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Roger Rabbits with |
Christmas Day 1976 and Santa delivered me an agonising pain in the gut. And the up-chuck, the full living colour nausea, to make it a totally festive occasion.
“Our finest gifts we bring, Pa rum pum, pum, pum…”
Yes, Happy Christmas! Thanks Santa!
“Me and a wretchedly sore abdomen, Pa rum pum, pum, pum…”
Got myself to the doors of the hospital and passed out. But the “hands of God” were standing by with a scalpel and a few hours later I woke minus a body part – an angry appendix.
Before I didn’t have an appendix, I didn’t know where it lived, or how it paid the rent. Who does? And before I could grow an understanding and emotional attachment, it had been whipped out. Gone!
My physician, Dr Google, has since explained that the appendix is dispensable but not useless. It’s a repository for nice and friendly gut bacteria, topping up the digestive system after illness or infection.
All this organ talk while comparing hospital experiences, and appendectomy scars, with an acquaintance called Patient 1, an elegant and mature one – age being relevant because appendicitis is typically, but not exclusively, a young person’s gig. There was no intimate ‘revealing’ of appendectomy scars. Uh-huh! She was as discreet as the non-invasive, laparoscopic appendectomy procedure itself. And my 30cm scar – well that had disappeared beneath the folds of an excessive lifestyle yonks ago.
A transplant…
The surgeon who performed Patient 1’s appendectomy, also, unwittingly, performed a transplant – an attitude transplant. “Whenever I heard of doctors and nurses threatening industrial action, it would get my back up. They have special responsibility – the safety and welfare of patients must come first.”
But while a guest of our hospital system, Patient 1 had an epiphany.
“I have new respects for our doctors and nurses. They’re special, angels. I watched them perform wonders in extraordinarily difficult and challenging circumstances.” It was an “eye-opening” experience.
It was 3am when she and her raging appendix were wheeled into the Emergency Department recently.
“Absolute pandemonium,” she said. “Children yelling and crying, patients moaning and groaning, visitors talking over each other, people on speaker phone, kids on play stations.”
And all the time doctors and nurses dashing between rooms, beds and patients, doing their good work. But too much work and not enough people doing it according to Patient 1. Not enough beds, not enough space, patients cooped in corridors and being treated in the back of ambulances because, she was told, there was no room at the inn.
“They held it together, but I don’t know how?” And staff candidly shared their worries about the pressure of long hours, burn-out and the problems that could come with tiredness in the high stakes industry.
At ease, in her time
They say they answered the call to serve and care for others, but now there’s job dissatisfaction.
Interminable waiting would probably define Patient 1’s experience. “Waiting for whatever and whoever.” Test results, scans, theatres – everything takes a long time.”
After one long wait, she was next in line for surgery. But she got bumped for a priority case and went into a holding pattern for five hours. “So a nurse sat with me for a very long chat. She put me right at ease. It was her time; she didn’t have to be there for me.”
Not so wonderful, perhaps, was her ‘uni-ward’ experience – just a flimsy curtain separating her from a bloke next door. It was probably the first time women in that ward had shared a bedroom with a man other than their husbands. “He coughed, wheezed and farted all night!” Perhaps he was in for surgery for those behaviours?
Corned beef and mustard sauce was on the menu. At $24/kg in the supermarket – it might be worth sacrificing an unessential organ for hospital corned beef. Patient 1 ordered ice cream and jelly. Only the jelly arrived. A hospital had run out of ice cream – what? Ice cream must be up there with sutures and surgical gloves on a hospital’s essentials shopping list.
The supply lines of ice cream might open up when Health Minister Simeon Brown’’s $100 million godsend for hospitals filters through.
Just a plaster
Patient 1 scoffs. “That just a sticking plaster at best. That could be spent doing up just one hospital, and hiring the people required.”
Patient 1 thought she had scored a premium window bed. “A view, but only of another hospital building with sick people.” Didn’t assist the healing.
By comparison, I enjoyed a corporate box at Greenlane Hospital – looking down from my bed at cricket on picturesque Cornwall Park. “Cucumber sandwiches, please Nurse?”
My deluxe package included bed baths, but no such decadence for Patient 1. A friend had to assist her from her budget bed to the shower. “Visitors aren’t visitors,” she reckons. “They’re another set of hands.”
There was a memorable ‘Lady with a Lamp’ moment when, in the dead of night, a nurse with small torch, guided her through the ward past darkened, snoring, wheezing shapes, and down the corridor to the loo. “Very Florence Nightingale. We should look after those people so they can look after us.””
Patient 1’s hospital lesson is to be a patient understanding patient. And love your appendix.