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2007 - June 24th - Sunday

POSTOPERATIVE DAY FIVE
 
At 3.00am JH vaguely ‘surfaced’ and rung her bell - because she thought she heard Hussein mention ‘Jeanette’, outside the curtains but this was not so; but JH got up at 3.30am and measured her urine, and again at 6.30am - when she woke up feeling ‘normal’, and also astonished that she had slept so long!  JH relaxed in bed but, at about 7.45am the lady in bed No 18 got more and more distressed to the point of being hysterical and incoherent; this poor lady kept sobbing-out that she realised she was waking everyone else up; eventually – after receiving kind firmness from the Nurses – she became more tranquil, but JH was not tranquil and could have wept with her.  A nurse came round to do everyone’s B/P – and called JH ‘Mrs’; JH said ‘not Mrs’ please but ‘Jeanette’, and added that she hated men: the Nurse doing Lilian’s blood pressure, and Lilian, were laughing at this little scenario.  JH’s B/P was high and, as before, it was checked with her standing up: apparently it was still high – but apparently not sufficiently alarming to muster the Clinicians (and probably just an abreaction to being called ‘Mrs). And then who should arrive but the male Phlebotomist to suck JH’s blood: JH felt sure he had not overheard the previous repartee. And a gentleman he was too:- he congratulated JH on donating a kidney to Kathy, and asked how we were related; JH explained . . . and went on to explain all about her nostalgic trips to Greenwich; JH received a cheerful smile. 


 

JH observes, yet again, that it is impossible to maintain complete privacy and confidentially in an acute hospital ward, and that pre-occupation with one’s own sickness precluded taking too nosey an interest in other people’s distresses.  However, as ever, JH people-watched: Lilian was visited by the Orthopaedic Consultant and his Registrar; they talked about Lilian having acquired osteomyelitis in her clavicle – the infection having tracked-down an intra-vascular line previously - however, now she was receiving intravenous antibiotics which would eliminate the osteomyelitis in time.

On coming out of the loo (again) JH bent to pick up some rubbish on the floor in the corridor – and her head clashed with a passing Nurse’s head with the same idea!  There was a discussion about JH being able to bend – providing she bent her knees – and the Nurse asked JH how tall she was to which the answer was 5’ 7”, but that she had been 5’ 10” and had shrunk; the Nurse said she was 4’ 11”, and she doubted that she would grow any taller: JH said that we don’t need Giants to Nurse us, as long as we get good Nursing – which we do.  Just before she left, Lily told JH that she had been told that JH did not need to measure her urine (so JH wondered if this instruction came from Hussein who must have seen JH toddling to and fro with a jug; furthermore JH added some ‘pertinent’ written remarks to the beginning and end of her fluid balance sheet – were they ever read, in particular by the scrutinizing Professor?).  Lily said – with her delightful white smile beaming from her very black face – that she would be on tonight: somehow JH and Lily entered into a conversation about how much could be achieved in personal communication by just smiling at people – which JH appreciated receiving herself from Lily and all the black faces around her – be they smiles emanating from the Nurses, or the patients - whose smiling white eyes were sometimes full of tears.  And . . . bearing in mind that the blood-sucker’s smile, which radiated from a white face, was also much appreciated.  Lily then told JH about her meeting - the previous day on her way home - with a group of boys possibly and/or supposedly ‘up to no good’ outside the tube station: Lily smiled at them whilst they were larking about, and one of the lads said ‘you’re the first person who has smiled at us today’!

The mid morning cup of tea did arrive at 11.00am - and a packet of digestive biscuits which JH kept till later as Breakfast had been rather late (however it was, after all, Sunday morning).  Grace was rather boisterous: she kept importuning Sister with a request for a bowl of water to wash with – but she was ‘ignored’; Grace – nothing daunted – shuffled over to Sister, who was attending to the sad hysterical lady, and asked again; Grace was told to wait, but she loudly declared that she had already waited an hour!  At this point JH threw down her pen and rose up: Grace looked most surprised at JH, when JH offered to be of help; furthermore she asked JH (and the whole Ward) if JH had seen Sister ignore her - and was it because of the bruises on her face (which apparently she had acquired during a fall, and were not port-wine-stain birth marks); JH countered that she thought that Grace was sometimes disregarded because of her boisterous personality – which Grace repeated with astonishment, or was it bemusement!

JH fetched Grace a bowl of water, and some wipes (offered off bed No 16’s table) and fetched two towels – as JH needed a dry one herself as she had dropped hers into her washing water yesterday; she then squirted some antiseptic washing lotion into the bowl of water, and drew the curtains around Grace’s bed (and, upon emerging, was aware of a few smiles emanating from the other patients).  JH then had a stand-up wash herself, and washed her hair.  JH had pinned her wet towel out on the balcony rail: it was the good-English-speaking lady who spotted the rain; JH retrieved her rather wet towel from the balcony after the worst of the torrent.  JH spotted a dry gardener clearing up the rubbish in the garden below the balcony, and below the resplendent tree. 

JH received a totally unexpected but much appreciated word of thanks from Sister for ‘helping out’. [This word was received after JH had observed Sister (who was wearing a mask) actually retching over the smell emanating from a bedpan full of excrement which sister was endeavouring to put as quickly as possible into the bedpan washer in the sluice.  Sister had undoubtedly realised that JH had witnessed her struggle to not vomit, and realised that JH would have had the same experience herself when Nursing, and being so desperately anxious to not exhibit her revulsion – not only to the contents of bedpans, but to the ordure pouring from fungating cancerous lesions - in front of really ill patients.]

Kathy had been told that she would be moving into either bed No 24, or No 16 in the Ward during the day; JH told K that, although bed No 16 was at the opposite end of the Ward to JH’s bed, it was by a window.  Kathy said that she hoped to have the bed by the window, after she had had her urinary catheter out: and then it all happened!  At lunchtime JH found herself sat next to Kathy eating ‘furry’ potatoes, broccoli, and pork – not to mention the gravy; Kathy could not eat her lunch with relish, and agreed with JH’s report about the potatoes, ie they were reheated and kept hot for rather a long time, so the texture had been altered - becoming rather ‘distasteful’ to the palate.  Kathy jumped up suddenly as she felt she was peeing - although she had been fixed-up with incontinence pads galore - Oh dear!  But this was to be expected after not producing urine - to pass - for at least the past 2 years.  Kathy told JH that she would not be discharged on Monday (after JH had left at lunchtime) because she had been told she needed to ‘lose more fluid’: she was doing just that - and then rushed off saying ‘I’m doing it again!’  JH expostulated to Kathy – who should not be grumbling about having to rush to the loo after receiving JH’s kidney, to which Kathy answered ‘It’s a gift!’ and then smugly added ‘It’s mine now!’ and JH heard the unspoken ‘So There!’.  Both Kathy and JH tacitly understood between ourselves that we should ‘ration’ our time spent in companionship: so now and then each of us ‘did something else instead’ as time out from each other (and so that JH did not obstruct the passage to the loo). 

Dr Chan came round with the Duty Registrar, so JH asked him who he was ‘. . . and was he an SHO?’: JH should have known better, as Dr Chan is one of the eight Consultant Nephrologists at the RLH!  So JH turned round to Kathy (who is always saying how good JH was with regards to ‘her way with words’) to say ‘You see, even I can say the wrong thing at times.’.  Furthermore, to make amends, JH made a feint to get up and curtsey to Dr Chan who – although laughing – exclaimed ‘Oh you’ll have to do it much lower than that!’ 

Lorraine, Colin, and the birthday boy, Myles, came to visit in the afternoon: Myles showed grandma his birthday presents, and the trophy, and medal, received at his party (from a professional Children’s Entertainer); JH asked Myles to draw a hippo, but this would have required too much concentration, so mum and dad did so instead – and produced very passable hippo portraits.  Suddenly . . . Myles had to be shooed out of the way as grandma made a dash for it!  Thereafter, JH and K sat with our backs to the drawn curtain by Kathy’s bed, but facing the window, so that Lorraine could take some photos of us both for submission to the Press, ie, The Echo in Essex - and JH gave Kathy the email address of Martin Freeman, the Herald Columnist in Plymouth.  JH went back to her bedside chair before the family left; she was aware that Myles came along to say goodbye – with a grown up who whispered to Myles that JH was resting, as she had her eyes closed!  




 
 
Was it JH or was it a nurse who finally removed Grace’s bowl of water after she had finished with it?  Be that as it may, Grace was ‘at any time’ still eager to importune a nurse to help her wash her hair:- this requirement was expressed to Gertrude, and JH, and . . . and . . ..  One Nurse ran away but JH can testify that she heard some sort of summons – like a bell or a call – being made to the Nurse, so the latter did not deliberately contrive to avoid Grace.  During the Robinson Family visit, JH asked Lorraine - who teaches all things to do with coiffeur - if she could offer to help Grace wash her hair, but Lorraine said she was not able to visit on the following day but, if mum was not being discharged, she would do so the day afterwards.  Kathy said that Grace ‘drove her mad’, but then she had met Grace on many previous occasions, and I am sure was not unkind enough to persuade Lorraine to forget all about JH’s suggestion.

The lady Surgical Registrar came round: JH had the usual conversations (those had with a patient due for discharge) about TTAs (to-take-away drugs), Doctor’s discharge letters, advice about arranging FU – but all these matters will be dealt with by the Medical Team and Nursing Staff in the morning. JH read her book about a sibling being conceived to match up with her elder sister’s tissue-type, with the expectation that younger sister would be expected to donate a kidney to her ailing older sister in due course – the title being My Sister’s Keeper, by Jodi Picoult. Before it got too late, JH did phone Pat and Norman Finnie: Pat answered the phone and was pleased to hear that JH was well; unfortunately Norman was still really struggling with all his health problems, but they continued to cope between themselves.  For supper JH had a ham and cucumber sandwich, and fruit.  An imposingly-tall gentleman wearing a black, round, rimless hat, and a long, white, ethnic tunic visited the elderly lady in the bed next to Kathy: Kathy and JH had observed that this lady was, perhaps, not quite ‘in the same world’ as us and seemed lonely and isolated amongst the hubbub of a busy ward; however JH and K did exchange smiles and the occasional word with this lady.  After actually spoon-feeding the elderly lady with the contents of a bowl, the imposing gentleman introduced himself as the lady’s grandson: in impeccable English he thanked us for being friendly neighbours towards grandma who was unable to express her thanks herself as she only spoke her own lingua franka.

When Moses came on duty in the evening, JH accosted him with her concerns about her bowels: JH was beginning to panic because Sister had said that the patient must have her bowels open before she goes home tomorrow – the period of non-action having now extended to at least 36 hours!  JH explained that she had been prescribed suppositories to be given to her at her own request, so Moses said he would bring some along for JH to ‘do it herself in her own way’.  At about 9.30pm, during the intervening wait for Moses to return with the said suppositories, Grace was heard to be talking – to another new neighbour - about ‘. . . Armstrong and Keen . . . Macintosh . . . bunches of flowers . . . lovely place . . . when I was in Germany . . . Sauerkraut’: in view of having a German brother-in-law and having infrequently visited Germany, JH almost went to talk to Grace, who undoubtedly sounded more informed about Germany than JH - but only ‘almost’.  A spectacular thunderstorm acted as a natural coolant, and was not too loud.  JH diffidently went and found Moses – who was no longer busy tending the patients opposite; JH found him busy with the medicine round in a side room; Moses graciously apologised for forgetting JH’s request – so she got her suppositories at about 11.00pm, retired to the disabled single private toilet, locked the door, inserted said suppositories, and lay on the floor of the toilet for about 20 minutes to aid their retention.  JH’s elongated reflection was to be seen in the shiny metal U-bend of the wash basin, until she got up and completed her performance satisfactorily.  As the night progressed JH was aware of the clicketty-clack of a busy pair of women’s shoes traversing the floor: when JH got up to PU she spotted the attractive blond young SHO as being the owner of the offending shoes; JH tentatively suggested that it was only in her day that the like’s of Night Sisters on the prowl walked about with squeaky shoes, and these ladies could not be asked to stop squeaking.  Miss SHO was full of apologies and said immediately that she had forgotten to bring her sneakers with her to change into: after that she tiptoed around the Ward – JH certainly does not advocate persons walking about a hospital ward barefoot, but a lot of patients seem to do so (but not in JH’s day), and JH also realises that she is so used to sleeping on her own in a double-glazed house, that she will hear noises in the night (when sleeping ‘elsewhere’) which would not disturb folks who live with other family members. 




 
 
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