Glentress Introduces Me to the NHS - 29/4/2007 - 4/5/2007
Ninety-five percent of the day at Glentress was fantastic. Great weather, great trail conditions, great company. Less than 100m from the car, on the last bump of the last run of the day, my day went very wrong. I remember three snippets before the walk to the ambulance. I hit the last bump with what retrospect tells me was too much speed. The back tyre came up behind me and I remember thinking oh crap this is going to hurt. The next bit I remember is being on the ground and sort of flailing trying to find air, like I had the wind knocked out of me. Brian said that wasn't exactly true. Yes, I was trying to find air, but I wasn't moving really at all. I prefer my memory. The next bit I remember is sitting up with Bram and being angry that I couldn't remember what happened. I don't like not remembering. I don't like losing time. I think my companions were a bit surprised by my anger. I told my dad about it later and he laughed, thinking it a very Christine moment. Somewhere in between the not flailing and sitting up with Bram, an A&E doc who happened to be at Glentress examined me and said it was ok to let me sit up. I don't remember him at all. My next memory is the totter to the ambulance, something I was very determined to do because somewhere in my rattled head, getting up and walking meant I was ok.
Brian made the journey in the great white chariot with me. No lights or sirens this time, as the driver was going as slow as he could within reason, much slower than I'm sure the rest of the traffic wanted to travel. I said no to morphine (no needles, thanks) and couldn't breathe deep enough for the nitrous to do its thing, so the drive was as bad as it could be. For the totter to the ambulance, my chest hurt and it hurt to breathe deeply. Once in the gurney and driving, my back hurt, too. They had me breathing enriched air to make up for my shallow breathing and help bring me back toward 100% coherence. I felt nauseous, so I looked out the window as much as I could to help distract myself.
Once at Edinburgh's Royal Infirmary, the paramedics helped me totter from the gurney to a wheelchair. They chose to class my injury as cardio thoracic in nature so that I would spend less time waiting for treatment. Once in the hospital, I was put in an exam room pretty quickly and onto yet another gurney. They did chest x-rays, confirmed a fractured sternum and decided to keep me overnight for observation. They also gave me a lot of drugs. Callum and Bram came to see me briefly and Brian asked if there was anything from home that I wanted. They set off and shortly afterward, I was taken to the cardio thoracic high dependency ward.
A few hours later, Brian came back to see me and got the list of people who needed to hear from me. I'm not sure how much more time he spent with me. I drifted in and out of drug-induced sleep. Brian left me with an Oor Wullie and the Broons anthology, which was absolutely perfect for being strung out on pain killers. If I fell asleep in the middle of a comic, I had to start over at the top of the page instead of back several pages or chapters.
The next morning, I had nurses hovering and eventually a flock of doctors came to see me. I was the outlier of the high dependency ward, not really a cardiac injury as the blood tests and the ECGs were showing. They let me out of bed to a chair, but that adventure ended when I tried to faint on my physiotherapist. It also ended my moratorium on needles -- I got stabbed with an IV to help bring me back toward coherence. The fainting spell brought back the doctors. Turns out one of them had done the same sort of thing to himself kiteboarding the year before. I found him oddly comforting. I was still complaining of back pain, so he and another doctor had asked me a bit more about the accident and then got me sent away for more x-rays. Those came back showing three fractures, though not clear enough to say whether or not the fractures were stable. One of the less socially versed of consultants came back to see me and told me I would be confined to my bed completely until they did a CT scan to assess the fractures better. Then she left, with me a bit of a mess for Brian and the nurses to comfort. The drugs continued, which meant every few hours, I would take a tramadol departure into LaLaLand.
Word of my predicament spread quickly, so I had a steady stream of visitors starting sometime on Monday. Drugs and LaLaLand meant my already dubious sense of time was more stretched. Friends from work and canoeing came to see me. I apologised to Masha for hopefully not scaring her too much. My supervisors came at the end of their work day. Jason told me I was fired. Then they both laughed. Somewhere in that conversation, my next doping came along, so I told them they had half an hour more before I got really stupid again. My parents phoned, too, and as much as I tried, there was no convincing Mom to not get on a plane. The question was simply Tuesday or Wednesday. The crazy kiteboarding doctor came back to see me, too, and gave me a more thorough description of his injuries and recovery. He said he put himself in hospital last July and was out snowboarding in January. His perspective was comforting.
Friends brought me music, toys and more books. Brian brought me more food so that I wouldn't starve on hospital food that I couldn't eat. Sadly, I didn't get to see Alana to thank her for the teddy bear. I did get to thank my work friends for their teddy bear. The two bears were great company for most of my time there, although, sadly, they were not allowed CT scans.
So Tuesday came around and by then I knew most of the nurses in my section of the ward. Two of them accompanied me to the CT scan and back to the ward. Because of the potential severity of the injury they had to log roll and slide me onto a gurney for transport. They have special porters to wheel the gurneys through the hospital. I asked mine if he would take me outside on his way back to the ward. He laughed and rolled his eyes.
About an hour after I got back to the ward and was deposited back into my bed, Rebecca, my primary day nurse convinced me to try eating. She cut up a plain omelette and doused it in tomatoes and cheese. She set it on my chest below the wounded sternum, so that I could reach everything easily enough. After she left to tend to other things, one of the doctors who I recognised from the morning flock came over to tell me my fractures were unstable, I would have to lie completely flat in the bed and an orthopaedist would be around to see me. He popped the bed down flat and left me there, plate on my chest, omelet bits spilling over, sobbing. That's how Rebecca found me again. She got the worst of it cleaned up and me slightly calmed down. Brian arrived a few minutes later and helped get me more calm and ready to cope with the diagnosis. A little while later, the orthopaedist came by to tell us that the fractures were all stable and I would be moved to the orthopaedics ward and they would start getting me mobile again. So basically, that first doctor completely misread my report. Fun.
I spent one more night in the high dependency ward awaiting transfer. More friends came to see me and I got to pass on some good news to the parents. Mom was still coming, but she would take the Wednesday flight instead of the Tuesday flight. That night, I got rolled to prevent bedsores. At Rebecca's insistence, they had cut back on my drugs, so aside from a brief bout with nausea, I got some restful sleep.
Wednesday's fun was transferring wards. I got moved to the orthopaedics ward, which was nearly impossible to find according to everyone who came to visit. More people were allowed to visit, but hours were slightly more controlled than in the other ward. One nurse chased Amy away because she was 10 minutes early for the first visiting hours. My first room had me in with a lady very obviously and very vocally suffering from dementia. My other roommate and I were happy when she was relocated, but annoyed it took two hours of the poor woman wailing for the staff to respond. Callum stopped by to visit at the same time as I was moved to a new room. The friendly, but not completely competent nurse crashed my bed into the wall three times along the way and then crashed my night stand into the bed for good measure. Great fun for a spinal injury.
Moving and more visitors were the only forms of excitement that I was allowed for Wednesday. I wanted out of bed, but knew that I would be a heap of Christine on the floor if I tried to get up without help. Thursday would arrive soon enough.
Mom arrived Thursday morning and thanks to Bram, made it to the hospital fairly quickly. She was sleep-deprived, caffeinated and wound up with anxiety, but it was good to have her there. Equally good, within an hour or two of her arriving, my first session with the physiotherapists had me out of bed and into a chair relatively quickly, with a walk with the zimmer frame set for the afternoon. At least Mom's first sights of her wounded daughter were positive, unlike what she could have witnessed in previous days. I had to remind her a few times that my bed was not a table to put stuff on. She added to the collection of toys and sat with me through my noble effort at lunch before heading off to my flat for a shower and possibly a nap. Thankfully, Brian had kept up my supply of food, including fruit and gloop (soy yogurts and Mullerice), because the hospital cuisine lived up to its stereotype. My post-lunch zimmer was good and my status was upgraded to allow me to zimmer with supervision. I was unplugged soon after and very much appreciated the independence. I spent some more time in the chair and the nice nurse who took my food tray away put the zimmer frame in the opposite corner of the room. I was in my chair, but trapped. Eventually, I had to page someone to help me totter back to bed.
Brian came back in the evening, just before Mom got back slightly more rested but still wired. More friends came to see me. I got to share zimmering adventures. I was utterly exhausted. Thankfully Mom talked enough for everybody so they didn't really notice my eyes rolling back and other signs of my struggle against sleep. After everybody else left, I showed Mom and Brian my zimmer frame skills as I got to the bathroom and back all by myself. They had to help me with shoes, though, as I hadn't figured out how to reach that far comfortably.
Friday rolled around. The new flock of doctors came to see me again and one of the consultants said he thought I would be getting home sometime on the weekend. I was happy to hear that. I expected more fun with the zimmer frame, but Stephanie, my physiotherapist, proceeded directly to having me walk on my own. I was out for a good twenty minutes, walking/tottering slowly down the hallway as well as up and down some stairs. I asked if I could go outside and she said I could go home! Since Brian had offered for me to stay with him and both he and Mom were around enough to keep me out of trouble, they were ready to send me home. Brian's is a ground floor flat with only a handful of steps (and conveniently misremembered handrails). The consultant's original idea was me going home to my third floor flat, so by the time my dad phoned, I could tell him the good news.
The chart above my head declared me independent, so I tottered whenever I could. I told Stephanie she unleashed a monster. Brian was in Glasgow for the day, so unfortunately, the journey home would have to wait until the evening. One more day of hospital ambiance wouldn't be so bad. After one more good bump in the arm, I was finally freed of the IV stint by my very apologetic nurse. We tested the anti-nausea drug in pill form and found that far more agreeable than the IV injection that made me more nauseous instead of less. Then the nurse wanted to kick me out of the ward completely. They had a big influx of new people and needed the bed. She suggested we could wait for Brian in the discharge lounge and then stopped to think for a few moments more. Spinal injury. Four hours in hard plastic chairs. Great plan. She left to make other arrangements so I could stay where I was.
My other two roommates left and two new women closer to my age were wheeled in. The woman next to me had a few spinal fractures from being chucked off a horse. I'm not sure why the other lady was there. She had some friends with her constantly and was wheeled out of the room as soon as the nurses left. I used my newfound independence to totter around the ward some more, including a totter down the hall to vend the other spinal fracture lady a TV card.
Brian arrived just about when he expected, a little after 6pm. I got to show off my independent status, but sadly, he agreed with Mom that I shouldn't walk from the ward to the car because it was quite far. Charlie from the kayak club arrived a few moments before so he got roped into helping lug all of my stuff and me to the car. The three of them convinced me that a wheelchair ride to the front door was the best idea. My totter out the door was short, but the freedom felt good.
Labels: glentress, mountain bike
posted by christine @ 11:11
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