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Thursday, October 16, 2014

Perhaps I am just old

During the day hospitals are very quiet. They do not come to life until about 9:00 PM when visiting hours sort of finish.

This is the signal for anyone who has an ache or a pain - or a grievance against society in general – to suddenly and contemporaneously raise hell with each other – their nurses and their doctors.

Crash carts hurtle up and down the halls – urgent calls are made to doctors and nurses – every alarm in the building goes off – blood covered zombies wander the halls – you get the picture.

The senior doctors - who have any sense at all - have left for the day so the task of ministering to the crippled and the lame and the insane falls to the hapless nurses and the small number of frazzled medical staff who are on duty.

One of their duties is to see me at least once per hour so they can take my vital signs – give me pills and change my numerous IV drips.

They have positioned the drips perfectly so that if I move my right arm  more than one inch an any direction then the alarm goes off. I work out how to reset this – but I am woken up every 10 minutes throughout each night.

By 6:00 AM I am totally exhausted and then the streams of doctors start arriving – each one asking the same questions and getting me to do the same tricks. This involves wiggling my toes and fingers and following flashlights and fingers around the sky.

I am initially distrustful of Dr Ermel who arrives on his own – unaccompanied by the usual pack - but he says he is a good guy and will be my infectious diseases man forever.

He is currently examining my cultures with great interest to see on which one he can focus his attention.  He is not as interesting as the surgeon who owns 15 bow ties – but appears to be very interested in my welfare.

Perhaps they are not all so young. Perhaps I am just so old.


6 comments:

  1. Old? You? Maybe, but lets not focus on that. You are constantly going new places, trying new recipes, finding new things. You are a New, an Explorer.

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  2. Okay, I know this will be a long drawn process to extract the correct amount of "whatever you call that ddrama shit" but what the hell exactly happened.

    Oh yea, are the headaches gone now?

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  3. I'm no fan of being in the hospital but at least in Vienna there was the 4pm strudel cart that came around...also, I bet you make a pretty funny hospital mate, even on the tough days ;) hope you're feeling better!

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  4. esb: Very true - and I am feeling younger every day.

    fmc: Still have the headaches. Do not really know what happened. The Doctor is mot sure what caused it but does not think it will reoccur.

    TNDW: I sure kept the nurses amused. We had no strudel cart but could order anything we wanted whenever we wanted it.

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  5. So pleased that you made it through - what a fright for Cate & the family, & what a painful experience for you.

    Life would not have been the same without the Badger Blog, and the man who writes it.

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