Nov 14th, 2010 – Another Day in Room S8-42

Finally the morning shift began, and with some familiar faces of nurses coming to check up on the patients.  Some of the nurses remembered me, as was just there a week ago, but then I’m back again!  I had to have an oxygen tube hooked up to my nose to elevate the needed oxygen my body needed.

If you’ve never had oxygen “pumped” into your system, it actually feels quite uncomfortable, and the “smell” of that pure oxygen is like breathing in a chemical of some kind… perhaps like an ozone smell?… I don’t know, it’s a bit hard to describe, but once you smell this, you remember it forever.

Anyway, here I was still being poked and prodded with medical equipment, and of course had the long tube coming out of my belly again…and I can’t really move much, for sure.

So the morning “wash-down” would soon begin, as an orderly would pass by with a set of towels, wash cloths, wash basin and a clean hospital gown to get cleaned up for the day.  But, shaving and a shower are totally not feasible with all the tubes and equipment hooked to you.  Just changing a hospital gown, gets pretty tricky with all the IV tubes still connected… so, it was a bit insane just doing some of the little things that normally would not be an issue!

The morning routine would always involve a blood sample test, a weigh in, a regular blood pressure and temperature checks and the distribution of your medication for the day.

I still had those 50 staples (or more, I couldn’t count them!)… holding my incision, they are really uncomfortable too… but I knew that I was soon due to have them removed! On my initial “release papers” I was to have a CLSC nurse stop by my house on Nov. 15^th to do the procedure of removing all those staples!

However, since I was back in the hospital, I was told that I’d have them removed in a couple of days, by one of the nurses on duty.  Something to look forward to I guess?… although it’s always good to have some of those “things” removed (or disconnected) after all… it just tells you that “you’re getting better”! 🙂

The afternoon soon came, and I was trying to catch up on some sleep?… then my neighbor’s wife had come for a visit!  And she was quite the character as I soon found out! She too had some health difficulty, as she was pushing a “rolling” walker  with some kind of large handbag attached… and then as she came in to see her husband “Charlie”  the  rather loud conversation would begin!

The conversation was mostly about things like:  “did you sleep last night”?… “did you take your medication”, or “what did you eat this morning”?… “so and so wants to come and see you”… “have you heard when you’re supposed to have your operation”?   And the way she would speak is like “slow motion” and very “mother” like towards him.

Well, not so bad if the conversation was some quiet chatting, but oh no!.. it was rather quite loud!

Charlie is elderly and had trouble hearing, so he wore a hearing aid, when he remembered to “put it on” though!  Their conversation would “go on and on” about small details and some little chit-chat… but the real problem that started to get quite annoying was the amount of times everything said had to be repeated over and over! As Charlie couldn’t hear well, and even with the hearing aid turn up to full level!  Often the questions had to be repeated to him… either the nurses, an orderly, a family member, or some visitor.

Also, Charlie’s voice sounded exactly like Homer Simpson’s father… you know, the grandfather on the Simpson’s show? I never thought I’d hear someone actually speak like that, with the “old-man – shaky” voice, and I can “impersonate” that voice too! … but I think you get the idea?

So, I just needed to tolerate all those “little conversations” for the remainder of my stay… regardless.  Sometimes I just found them totally hilarious, and other times (especially when I was over-tired)… well, those conversations would just get totally annoying, as they would often end-up arguing over small concerns, such as a phone call, or where the electric shaver disappeared to…

The remainder of the day, I would try to read something, or watch TV… there was a small LCD screen TV that you can rent by the day… it helped pass the time while you were pretty much strapped to your bed with all the IV connections etc.

Anyway, tomorrow would be Monday, back to some of the regular staff and perhaps some new visitors too!

Thanks for reading… and I will update with some more stories soon 🙂