The day before I was digging a hole for the spigot on the radio mast. Normally I am housebound and suffer enough chronic fatigue and other illness and disability to make using a mattock impossible. That day I ‘girded my loins’ and did it anyway. It was not going to be done if I didn’t do it myself. The next day, 22 Dec 2014, I paid for it with almost total impairment of my ability to walk. I could just dress myself after the pain relief kicked in if I gritted my teeth and fought.
The community worker arrived to take me to hospital and had to help me into the car. I wasn’t able to bend and support myself. We arrived at the door to the main entry of Gosford Hospital about 6:30 am. The ward didn’t open until 7:30 but when the community support team rang to organize things I was too tired to get a grip on times so I went with the first thing they said when I didn’t offer a time.
Hospitals are cool and peaceful in the early morning. The nurses in the wards were probably giving the meds. The morning shift and wardsmen were just arriving and preparing to take stock of the situation from the night staff. I shuffled slowly along the wide corridor and stopped every few yards to cope with the pain. Someone would place a hand on my arm each time and check to see if I was alright and headed in the correct direction. There was hardly anybody around but I didn’t stop once that someone didn’t check I was alright.
The ward I was going to is quite a small one inside the medical imaging area and it was closed for an hour yet. I was too sore to walk more than a few meters at a time and perched on a bed that was in the hall. That hurt too so I would perch and then walk a few meters and perch again. After about forty five minutes an elderly couple with a day bag clutched each other and stood by the door. I was too sore to talk and they were in that place where one of you sees the possibility of the coming death and the other struggles with the possibility of losing the loved one that has been the center of their world for maybe half a century or more. I wasn’t as worried about it as they were. I have developed quite a lot of trust in the ability of this section of the medical profession and the technology they wield. I guess I could have reassured them but they were too deep in the emotion and would have thought me forward or even rude. Besides I was a bit scared too!
You don’t know what they will find. I said I trusted them here and I do but the last time really hurt and my heart had proven to have been in awful shape. I thought there was a good chance this one would be a blip on the short walk down the plank to heart failure. Maybe it is. The plank is just longer than I had thought.
The door opened and we wandered into a small lounge with a desk. In a nook were four beds with the customary curtains. All was open now and the staff hustled about getting things running. The head nurse, the assistant and several nurses seamlessly became a machine. My processing began when a nurse handed me a gown. That was the first relief. In St Vincents Hospital in Sydney they had given us all immense paper panties. This morning the nurses did some kind of magic and despite all the pain and the concern and my ordinary disabilities I meshed into the machine that was them and felt SAFE! The other patient and their partner were at the desk so a sister came to me and we sat in some comfy armchairs and filled in the forms. She smiled and she laughed and joked a little. I had the feeling she was very controlled in keeping the mood low-key. I am sure that a burst of laughter would bite into the fear a patient is dealing with so they keep their voices low and their eyes are always meeting yours. They answer every question and their interrogation is the most gentle and yet complete I could imagine.
Two nurses helped me into bed. I couldn’t do it alone after all that digging. Every few minutes they asked my name and checked my blood pressure. They never left me alone. One nurse becomes ‘your’ nurse during this time and hovers about doing the chores to prepare you. She places the big cannula for the saline drips in your wrist. She washes your groin with antiseptic and then shaves you on both sides. They put the entry point for the probe there. It goes up your leg into your heart or it goes via the wrist if the groin is not suitable. I told them how painful it had been the last time I had this procedure and ‘my’ nurse drew the facts out. I explained that I have so many badly healed joints that a time spent on my back becomes very painful very quickly. In order not to shake the artery they use to enter the probe the patient has to lay absolutely still for quite a few hours after they leave the operating theater. It is tough for a person who is fit, bad for an elderly person, and several hours of agony that wouldn’t quit for me.
They added plastic tags to a wrist and ankle. I joked a little but I was in the grip of a slow, much practiced, dance and while they smiled the nurses moved through their preparation with quiet determination. Scarves came from somewhere. They were all different and colored and tied about the head to hold the hair in check and perhaps to aid in identifying who each person was when they they lost their identity in the scrubs. They became less likely to smile. A few of them had thousand yard stares and would not meet my eyes although the ones who were close seemed to get closer as though they wanted to fill the fear and doubt with their personal physical reassurance. People die here. I didn’t spend a lot of time thinking about that but the thought moved through my mind and made my bowels clench. Was there an injection? I cannot remember. A nurse who had been off in the distance for most of the morning so far came and asked me if could get from bed to operating table on my own. It told her I would get it done and she smiled. I guess she had heard the conversation about the pain last time and the fact that I was hurt and crippled was no secret in that gown. They told me they would use a hover-mattress. That made them smile and they joked about the mattress for a while. Apparently once you have been on it you don’t want to get off. They had all tried it and enjoyed it. I wouldn’t have to lift a finger. I felt safer and some of the dread that had been sneaking into the back of my mind withdrew. Despite the smiles I was struck by the way the whole group had gone from being carefree to being intense when the scarves went on. One of them even paced. I guess you cannot be this close to fighting for lives you may lose without consequences. They were like martial artists in the change rooms before a big tournament but more so. Soldiers before a battle? Lions before a hunt? The terms are not adequate.
They wheeled the bed up a hall somewhere and they gathered about me and traveled with me. They spilled into a room that was as technological as any place can be and yet the equipment was sparse. You need room to move about and to keep cables free. They chatted and checked that I had not forgotten my name. Their faces disappeared into masks and for some that seemed to free them of tension. People with great compassion in their eyes leaned over me and then moved away disappearing into the steady pattern of movement. I guess the intensity of the emotion began to blur reality. Someone told me they had heard how much pain I had been in last time and slid a syringe into the plastic where the cannula disappeared into my wrist. My mind back-flipped and the sharp edges of the room blurred and disappeared into a fog of masks and machines. “Bloody hell!” I said without much control at all. The nurse with the needle chuckled and made some comment about me feeling nothing from this point on.
They surrounded me and began pushing thick materiel under my body. “My” nurse appeared at the fringe of my vision. She seem to be smiling and told me I was about to get the ride of my life. Another nurse laughed and said she had ridden on it at training and would swap with me if I wanted because it was great fun. Laughter. There was a putt, putt, putt and the material slowly enveloped me as it filled with air and then lifted me. It felt really nice! I thought they would turn it off but that is not the way of the hover. The air continued to lift and cradle me as they slid the mattress and I effortlessly onto the operating table and let it deflate. One nurse got some very sharp items from a shelf by the wall and then some packs of something. I would have let rip with a nervous laugh but it seemed stuck in my neck. They covered me in a big green sheet. It covered my face at first and I surprised myself by feeling the urge to claw it off. It was removed though. They opened the sheet at my groin and slapped some tools on my belly. They asked if I minded them them keeping their tools there. I was too stoned to shake my head. I may have grunted.
The doctor appeared. I thought he entered the room and moved through the nurses like a boat through a flock of waterfowl. I think he had retinue. He was Dr Krull. He arrived by my left side and someone mirrored his presence on the right and faces with masks closed and then moved away and closed although that may have been the medication. He went to the packets and sharp objects and told me he was sorry but this would hurt. It did too! He took a long tube and shoved it into the artery in my groin and slid it from there into my heart. He had to push quite hard. The big camera came alive and the big screen to my left showed the probe and the radioactive iodine pumping in. He shoved and my body lurched and he hunted in my arteries. I could see it and I made comments and someone answered a few times. I think he left and got Dr Gunalingham for a second opinion. They conferred and told me there was another blocked artery but it was too small for a stent. I don’t know if they stented any other arteries. I guess they did because the angina stopped after that day. They discussed open heart surgery and my heart dropped. I will not survive that. Not in this little apartment and living all alone. They wrote out some prescriptions, slapped them on my hairy white chest and strode out of the room.
The nurses pumped up the mattress, slid me back onto the bed and I must have slept because I woke back in the ward some time later. I guess I didn’t move for much in the next three hours. People came and looked at my groin and checked my pulse and looked at my groin again. If the plug in the groin gives up you bleed out and it is very fragile for quite a while.
At 2pm they moved me to a lounge chair so someone could use the bed. I sat opposite an elderly woman who stared into space as though our untied hospital gowns and the blanket we held about ourselves were my fault. A nurse came over and began the long list of do’s and do not’s to engage in after a heart procedure. You must be careful. You must not lift anything. Is there anyone who can make you tea and meals? I said no and she looked worried. Is there someone to pick you up and take you home? I said yes and I will pop in to the shops and get some groceries afterwards. She looked horrified. The head nurse took over and when she said I couldn’t lift anything of ten pounds or more or walk or anything it became a bit of an argument. I had a twenty kilo bag of concrete still sitting in front of the fridge. The ramp for the scooter weighs ten kilos and I had to go shopping when I got home. I think she considered pulling her hair out. She told me she would not have let me undergo the procedure if I had told her about this. She seemed to think I had lied when I said that I could take it easy. It is all a matter of degrees though. I am taking it as easy as I can when I lift those things and go grocery shopping and cook my own meals and sleep on that horrid old sofa that has no level surfaces. Not taking easy includes limping the kilometer os so to get the broken scooter home. I sleep most of the time anyway. Either that or I spend all day fighting for the energy to get as far as taking it easy.
When she said she would not have let me have the procedure I thought for a moment. “So if I said that I lived a brutal and painful life in a shitty apartment on my own you would have withheld life saving surgery?” She blinked. “And you think that suspecting you would do that I should have told you what a shitty life I lead.” She blinked and left. I felt a bit guilty. I live an unusual life and it wasn’t her fault she didn’t think of all the angles.
They gathered me up again. Their little machine went into problem solving mode with the community support team that looks after me and they got someone to get me shopping and get me home although all the rest was up to me and when their shot of immensely strong meds wore off I hurt like crap all over again and every tiny thing I did and still do takes effort. all this time later that event still works on my energy levels.
For a little while and just days days before Christmas I was in the hands of determined and compassionate professionals and even through the blur of pain they were wonderful