knew and decided to have a party-right outside my room. They were laughing and cajoling and wouldn’t get the hell out of there. I finally called a nurse and said this noise is insane. I mean isn’t this the time we’re supposed to rest? It’s bad enough that they will be waking you up every hour, but the few moments you can actually sleep are disturbed by a frat party.

My male nurse came back in to check my vitals and I impulsively asked a very strange question. I had been plagued by a vision in my mind of having a weird invasion of a very intimate part of my body during the operation. It’s the only thing I remember from the operation. I blurted it out. “Is there any chance that some fingers might have been shoved up my…well you know…during the operation?” He very calmly replied, “you know I think that may have happened. I believe they insert two Tylenol up there to keep you from getting a fever or infection or something like that.” Ah…so I wasn’t crazy or having sexual fantasies. No one gets away with sticking fingers up my ass even if I am under major sedation!

8.

Fall Risk In Springtime

I woke up (if you can call it that after being wakened constantly for either tests or just plain noise) to Nurse Ratched’s return. She arrived with all my pills including laxatives, which are a staple (no pun intended) after an operation. Of course she wanted to know if they were working. I explained it will happen when it happens. Her response was “Oh no. I assure you you will poop before you leave here.” I said “Oh no. I will go when I’m ready.” She responded with some kind of threat that they will seek further methods if it doesn’t happen. It kind of felt like Nazi Germany. It’s a fact that pain killers like Percocet will really screw up your system so I tried to stay away from that drug. (By the way, I never did ‘go’ while in the hospital. I was on liquids most of the time.)

Speaking of liquids, there is another fun part of this operation. Somewhere during the prep (Thank God I don’t remember), they shove a tube up your pee pee. Oh yes. They don’t want you peeing during the operation so they insert a catheter to let you drain without using the bathroom. This is very convenient…for a while. When Jeanne arrived, she thought it might be nice for me to see her naked across the room out of eye’s view of the staff. I yelled “Nooooooooo!” My friend had told me a story about what happened to him when he had a catheter in him and suddenly got an erection. He was in total agony, so I convinced Jeanne that despite her good intentions, I was not in a good place for fun. Later on, I told Ratchet it felt a little like it was leaking so she felt she had to examine it. With my dignity out the window, she literally banged it around a little and then left the room. What she didn’t tell me was she went to consult with the doctor, who said it was okay to remove it. She came back in, and without any anesthesia, she YANKED the unit right out of my unit! I can’t begin to tell you (unless you’ve had this procedure) how painful this is. She gave me no clue that this was what was going to happen. Chalk up one more for the gentle bedside manner of Nurse Ratchet. I was still attached to an IV which continuously got tangled in the phone cord and nurse’s buzzer. They gave me a bottle to pee in and told me of this toilet near the bed (which I could never lean over to even see). Again, this bottle may seem like a convenience at the onset, but believe me, it is anything but convenient. It is so difficult to do something sideways that you are used to doing straight out (if you get my drift — again, no pun intended). Eventually, I decided I would get up and use the bathroom dragging all these wires with me. They had put a wristband on me saying I was a “fall risk,” but I laughed, believing that was like old people saying ‘I’ve fallen & I can’t get up!’