Don’t you hate it when blog authors fade away and leave their readers hanging, and then come back online months later with a boring ream of excuses?
Yep. Me, too.
So no boring excuse spiels from me – but this is simply because I have the biggest mother of a sick note:
Dudes, I nearly died.
Seriously.
All right, for those of you
- thinking, “What the heck?! This is supposed to be a travel blog, not some spill-your-guts Dear Diary-style Pity Party”;
- not interested in/want to be spared the detail of what is a highly self-absorbed, blow-by-blow tale of medical woes; and/or
- who consider E.R., Grey’s Anatomy or similar to be torture rather than entertainment (my hand is up for this one),
I totally get it - please feel free to skip the verbose tome that follows before. Here, instead is the brief run down if you’re interested:
- On September 24th I had horrible abdominal pain and vomiting resulting in a midnight flit to Emergency
- The following afternoon I had a laparotomy for acute purulent peritonitis, at which point I was close to death
- The next morning a line put in my femoral artery in my groin caused three blood clots to become lodged in my right foot. The circulation was totally cut off = ischaemia. As a result I had 4 angiograms and thrombolysis over two days to dissolve the clots
- After the 4th angiogram I was admitted to Intensive Care with ongoing sepsis, respiratory failure and delirium. I was intubated and placed in an induced coma for 24 hours
- I spent a total of 4 days in Intensive Care, before graduating to Critical Care and finally to the Surgical Ward
- I was discharged on the 5th of October but was re-admitted within 18 hours with a relative minor but extremely painful lung infection, and severe exhaustion
- After 5 days in isolation, I was discharged “for good” on the 10th of October.
- Total days in hospital = 16. Total anticipated recovery time = 6-12 months
So there you have it. Feel free to resume your regular scheduled travel blog reading. Now that I’m home recouperating, I’ll be picking up the story of our Galapagos Adventure, so will soon be back with far more interesting tales, and many photos of sealions and tortoises.
It had been my original intention to write a more detailed, yet still reasonably succinct, summary of my hospital experience for the purposes of this blog. Unfortunately, with my perchant for verbosity and with the whole experience still being too fresh in my mind, said summary instead mutated into a personal catharsis of over 11,000 words. Whoa. And while it was therapeutic and all for me to put the whole thing in writing, I wouldn’t expect that anyone would want to read about my medical exploits in that kind of detail. At the same time, I’m really not yet well enough, nor inclined to invest gobs of time, in doing some hack editorial job on it.
Meh. It’s what happened, it was intense, and if you’re keen to know the full story of the total life-threatening experience, here it is below. With pictures.
OVERLY DETAILED VERSION
WARNING: GOREY MEDICAL DETAILS CONTAINED WITHIN
I’d not had the best run health-wise since returning from our big American trip. First Sean, and then I, succumbed to nasty mid-winter Hobart viruses. Having not been around in the early stages of winter, but rather sunning ourselves in Mexico, our systems were completely unprepared for the wave of winter pestilence we encountered on our return. We each had a fortnight off work, which was unprecedented for both of us. I ended up with bronchitis.
And then I got back on my feet, and promptly and sensibly headed off to Langkawi, Malaysia, for a long-planned week away with two of my lovely girl friends. But that’s a whole ‘nother blog post. Anyway, suffice to say I was fit and groovy, and spent every morning kicking serious pooty at the resort gym and feeling like a fitness superstar.
Just as well.
The week after our return, I got annihilated by yet ANOTHER horrible Hobart virus (this winter has been particularly shocking for bugs, lucky us). Back to the GP for something like the 5th time in a month, only to be told this bug is nas-tay and that I needed to stay home for the next week at least, at risk of relapse and spreading pestilence. Accordingly I lay low at home, but dudes, I was totally OVER myself.
All this illness was completely unrelated to what happened next, but it gives you some notion as to why blogging was not at the top of the spare-time activity list from July to September 2011.
Fast forward to 4am on the morning of Saturday, September 24, I awoke with severe abdominal pain and tightness, which proceeded to hideous nausea and a charming bout of dry retching. As this was so severe, and so out of character for me (I can probably count on one hand the number of times I’ve actually vomited since I was 5 years old), Sean and I did something I’ve never before done: we went to the Emergency Department of Hobart Private Hospital.
On staggering in I was confronted with the news that a $170, non-Medicare-refundable admission fee was payable for the privilege of throwing oneself on the mercy of the Emergency medicos under the auspices of the Private system. I started feeling more cynical and – much how the car behaves perfectly once you get it to a mechanic - less unwell. The nice medic on duty said we should hang around anyway – free of charge – in the waiting room for 15 minutes to see if I got worse, but when I found myself falling asleep with my head in Sean’s lap, I figured I couldn’t be too ill, so we pulled the pin and came home.
I decided I’d check in with my doctor when my clinic opened at 8am. I then had to wait for close to an hour before they consulted my doctor and called me back, which I spent lying on the floor in intense pain, silently pounding the carpet with my fists and telepathically pleading with them to call me back. When they did, the mood was one of relative lack of concern and the advice was anticlimactic: manage the pain with codeine and see where that got me. All righty, then.
So a day spent in bed in the kindly arms of strong painkillers and I was feeling okay, if not extremely tight and full in the tummy. Later in the evening, Sean, bless his heart, brought me in a delightful meal of tuna mornay and vegetables that he’d concocted himself especially to try to tempt my appetite. Unfortunately, I was seriously Not Hungry, but I did my best to chow down for his sake. Tip for the unwary: Tuna Mornay Does Not Make For A Happy Subsequent Vomiting Experience. Not that any vomiting is happy, but, you know what I mean…
Yep, 10pm saw me back to square one, only worse. This time I not only felt like my stomach was about to explode, I was throwing up like a champion hurler and driving the porcelain bus like an Formula 1 racer. Sean, bless his heart again, told me I might feel better if I got out of the toilet bowl and tried walking around, and subsequently followed my unsteady progress across the hallway, hovering with a bucket at the ready. He was completely unperturbed, to the point where he would ask if I could wait before heaving again, because I had hair in my face. Sorry - nope. My poor dogs were most distressed as they were unused to seeing Mummy Throwing Up – they much preferred Mummy Cleaning Up THEIR Vomit, as opposed to Mummy generating same. I was doing my best to comfort them between hurls, while Sean was doing his best to grab my hair and shove it out of my face.
At 11pm I made what turned out to be a life-saving Executive Decision: that This Situation Was Simply Not Normal.
This time I phoned my doctor directly, albeit with reluctance given the lateness of the hour, and I explained that my current state of gastronomic affairs was beyond anything I had before experienced. This time I was told to take Stematil (an anti-nausea drug that I happened to have on hand, thanks to a well-stocked travel kit) and some more codeine, and if I couldn’t keep those down for 30 minutes, to head into Emergency (again). Salud to the Stematil, and I got Sean to set the kitchen timer. With seconds to go before the buzzer, I spewed spectacularly once more, so that was it. At 11:30pm I wobbled into trackie pants, rinsed the stray vomit out of my hair (delightful, that), and back we headed to Emergency, blue laundry bowl firmly in tow.
(For some reason, that poor blue bowl became quite famous: for some reason, the doctors and nurses all thought it quite amusing. All I can say is, it’s far more sensible than the horse-nosebag-style plastic barf bags they provided in hospital. Okay, I appreciate that the disposable thing saves the poor nurses rinsing horrible kidney dishes, but honestly, how can one throw up neatly into a bag with an opening diameter of maybe 15cm? But I digress).
From that point, and for the six days that followed, I have only flash memories. I remember it being a total marathon to shuffle tentatively from the car to the doors of A&E. I remember telling the dudes on the desk that Sean would have to fill out the forms, as I was way past the point of being able to do so myself. I remember not wanting to tell them my weight because I was ashamed of it. I remember a nice Intensivist giving me 10 units of morphine to no effect, which resulted in two more slugs of 5 units each before the pain even began to subside. I remember being put in a room with another girl and being silently indignant that top level private health insurance did not automatically grant me a single room, especially when she and her flatmate started discussing the alcohol-induced-vomiting antics of a third flatmate. This inspired me to further vomiting antics of my own. I remember apologizing to this girl for said vomiting as I was wheeled out of that room and taken down to Critical Care. I remember being issued an anti-nausea suppository and saying to the nurse “Oh, a suppository. Lucky you” – and his reply, “No, lucky YOU”. Yep, you try self-administering a suppository while lying flat on your back and trying not to barf. Well, better oneself than a nurse, I guess, but still. I remember not being able to pass urine, even when I felt like I had to go, and they propped a recycled cardboard bedpan under me (no, I bet you can’t pee uphill either, but I couldn’t even go once they decided to take me to the toilet).
The doctors didn’t know what was wrong with me. I had to force myself to drink enough of a huge bottle of iodine contrast fluid without throwing up, so they could do a CT scan on me. I remember thinking the CT tunnel wasn’t so scary, but it wasn’t fun having to be slid from my bed onto the machine’s gurney, and wopping onto it like a dead tuna because I no longer had the strength to sit, let alone stand.
The scans showed nothing of interest in my lower abdomen, aside from some areas of free fluid. Apparently all my external signs remained normal all morning, and I had no temperature.
It was only when my blood tests returned a white cell count of over 28,000 (with normal being around 10,000, which can rise to 12-15,000 if one’s system is stressed with minor illness), that my doctor really started panicking, realized I must be very seriously ill, and returned to check on me.
In the 20 minutes between when a nurse had last looked in on me, and my doctor’s return, I had gone from looking normal to presenting as “visibly septic”. I was apparently hot, swollen and a not very attractive shade of purple. And that, my friends, is when the proverbial poo hit the proverbial fan. My doctor got very, very worried, and apparently said to a nurse, “Why have you not done something about Natalie Dowling? She’s really, really sick”. “Oh. I just checked on her 20 minutes ago, and she looked fine”, replied the nurse. “Take another look”, shot back my doctor, wryly. She did so, and similarly freaked out.
My doctor called in a colorectal specialist. As it was a Sunday afternoon, said specialist had just opened a bottle of sauvignon blanc and wanted solid assurance that this really was an emergency warranting him deserting his nice wine. Like Sean later said, it was lucky for us that he wasn’t already halfway through the bottle. “Um, no, sorry, it can’t wait until morning” got Mr Carey Gall (yes, I know, great name for a colorectal surgeon) in to the Private quick smart, and me to the O.R. by 4:30pm – but by this point, I was, in the words of my doctor “moribundly unwell” (sic). Yep, that’s a polite way of saying that I was dying.
I personally don’t remember much except for knowing I was going to have an operation, and calmly telling Sean, just in case, that, if, for whatever reason, I didn’t make it, to tell everyone that I loved them and that I was really happy with where I’d got my life to at that point. Poor Sean freaked out and said “Please don’t talk like that”, and I said “No, no, it’s okay, I’m 99.9% sure I’ll be fine, but just in case I’m not, I’m just being pragmatic”. I was a more scared about going under the knife of a surgeon who I’d not even got to get to know beforehand, so I was hugely relieved to see my regular doctor all scrubbed up as I was wheeled into theatre. I said “Thank goodness you’re here. Are you staying?”, and he replied “Of course”. He reassured me that Mr Gall was outstanding and the only one he would get to open up his family. And so my highly classy comment to Mr Gall then was that my doctor “rates you”.
Good one, Nat.
They started with an investigative laparoscopy, but due to a “poor outlook”, this was rapidly upgraded to a full laparotomy. OK, just so we’re clear, that’s the big slice and dice, folks. I’m talking a 23cm not-messing-around-here ribcage-to-pubic-line incison. Yep, that’s right, I’ll need to be re-thinking the whole swimwear thing. No more two-piece swimsuits for me.
(OUCH)
(New swimsuit, hurrah! Thank goodness it'sall about retro this season)
Diagnosis?
Acute, purulent peritonitis. Peritonis is extremely serious. And I apparently had a very, very bad case.
And I learned, much later, that mine was a VERY messy and very serious operation. Too much info alert: Mr Gall explained that I simply poured pus all over the O.R. I was rather abashed on learning this, since Mr Gall was only the best dressed surgeon in the joint (invariably sporting perfectly Windsor-knotted ties and immaculate suits when he would subsequently check in on me at 7am, while I was still all horrid and bed-heady). Sean imagined his horrified reaction at me just bursting all over the place: “Oh no! My best scrubs!!”
Sean later asked exactly how much pus was involved: “Was it, say, around a cupful?”, he ventured, conservatively. My doctor just gave him a look that was like, you’re nowhere near the appropriate unit of measurement to describe this event, and replied, wryly and evenly, “Many, MANY cups”.
Eeeeew.
Anyway, after recovering from the tsunami that was the infected state of my insides, the two doctors proceeded to take my intestine and bowels on a tour of the outside world, washing them and checking them carefully for any perforations. Luckily there were none. I always used to joke after having had minor laparoscopic surgery in the past, to not make me laugh because I felt as though laughter would make my intestines come looping out of my belly button. What do you know, they finally did.
All joking aside, I was so, so fortunate to come out of this operation alive and unscathed. There was, as I was later informed, a whole suite of various grisly and undesirable things that could have gone wrong. This was very humbling to learn. I felt as though I’d dodged a hail of bullets. I didn’t even end up with a skin infection from the 30-staple wound (and they’d stapled rather than suture me because a) I was so very sick they wanted to get me out of theatre as soon as possible, and b) they were almost sure they’d have to re-open me up to deal with an infection). You should have seen Mr Gall when he removed the dressing days later and saw a clean wound; he practically did cartwheels.
My doctor later told me in the whole post-hospital-discharge-debrief that he was just so grateful I was here to talk to about it, because “frankly, we could have been going to a funeral”. The thing that really stopped me in my tracks was when he told me it was a mercy I hadn’t admitted myself on my first trip to Emergency, some 20 hours earlier. With a longer precedent of me presenting as normal, he would have left it increasing longer between checking in on me – and if he’d left me for another hour or so, he wasn’t sure if I’d still be here today.
It turned out the samples they took from me grew a highly aggressive form of Strep A. How I picked this up remains a mystery. Even the infectious diseases specialist who was consulted said we’d probably never know from whence it came, but I was reassured that it was nothing I had or hadn’t done, and it most likely was nothing to do with having been to Malaysia.
So at this point it was early evening on Sunday 25th and everyone was starting to heave a sigh of relief. But the adventures were only just beginning.
I was so ill by the time I had got to theatre that they couldn’t get an arterial line into my arms. In the end they had to go with the femoral artery and put a line in my groin, at the top of my right leg.
In the early hours of Monday 26th, I vividly remember alerting the nurses to the fact that I had terrible pins and needles in my right foot. A nurse reassured me that probably I’d just been lying on it strangely. I remember carefully bending my knee so that I could rub the foot, being wary of the whole stomach-incision-nightmare, only to get absolutely no sense of sensation returning. Within 20 minutes I was silently pounding the bed and saying as politely yet firmly as I could, “I’m sorry, but this is the WORST pins and needles I’ve ever had, I literally CANNOT FEEL my foot, and I’m seriously not messing around here. PLEASE HELP ME”.
The foot was bright white.
I remember one of the nurses frantically removing my toenail polish with strong-smelling acetone (and thinking “Damn! There goes my pedicure” but simultaneously, and with some relief, registering their sense of urgency).
They went and fetched a Doppler. They put it on my calf –whoosh, whoosh, whoosh, nice pulse. They moved it to my foot. Dead silence. And then they put their Careful Neutral Masks of No Panic While Pooping Raisins Internally faces on, and that scared me more than the silence of the Doppler.
“Please guys, what’s happening?” I pleaded.
They looked at one another. Still carefully neutral, they looked at me.
“Um. We think you might have a blood clot in your foot.”
Okay, start panicking.
“A BLOOD CLOT?!?! AM I GOING TO HAVE A HEART ATTACK AND DIE?!?!”
I have to clarify something at this point. I can honestly, hand-on-heart, say that at no point during my entire ordeal was I frightened of dying. I was very upset at what my possible death would mean for Sean and my family, but I have always believed – and have experienced this with horrible things that have happened to loved ones - that no one is immune to having anything happen at any time. With this acknowledgement, I have always tried to put extra effort into living and making the most of my life in such a way that, if I were to die tomorrow, I could be content in the knowledge that I experienced and lived as much as I could in whatever time I’d been granted. After all, that’s all anyone can hope for and more to the point, it’s all you can control. There’s no point focusing on what you might miss; you can only work on what you can do in the now. But it’s one thing to talk that talk, and I always had a tiny fear that if I ever had to walk the walk, I’d turn into a quivering, hypocritical coward with no courage or moral conviction.
I am both proud and relieved to say that my philosophy held up under quite desperate circumstances, and I am at peace in the true knowledge that I do not fear my own mortality.
But where this blood clot business was concerned, it wasn’t about the death thing, it was about the horrible inexorability of a clot travelling ever closer to one’s heart, and having to live one’s last hours or minutes in the knowledge that one is nothing more than a ticking time bomb. That’s scary.
Anyway, the nurses were all quick to reassure me that no, I wasn’t going to have a heart attack and die, as the clot was arterial and was travelling downward and would not traverse to the veneous blood flow. For some (still-unbeknownst) reason, the line in my groin had resulted in this clot forming and breaking away, but at least it wasn’t heading anywhere cardiac-related.
Okay, then.
New panic:
“AM I GOING TO LOSE MY FOOT?!?!?!”
Now THIS scared me way, WAY more than the possibility of dying. After all, it doesn’t really take much courage to die. It takes a LOT of courage to live as an amputee. Particularly if you love sports. All I could see at that moment was my ice skates.
They prevaricated.
“Oh, you can go for a very long time without oxygen to a limb.”
And,
“You’re totally in the right place, don’t worry, we will look after you; you have loads of time”.
All I could think was,”No-way-I-grew-up-reading-Laura-Ingalls-Wilder-books-where-they-were-always-getting-frostbite-on-the-prairie, and going numb was NOT A GOOD THING”.
And then, “So if I’m in the right place, and you KNOW I have NO circulation getting to my foot, then PLEASE SOMEONE HURRY THE HELL UP AND *DO SOMETHING*!!!”
It felt as though, despite everyone knowing things were BAD, nothing was happening. Helpful insights from the Cliff Notes (sorry, medical notes from my file, that I later paid a princely price to have released to me in order to enable myself to join the dots) indicated that, indeed, while a vascular surgeon, Mr Cottier, was consulted, I didn’t see any angiogram action until 8am that morning.
And of course it turned out they were right: a foot must be able to last for AGES without oxygen, because even once the angiograms had located the clots (turned out there were three, count ‘em!) and they gave me clot busting drugs (cue “Ghostbusters” music), it was still another day or so before the clots began to dissolve. Gaaaaah.
Here I am in Critical Care. I remember Sean asking me if I was okay with him taking photos. I didn't care - but I'm clearly not looking my best!
Here I am in Critical Care. I remember Sean asking me if I was okay with him taking photos. I didn't care - but I'm clearly not looking my best!
Not that I remember very much at all from this point forward. I remember Mr Cottier telling me, that, despite the assurances of the nurses that I’d be fine, the worst-case, albeit highly unlikely, scenario was that they would have to amputate my foot. I remember Sean saying “Don’t tell her that!” but me thinking hey, at least he’s giving it to me straight. I remember that they had to wheel me across to the adjoining Royal Hobart (public) Hospital for the angiograms. I remember hating this journey as it seemed to take forever. I remember the angiograms as being very long and uncomfortable procedures (in fact, they were only about 15 minutes each on average). I was also somehow convinced that the angiograms themselves only took about a third of the total time I was at the Royal; for the other two thirds of the time, I was convinced they were shooting video footage of me for a documentary. Yes, I’m weird and egocentric. I remember being very annoyed that they were wasting so much time supposedly filming me when I was sick and in pain. It turns out that apparently the angiogram room contains a lot of video screens, so maybe I got myself a bit confused by these.
Okay, so now that brings us to the part that was truly the most scary and surreal for me.
I continued to have sepsis. In cases such as mine, following surgery, one typically becomes more septic before becoming less septic. Ouch. As a result of the sepsis, the shed load of mind-bending drugs of both the anaesthestic and pain-managing varieties, and, presumably, the overall trauma, I started to become highly delirious. And, so I’m told, and am ashamed to say, somewhat uncooperative. In hindsight, I was so, so sorry for poor Sean. It must have been totally hideous for him standing helplessly by as I descended further into delusion and paranoia. I apparently pulled out my naso-gastric tube, and this had to be re-set while I was conscious. This must have been very uncomfortable, as I apparently, and again much to my shame, dropped the F-bomb . I also begged for Sean to take me home, as I believed that everyone hated me and was trying to kill me. Sean doesn’t like talking about this, and frankly, it makes me shudder to think of what I put him through. I think it’s easier being the patient than the loved one. I have no memory of this and so it’s much easier for me; being told about it afterwards was analogous to it’s being something that happened in a movie, or a dream.
Anyway, I became so unstable and agitated that by the time I was due for my 4th angiogram on the Tuesday afternoon, I had to be put under a second general anaesthetic, because there was no way I would have been cooperative enough to have stayed still for the procedure. This is why I later insisted I had only had three angiograms, and I thought Sean was mistaken when he assured me I’d had four.
And then, because I also ended up having respiratory failure, and massive oedema/lung fluid/fluid retention issues (apparently I was puffed up almost beyond recognition), and because my organs were starting to go on strike and shut down, they decided it would be best for all concerned if I spent 24 hours in an induced coma in the Intensive Care Unit. Unfortunately, my total time in the ICU ended up stretching to 4 days.
Naturally, I remember absolutely nothing of the induced-coma phase. However, I’m told that, despite having wrist restraints due to my propensity to remove the artificial plumbing from myself, being small, I managed to somehow still wriggle myself down in the bed – and pull out my breathing tube.
That’s right, I self-extubated.
Go me.
Except, not. When you’re intubated, the tube is kept in place via a little balloon that is inflated once the tube has been inserted. The preferred protocol is to deflate the balloon prior to extubation, but of course I didn’t take that course of action. So I was left with a hideous choking sensation and urge to constantly cough, that lasted for at least the next 10 days, and then reduced to the sensation of having swallowed a golf ball. That, and I totally wrecked my vocal chords. Six weeks later and I still have no vocal power, and no upper or lower register worth singing about. It’s getting there, but like my Cleverclogs Consultant Anaesthetist sister said, jokingly, “Well, you’ve only got yourself to blame for that one!”.
The good news was that after my little self-extubation adventure, I supposedly became a lot more settled. This was a huge relief to my poor parents and sister, who Sean had, with great trepidation, phoned on Monday with the news that I was critically ill. They lost no time in arriving from Adelaide on the Tuesday, just in time to see me disappear in my delirium into the bowels of the ICU.
I’ll try to sum up my time in ICU as succinctly as possible. It was torture. For a start, it was a completely disorienting regime of constant bright light, and although the room was dominated by a huge, ceiling-hung clock, there was no means of discerning whether it was 7 o’clock in the morning, or 7 o’clock in the evening. On some level, and at certain times, I was aware I was in hospital and could, with a huge effort, convey this when asked. When pressed further as to if I knew why, I found it completely exhausting trying to decide just which ailment to pin the whole thing on, but ultimately could feebly murmur, “Tummy operation”. But when they asked me what the date was, I had no idea, other than to suggest it was at least November, but it could even be early in 2012.
You see, I was completely convinced and totally terrified that I had somehow become stuck in some torturous parallel universe or alternate reality – and wherever this was, I’d been stuck there for months. It felt like a dream from which I couldn’t wake, despite desperately wanting to. The closest I can describe it is as Alice’s falling down the rabbit hole. It was like being on an endless loop of disoriented terror – like that sequence from the movie “Walk the Line” where Johnny Cash is drying out from drugs and has the song “Brown Girl in the Ring” repeating over and over in his head. I was terrified that this was how my life was going to be from now on. The main problem was that I had absolutely no frame of reference against which to pin or anchor my experience to anything in my world, the real world. There was no shred of anything that could tie my situation to the world and the reality I knew. Yes, I knew that Sean, Mum and Dad were there, and later, Sean’s Dad. But I simply thought they’d been drawn into the parallel universe with me.
Worst of all, I didn’t recognize my own sister. And not only that – I thought she was Sean’s new partner. All I perceived was an elegant, classy dark-haired girl with a black shoulder bag who would always come in with Sean and then discretely be in the background, as befitted a tactful replacement partner! This latter was probably due to the fact that Melanie, being a doctor, spent much of her time in ICU checking with the staff that everything was being done to give me the best possible care.
And, much as I wasn’t happy about what I perceived the situation to be, I didn’t blame Sean or this supposed “new partner”, because I figured I’d been stuck wherever I was for months and months, that things were never going to get better for me, and that Sean had consequently and understandably moved on with his life. I thought they were just making a polite “duty call” on me every few weeks!
Melanie had brought framed photos of me into ICU, so the staff could see me more as a “real person” and as such, hopefully treat me as humanely as possible. There were three pictures, but I kept insisting there were four, and that I be shown the fourth – because I was convinced that there was a fourth picture of Sean with this “other woman”. Even after I came out of ICU and was in Critical Care, I asked Mum where the fourth photo was. When she tried to explain there had only ever been three, I replied “Don’t lie to me! ”
Aside from my hideous delusion that I was in some torturous and inescapable alternate reality, my other torment was that my mouth was totally, frighteningly dry – at all times. I simply CRAVED ice, and, again, much to my shame, after a couple of days I apparently stopped being polite about it and simply became demanding. “Ice, please”, became “MORE ICE!” And then, as the sedation was allowed to wear off and I entered my last couple of days in ICU, I struck a somewhat officious, although highly capable, nurse with whom I had, shall we say, something of a personality clash (if you could equate my deranged state as being equivalent to having a personality, that is). I waged a battle royal with her over her denying me ice. I could NOT understand why she would viciously shovel a mere two chips of ice into my mouth before ripping the spoon out as though I would swallow it given half a chance. I even remember saying “What part of ‘please may I have some ice’ don’t you UNDERSTAND?”
Just by the by, it turned out that, horror of horrors, I was quite the snotty madam in general during my delirium. I cringed at some of the stories my parents later related in an “isn’t this amusing” manner. By way of example: another hideous thing about ICU was that every smell and taste sensation was heightened, and you had no way of escape – no walking away, no rinsing your mouth out. I remember protesting helplessly as they sprayed a particularly noxious “mouth hygiene” solution into my mouth – and for the next 5 weeks, I carried the sensation of a strong toothpaste-style burn on the front of my tongue, that affected the taste of everything I ate. Then they kept putting lanoline on me, and the smell was overwhelming (and it didn’t do a thing – my lips and my eyelids were practically falling off, or at least, peeling hideously from dryness by the time I got out of ICU). And when I, for the millionth time, complained of thirst, they (vindictively, I thought), fed me a particularly cloying yoghurt drink. I remember that, and I remember expressing my dislike of it, but I don’t recall my exact choice of words, which, as it turned out, were a resounding, “This is SHIT”. Oops. Poor Mum was absolutely horrified. She immediately snapped (and again, I can’t remember this), “NATALIE! I KNOW you don’t like it, but you DO NOT speak to the nurses like that, and you DO NOT swear!” Apparently she and Dad then explained aside that I didn’t know what was going on, only to have me pipe up in regal tones, “SHE does understand, and SHE is not stupid!” Egad.
I wish they had tried to explain that I was oedema-ed to hell and that, because of this, they had to keep me on a negative fluid balance. Perhaps they did, and I was just too drugged out and sick to get it. But I do know that every time I tried to bend my right leg (which, as I later was told, had a hideous sheath all the way down it for the angiograms), and was told to keep it straight, I complied every time, because on some level I remembered something had happened to my foot, so the instruction to keep my leg straight made sense to me and I was happy to obey.
Anyway, the whole dry-mouth Ice Wars thing was hideous. I kept saying “I KNOW I can’t have the whole mugful, but my mouth is SUPER DRY – please, I just need something to moisten it”. And then I started begging for Ribena and/or orange juice (one of my closest friends in Adelaide later sent me an amazing care package of groceries, featuring, as a nod to this, Ribena and orange juice).
(thanks Mia!)
Mum finally was given the okay to bring me in some Ribena, and when I tasted its cool sweetness, a huge grin slowly spread across my face. Now that’s what I was talking about! Then I started in on wanting icy-poles, which they had on hand in ICU. There were two given to me, one of which I ate immediately, and the other somehow got left on my tray. I remember Mum saying they should throw it away, because it was melted, and I immediately interjected, saying (correctly), “No way – there’s a bit of Ribena left in that mug. Pour the icy pole into the Ribena with a bit of ice”. They did, and I drank it, and I remember thinking I had invented the Best Drink Ever.
(thanks Mia!)Mum finally was given the okay to bring me in some Ribena, and when I tasted its cool sweetness, a huge grin slowly spread across my face. Now that’s what I was talking about! Then I started in on wanting icy-poles, which they had on hand in ICU. There were two given to me, one of which I ate immediately, and the other somehow got left on my tray. I remember Mum saying they should throw it away, because it was melted, and I immediately interjected, saying (correctly), “No way – there’s a bit of Ribena left in that mug. Pour the icy pole into the Ribena with a bit of ice”. They did, and I drank it, and I remember thinking I had invented the Best Drink Ever.
But going back to the terror of the whole alternate-reality-perception thing. What was it that finally got me out of it, and convinced me I was still in the real world? Two words: Kate Middleton. They had somehow sat me up and produced two gossip magazines for me to look through, which, in an owlish stupor, I somehow managed to do. I remember being desperate to find some shred of familiarity, some proof that I was still in the world I remembered and to which I desperately wanted to return. And suddenly, there it was. Kate Middleton, wearing a dress I remembered, photographed at an event I remembered having read about. It all sounds ludicrous now, but the sense of relief was enormous. Huge. It felt like being pardoned from a life of imprisonment. As stupid as it sounds, Kate literally saved me. I’d always liked her. Now I owed her my sanity! I went on to browse the rest of the magazine, and became quite fixated on pictures of Victoria Beckham’s rented Malibu beach house. I stared and stared at the pictures of these beautiful, spacious rooms overlooking the tranquil ocean, and these relaxed me enormously. I even memorized the page number, and when my parents and Sean arrived, I insisted they look at “page 27” so they could enjoy the pictures too.
My final memory of ICU is being told I was good to leave. I was so, SO happy to be escaping from this room of torment. Whether I was improving rapidly, or whether the drugs had been allowed to wear off, it’s very odd to me that I have no memory at all of the Friday morning, September 30 (where apparently I sat out of bed, ate cornflakes and then complained of nausea), but I can remember everything from the point in the late afternoon when I left ICU, onwards. I raised my hand in farewell and triumph as I was wheeled out of there and back to the comparative haven of the Hobart Private Hospital, and the Critical Care Unit.
From there on, it was onwards and upwards. I had the loveliest nurses who looked after me with total compassion and expressed their joy that I was alive. I spent one night and half of the next day in Critical Care. Here I took my first walk with the aid of a frame and many nurses - but unfortunately disgraced myself in the process with the kind of toilet accident usually reserved for newborn babies. Oh, the humiliation. I was so sorry for the nurses, but they cheerfully dealt with it and turned a walk to the nurses’ station into a walk to the bathroom, stating that, when all was said and done, they were about the same distance away! In getting to the bathroom I caught the first glimpse of myself in the mirror, and it made me physically stagger. After assuring the nurses I didn’t have balance issues, I stopped and took a proper look. I literally did not recognize myself. I’d expected to look terrible, but I was totally beyond terrible. My eyes were darker than I had ever seen them, and they carried a look of wild-animal desperation that I’d never before seen in myself. I called it my “velociraptor look” and tried to make fun of it, but it actually freaked me out.
I spent that night spent feeling so grateful to be alive, intact, and out of ICU, and with a window whose curtains I had refused to have drawn, because it was such a blessed relief to see natural light. When I finally slept, I unfortunately woke screaming and in tears with a horrible, endone-induced nightmare, but I was immediately comforted by two beautiful nurses, Lisa and Dot, who hugged me and gave me nice drugs. And when, the following lunchtime, I was promoted to the Surgical Ward, I cried to leave my beautiful day nurse, Abby. She assured me I’d love the nurses upstairs, though, and she was right. I went into a High Dependency Room, but after one night there, I was again promoted to a regular private room –with carpet! – and was finally able to stay put.
From there on in, it was all about starting to put things back together – and for me, to piece together a “lost week” where I felt as though I’d been kidnapped by aliens. I got to have my first shower on the Sunday morning. It was TOTAL BLISS – and I washed my hair six times, as it took at least three washes before a week’s worth of oil even began to disappear - but I stared down at my body, aghast at all the sticky places where surgical tape had been, for reasons I knew not. There was a nasty L-shaped scab on my upper right thigh, where the angiogram sheath had been inserted. I juggled two horrible, disgusting, nausea-inducing drains that dangled out of me and ended in plastic hand-grenade collection bulbs, one of which I christened “Pineapple”, and the other, “Papaya”, for the colours of hideous fluid that each contained. I found out firsthand what it’s like to have a catheter. May I say that its only benefit is in knowing that, if you wake in the night, you don’t have to get out of bed to go to the toilet. But man, talk about uncomfortable, especially when the bag would start to fill. I would start to felt as though I was dying for a wee, but I couldn’t “go”. One night this sensation was particularly terrible, but I didn’t want to mention it, because a) I’d been given a diuretic, and I thought that might make me feel uncomfortable, and b) I was having a nice conversation with close friends, and the conversation was not, for a change, about me, and I didn’t want to interrupt it. Finally a nurse came to check on me and it turned out the bag was almost totally full. Oh, the relief when it was emptied!
Finally, I had a huge IV line in my left shoulder, which was attached to a bag suspended from a pole. Now, this one bag was a huge improvement from the NINE I had supposedly had while in ICU (and nine is not huge potatoes by ICU standards, either), but when I had to make haste to the toilet for Number Twos, it was no fun juggling the pole and the catheter bag. Usually I would ring for a nurse, but one morning the call of nature was urgent and I had to self-mobilise. Scary stuff. But it was again a huge improvement that I was able to actually get to the toilet; in Critical Care I continued to have many humiliating “accidents” which necessitated me having to roll myself successively, and very painfully, onto each side, clinging desperately to the bars of the side rail of the bed, while the poor, lovely nurses cleaned me up, time after time. Horror.
But there were far more positives than negatives. My overriding emotion was sheer happiness at being alive, intact, in the real world and out of ICU. I continued to have odd moments where I feared I was still not in the real world – for example, when the AFL Grand Final on the Saturday afternoon was such an unusually close and exciting game. I thought that was too good to be real, so that therefore I must still be in an alternate reality. I had to keep pinching myself and reminding myself it was all good.
Then there was the humbling sense of having gotten away with everything so incredibly Scott-free, and a sense of increased empathy for poor people who have to live with worse things, and/or who endure far longer and more serious stays in ICU. I kept thinking how grateful I was not to have something more sinister, like cancer. And the nurses kept quietly pointing out that they were incredibly glad that I had been so young and fit, as, I had I been older and/or less fit, they doubted they would have been seeing me on this side of the experience.
The realization of how serious my condition had been came slowly, and it was like a reverse freak-out. Typically, it’s the patient over-reacting and the medical staff explaining that it’s not as bad as the person thinks. In my case, I was all “Hooray, I’m alive, it’s all good! I can breathe and beat my heart like a champion!” – and then the doctors and nurses were having to tell me, well, actually, you really nearly didn’t make it, and here are all the things that we feared might have happened to you, but luckily did not, and please do not underestimate the severity of what you went through.
Next, I was totally overwhelmed with support from my family and friends. I had a constant stream of visitors, flowers continually rained on my room, and a growing row of cards were propped on the shelves alongside the bouquets and boxes of blooms. There were gifts and food and messages and phone calls and emails galore. Not that I had my mobile phone – Sean, quite rightly, confiscated that, but he and Dad would print off all the emails they’d received and bring them in to show me.
(The first flowers arrived while I was still in ICU, so Pickwick and Hercules got to enjoy them first. These beautiful bright flowers are from Linda, Bryan and Michelle).
(It didn't take long for the irises to open!)
(A HUGE hamper of gourmet goodies arrived from the wonderful Siobhan, Kathryn, Tam, Mandy, Jane, Clair, Julie, Liz and Kez)
(Incredible "hospital hamper" from Linda, Michelle, Suzette, Emma, Kobi, Kat, Flis, Suez and Shelley)
(Thanks Jane, Leon, Simon and Mel for these lovely flowers!)
But I was mentally reeling. Every day I was trying to process all the new medical information, and sort out which of the constant parade of visiting specialists had done what to which part of me – not to mention trying to establish what their names were. I was desperate to call a time out on the whole thing, because I was still scrambling to put together the missing week before, which I needed to understand in order to make sense of the cast of thousands who were now attending me. At night I would try to go to sleep, but the moment I closed my eyes, my mind would almost audibly start to whirl on super-fast-forward. And then the stupid, choking tickle in my throat from the wretched breathing tube would kick in and make me cough, painfully. To allay this, I always had to have a cup of ice in reach – even when I went for a short walk. That was non-negotiable and I was deadly serious about it. During the day, I could cope with the choking cough, but when I was trying to sleep at night, it was torture –and there was nothing to be done about it. In the end, I would give up trying to force myself to sleep, and I dealt with the mental overload the only way I could think of – I dumped it all out in a diary. I begged for a notebook, but until it arrived I grabbed the only thing to hand – a tissue box – and started compulsively scribbling on that. Recording all the days’ events, and my feelings, was the only way I could de-process it, and could let it go in the knowledge that I had written it all out and had so ensured that it wouldn’t blur into a haze of confusion.
But gads, was I ever tired. And the parade of events continued. On Monday, two and a half days out of ICU, Mr Gall gave the okay to remove my catheter and drains. The catheter was a piece of cake (but I did hope my bladder still worked! It did). On the other hand, the nurses were strangely cagey about the whole drain-removal process, except for insisting I take an endone an hour beforehand. At that point I started getting slightly nervous. And rightly so. Let’s just say that having lengths of drain pulled from your body in a process that takes over 5 seconds of pulling for each, feels like being unpicked from the inside. I freaked out when they told me to count to three and hold my breath. It reminded me of soldiers on battlefields undergoing surgical processes with no anaesthesia, and having to bite down on something to deal with the pain. The main problem was that, because I’d been so very sick, they had left the drains in 2 days longer than usual, with the disgusting result that TISSUE HAD STARTED TO GROW ON THEM. You can guess what that meant – when it came to pulling the drains out, there was a huge amount of resistance – and PAIN. I swore blue murder while keeping my mouth closed and my teeth clenched. Tears poured out of my eyes. The nurses were so lovely but they had to do this – and it was just as well they were experienced, because the one who extracted the drains said that when she did her first one ever, she stopped pulling when she encountered resistance, and the patient told her to never again do that, because re-starting to pull was far more painful than pulling continuously would have been. The worst part for me was in knowing that the second drain was still to come after the first one. I lay there hyperventilating, in shock, and trying to steel myself for what was going to be a worse experience for knowing what was coming. And at that point, I got two phone calls – and promptly told my loved ones that now was NOT A GOOD TIME!
So yes, the second drain was longer and worst than the first. The only way I got through it was to tell myself that once it was out, it would all be over. Afterwards, I lay there, feeling unpicked and strangely empty inside, totally shaken, and in need of a little nap. But no sooner had the nurses packed up the sterile field, then in came my wonderful physio, Julia, to get me up and walking around, now that I had no plumbing paraphernalia to restrict me. Great idea, terrible timing. In fact, this was typical of the whole hospital experience – it would be one thing after another in rapid succession, bam, bam, bam – but followed by long periods of quiet.
(After one walk around the ward, I returned to this beautiful box of gorgeous roses from my lovely sister Melanie and brother-in-law Dave. Do you like my styling look? This picture always reminds me of Allie Brosh's tragic "Do I look Pretty?!")
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Until the point when my physio got me up and about, my world in the ward was my comfy little motel-style room, a window that overlooked the corner of Collins and Argyle Streets, and which I would make a point of peering out of every time I had a walk to the bathroom, and a small wedge of corridor into which the friendly faces of nurses, doctors, friends and family would regularly materialise.
(my little window to the outside world - hurrah for natural light, and flowers from lovely friends!)
But on getting up and being taken on a walking tour of the ward, suddenly, my whole world was broken open. It was a complete shock to my system to see the ward as a whole, as part of a functioning hospital, and from the perspective of the nurses and visitors. Understanding the layout, and passing the nurses’ station, and seeing the nurses as working beings, rather than angels materializing in my doorway, was like sensory overload. The biggest spin out was passing the elevators and foyer area, knowing that this represented the interface between my safe, insular little universe and the bigger world outside – and that it was through those doors that my parents, sister, Sean, friends and doctors had passed every day. It was almost like agoraphobia. I was relieved to return to the haven of my room, but I now had basic physio exercises to do, so I would from that point venture on walks of “the block” a few times a day.
The following day was Tuesday, and that evening, my IV line was removed. This was a painless process, but necessitated me lying still for an hour, because I’d been on anticoagulants for the blood clot, and they didn’t want me bleeding copiously from the IV line wounds. But meantime my dinner had arrived, so Sean was given permission to feed me, provided I stayed flat on my back and didn’t move. This was scarily reminiscent of ICU, and Sean fed me so fast I barely had a chance to breathe. At the same time, my parents were wanting to know what clothes to bring in the next day, because Mr Gall was planning to discharge me.
Yes, discharge me. Mr Gall was super-dooper delighted with the progress of my stomach wound, and had practically been cock-a-hoop at how well it had all healed and with the lack of infection. Despite my assurances I was in no hurry to leave (it had been less than 5 days since I’d left ICU, and I still felt extremely fragile), he was all “You’ll be right to go home on Wednesday”. He and my regular doctor had called in every day to see me, and my doctor had said that he had never seen anyone get so very sick so quickly, but then also make such a rapid recovery.
Mr Cottier had been in, too, and had explained the full story of my foot ischaemia, and how they had performed 4 angiograms, and that the clot-busting drugs had successfully broken down the clots, so that he felt “the best possible result had been achieved”. He warned that the nerve damage meant I could experience numbness and tingling for up to a year, but that it should ultimately resolve, and that, functionally, the foot would be as good as new. From being told before the first angiogram that the worst case scenario would indeed be amputation, to having a practically normal, despite somewhat numb, foot, was an outstanding outcome. Mr Cottier was quite a gruff, brusque type, but he too was quite rightly very happy with the result of his ministrations
As for me, I was terrified at the prospect of going home. I was painfully aware of how highly dependent I still was, and, despite numerous talkings-to from Dad about having to acknowledge that I couldn’t do things for myself and had to accept my limitations, I wasn’t convinced my family realized quite the extent of my dependency. On that Tuesday night, they had to run to leave before the carpark closed, but in their haste, and, presumably, assuming the nurses were there to help me, they had inadvertently left my room in chaos. I couldn’t reach my tray with my cup of ice chips, and as I’ve said, this was my number one deadly serious priority. My chair with all my newspapers and magazines had also been moved out of reach, and my bed was totally skew-whiff.
I knew that the ward was full that night, and I also knew I was being encouraged to be more independent, with my discharge imminent. So I started Mission Tidy-Up, Phase One: Get Out Of Bed. That accomplished, albeit slowly and painfully, I turned my attention to Phase Two: Maneouvre Trolley Tray To Within Reach. However, said trolley’s wheels were hooked up in my bedspread, which had slid mostly off the bed. In trying to disentangle the wheels, the trolley jerked, and my jug of water spilled, fortunately all over the little lino section of the floor by the sink, rather than the carpet. However, I couldn’t yet bend over with my wound, and I knew my muscles were only good for about three ballet style squats, which I expended mopping up the water. And then I was exhausted. So, with much reluctance, I buzzed for a nurse. And then I collapsed in a chair and started to cry. To which I sharply told myself to stop feeling sorry for myself. But the issue was just that I felt so worried about being a burden to Sean and my parents, who were urging me to allow them to do everything, but who I feared didn’t quite get just how huge an “everything” that was going to be – and I foresaw myself losing patience and getting cross with those who were only doing all they could to try to help me, and I freaked out at the prospect, and wished I could just stay safely in hospital, where I wasn’t a problem for them.
The lovely nurse who turned up to help me was so kind and understanding, and reassured me it was normal to feel that way, and that I’d be fine.
(By my last evening, my shelves were a riot of colour - I felt surrounded by love)
So the next day duly saw me endure the uneasiness of having 30 staples removed from my 23cm zipper wound, and subsequently being duly discharged at lunch time. In a determination to be self-respecting, I struggled into a dress and makeup, only to encounter nobody as I left, and so I had an inauspicious and anticlimactic farewell. After ducking in to town to buy me some nighties (I only had pyjamas at home and couldn’t bear the thought of a waistband), Mum, Dad and Sean loaded the car with flowers and bags of magazines, cards, food and books, and home we went.
(All the flowers in the driveway after my first discharge)
As it turned out, coming home was lovely, and my fears had been groundless. True, I still wasn’t able to shower standing up, and despite having explained this, no solution had been proposed or was forthcoming, but I figured that was a problem for the following morning. Everyone bent over backwards to watch after my every movement. We had a lovely lunch, with Mum, Dad, Sean and I all together again (Melanie had only stayed for three days while I was in ICU). Then I went straight for a nap, but woke an hour later in what felt like excruciating indigestion pain, all down my side. I called five times before Dad heard me, and then I got him to give me a rub-down, hoping to shift what I thought was wind. But no dice. I couldn’t lie down without the pain returning. Undaunted, I decamped to a recliner, where I was bundled up and spent the rest of the afternoon cosily sewing on a quilt and chatting away to my Mum. We had a lovely dinner, and I fully enjoyed the novelty of non-hospital food (despite the food at the Private having been outstanding).
Come bed time, however, and I was in trouble. Every time I tried to recline, shooting, grabbing pain would clench me on both sides of my body. I kept trying to lie down, each time without success. At 10:30pm when Sean came in, I told him I would have to sleep upright but couldn’t in bed, and asked him to move me to one of the recliner chairs in the lounge. With a pillow behind me, and hugging another tightly to me, I managed to sleep from midnight until 3am, and woke in worse pain than ever. I was still convinced I had indigestion, and spent the next three hours on my hands and knees, alternated with propping myself between the lounge and recliner bases, trying to shift the wind. The whole thing was made worse by the fact that a burst water main had meant we had no running water that night, so if I had a horrible toileting event (all too frequent at that point), I wouldn’t be able to flush.
At this point, hospital, with its running water and beds with adjustable reclining angles, seemed to me the pinnacle of luxury. Home had become a place whose horizontal surfaces I spent time either prone on, pacing while puking, or pounding in pain. At around 4am it occurred to me that, while I was still convinced I had indigestion, I should perhaps let my doctor know that I was in excruciating pain, given that I’d had major gastro-intestinal surgery. So I made myself stick it out until 6am, at which time I knew my doctor would be awake, watching rubbish on YouTube via my phone in the interim. By the time I phoned my doctor at 6:15am, I had been in pain for 15.5 hours, but I didn’t need to convince him of anything. Before I could finish justifying why I was calling, he interjected to say, “I don’t like the sound of that. Get yourself back to Emergency and we’ll scan you”.
“Yes, and so…….I’m sorry, what was that?!” Once I registered what he’d said, the relief was enormous. I felt like a prize git, because I’d only just been discharged, and I was still convinced it was indigestion, but at least I wasn’t being left to party with the codeine this time. I also explained that I had the most massive cumulative sleep deficit that felt like about five doses of major jet lag, and I could barely think straight any more. He repeated to just get myself back in to the Private and they’d take it from there.
So I roused Sean and my parents. Poor Mum took a while to work it all through, and she even asked if I was going to have a shower before I went in. I gave her a long incredulous look and replied, “Hmmm, let’s see. I can’t shower standing up, in fact I’m so tired I’m swaying standing up, I’m in agonizing pain, and I’ve been told to go in straight away. No, I am not having a shower”.
Back in Emergency, I had a hero’s welcome from the Intensivists, who had attended me that first night and who were delighted to see me alive and, relatively, well. Through my pain, I explained I felt like a total git having been discharged and now returning within 18 hours, and that I was sure it would turn out to be nothing. They looked at me long and hard, and a lovely male doctor who had attended me that first night said “Anything you say about your own pain we are taking SUPER seriously”. Apparently no-one could believe how very sick I had turned out to be, given how stoically I had coped on my initial admission. He said they were so used to seeing people come into Emergency moaning and groaning over nothing, yet I was near death with sepsis and had barely complained, despite rating my own pain as 10/10.
They reckoned my current problem was nothing to do with my digestion. The big concern was whether I had a pulmonary embolism – a blood clot on my lungs, but they predicted that I’d either have a lung issue, or at best, nothing beyond requiring a stronger pain management regime. Either way, I was assured it was still very much the right thing to do to have come in.
A morning stuck freezing on a gurney in an Emergency bay, having to listen to people crying and screaming through what turned out to be trivial complaints, one chest X-ray, and another, (extremely painful because of having to lie horizontally), CT scan later, the verdict was in: I had a mild pleural effusion (lung infection) and attelectisis, or the collection of fluid at the bases of my lungs. This wasn’t a trivial thing but was very normal given how sick I’d been and how long I’d been prone in bed. But the bottom line was that my doctor had strongly recommended I be re-admitted to hospital.
I was secretly HUGELY relieved, even though I hadn’t expected it. But just to be sure I wasn’t being a complete sook, I asked my attending medical officer what she would recommend. She replied that I should be re-admitted beyond any doubt, if nothing else so that they could keep an eye on my observations. And it just goes to show you how ill I still was, that my overriding emotion was massive relief.
(Doing well with my lung exercises at home with the help of this little toy - I got all three balls to the top!)
So lunchtime saw me starving hungry after being dosed up on endone and having had nothing to eat all day, and thus with some emergency sandwiches on board, being wheeled back up to good old Level 4, where I was overjoyed that they had managed to give me my old room back.
My doctor tracked me down shortly thereafter, having first paid a futile visit to Emergency. He said I was clearly exhausted and that I wasn’t going anywhere until I could comfortably lie flat while breathing deeply (I was to the point of shallow breathing even while upright). And he sealed my room to everyone but him, Sean and my parents, and insisted I get my laptop in with a whole bunch of movies and TV series, and to just watch stuff until I dropped off to sleep.I had nearly cried with relief to see my bed with its reclining back - although with the room stripped bare of all my flowers and cards, it almost looked as though I had died! But it wasn't long before even more flowers and cards arrived to bring me more cheer and comfort - I was so spoiled!
My doctor tracked me down shortly thereafter, having first paid a futile visit to Emergency. He said I was clearly exhausted and that I wasn’t going anywhere until I could comfortably lie flat while breathing deeply (I was to the point of shallow breathing even while upright). And he sealed my room to everyone but him, Sean and my parents, and insisted I get my laptop in with a whole bunch of movies and TV series, and to just watch stuff until I dropped off to sleep.I had nearly cried with relief to see my bed with its reclining back - although with the room stripped bare of all my flowers and cards, it almost looked as though I had died! But it wasn't long before even more flowers and cards arrived to bring me more cheer and comfort - I was so spoiled!
(Empty room problem soon rectified thanks to even MORE flowers from the amazing Linda and co. - thanks for this stunning box of pink, girls xxoo)
(Soon, the room was just as colourful and cheerful as before!)
(Thank you for these gorgeous roses, lovely Kylie!)
(Massive gorgeous bouquet from caring work colleagues - with and without cellophane!)
(Rachel, Andy and Agatha sent me these divine oriental lillies - the nurses had to keep fetching vases!)
(Soon, the room was just as colourful and cheerful as before!)
So, isolation, sleep and movies – along with a BUNCH of pain relieving drugs, and exhausted stupor - was the next 5 days. It was just what I needed. But I still wasn’t sleeping for more than three hours in the night, and ultimately it took getting out of hospital and the corresponding absence of call bells and disturbances before my sleep pattern finally started getting back to normal.
(Kylie's pink roses, with Melanie and Dave's red roses)
(Gerberas from kind colleagues)
And after 5 days, I was finally ready to go home. I knew things were on the improve when I started getting the serious munchies on Sunday night, which somehow made me lonely and craving home and my family and some “normal” food. (Instead, I had to settle for motel-style cheese and biscuits and a sandwich from the supper trolley, but it was better than nothing). Then on Monday morning, my doctor called in early and suggested going home, but I was all groggy and vacillating (because I was still worried about my lungs), so he concluded I should have one more night in – to which I agreed, until he left and an orderly came in and spilled my water all over my tray and my bed. To me, that was the sign that the party was OVER. I realized that my Dad was due to return to Adelaide on Wednesday and I wanted to spend more than half a day with him.
(Dad carving a baked salmon on the night after I was discharged. Sean is not being helpful!)
I was tired of the sweaty, plastic-lined bed, even though it reclined to any angle I so desired. I was desperately craving fresh air, and sunshine. And the isolation thing, while so appreciated at first, was making me lonely. And all my pain drugs were PRN, so none of the nurses, lovely though they were, really knew what to do with me and were all dealing out different drugs at different times.
So I put my foot down. I wanted out, but first, I wanted to make damn sure my lungs were good to go. I didn’t want a repeat of last time, and a third trip back to Emergency. So I buzzed a nurse, gave her the 411, and next thing, action stations! One of the lovely intensivists, who I remembered from my first admission, showed up and ordered a chest X-ray, and then explained how I should use the pain management drugs and the sleeping tablets – which until then had been a total wilderness to me. The X-ray still showed a bit of blurring at the margins of my lungs, but nothing serious. The lovely physio turned up to put me through some stair work, which, if I could manage, I was told I would be good to go. I passed that one with flying colours, the physio taped my poor foot for me again, and I was given the green light to be discharged. This time I had a lovely farewell from lots of the nurses, and I felt strong and confident enough to be happy about going home.
(Happy to be home and still enjoying my beautiful flowers)
(All the flowers lasted for AGES! These stunning lillies were still open after over 2 weeks!)
(All the flowers lasted for AGES! These stunning lillies were still open after over 2 weeks!)
And so, almost five weeks later, here I am. I’m still quite fragile, and am facing a very long recovery, but I’m so far from going stir crazy at home: I’m still high on the novelty of how lucky I am to be alive. From a practical perspective, I struggle to get through the basics of my physio exercises and my basic ablutions each morning, before crashing out in the afternoon. I have myriads of appointments each week, because I’m throwing everything from physiotherapy, to acupuncture, to remedial massage at this, to optimise my recovery. The days just disappear! Not that I’m down about it, though – it just emphasises that I still have a long way to go, and frankly, each day is a huge celebration of being alive and intact.
I’ve had loads of happy visits from lovely friends.
Work mates and friends have rallied round and are supplying delicious evening meals and treats for us.
(Yummy cupcake - thanks, fabulous friend Linda!)
(Insanely awesome macarons from lovely Kylie and fruit cake made by my beautiful Mum)
(Divine jam shortbreads and macaroons made by the very talented Toni)
And I’m only now just getting to the point where I’ve processed all that’s happened and am starting to have a little more time in which to relax and do the more “fun” convalescent things, like watching movies, and attacking the huge pile of books and magazines that has avalanched on me from scores of friends.
(Convalescing, Hercie style)
My recovery pattern is going to be more the tortoise than the hare, but I’m still doing amazingly well given where I was a month ago.
I’ve been surrounded by so much friendship and support that it’s been completely overwhelming. That, and that fact that I’ve been so fortunate in having been granted the opportunity to make a full recovery, leaves me with nothing but things to be grateful for around this whole experience. My only vague concern has been about returning to work, which is ridiculous because the only person putting pressure on myself in that department is me. My doctors and my work colleagues and superiors have been unanimous in their emphasis that I was very seriously ill, and that this will take time to get over, and all have been very assertive in bringing home to me that I must take plenty of time to allow myself to get fully better before I even think about going back to work. My senior bosses have stated they don’t really want to see me back before the new year at the earliest, and the practitioners I’ve seen since then have agreed that this timeframe would give me the optimal chance of rehabilitating myself properly. It’s probably just as well I’m being sat on in terms of returning to work, because my mind is still scarily mush. I do crazy things like add when I mean to subtract, and get place names confused.
(Here I am, with my beautiful Mum, within a week of my discharge. I made a superhuman effort to attend Linda's incredible Girls' Night In, raising funds for cancer research. Granted, I looked like a shadow of my old self, and I only managed to stay two hours before spectacularly hitting the wall, but it was great to get dressed up and feel "human" again)
I’ve been surrounded by so much friendship and support that it’s been completely overwhelming. That, and that fact that I’ve been so fortunate in having been granted the opportunity to make a full recovery, leaves me with nothing but things to be grateful for around this whole experience. My only vague concern has been about returning to work, which is ridiculous because the only person putting pressure on myself in that department is me. My doctors and my work colleagues and superiors have been unanimous in their emphasis that I was very seriously ill, and that this will take time to get over, and all have been very assertive in bringing home to me that I must take plenty of time to allow myself to get fully better before I even think about going back to work. My senior bosses have stated they don’t really want to see me back before the new year at the earliest, and the practitioners I’ve seen since then have agreed that this timeframe would give me the optimal chance of rehabilitating myself properly. It’s probably just as well I’m being sat on in terms of returning to work, because my mind is still scarily mush. I do crazy things like add when I mean to subtract, and get place names confused.
My GP and my main specialist have been very insistent that I take as much time as I need and have brought home to me how many bullets I dodged. Until a couple of weeks ago, I didn’t fully realise just how much could have gone wrong, and how, if the timing of things had been a little different, I might not have made it. I’ve been very, very lucky.
I see nothing but positives to come out of this – in terms of how completely I’ll be able to recover, in terms of the increased empathy this has given me for others, and in terms of the love and support I’ve received from all my family and friends.
(Very cheering balloons from Auntie Liz, Ian, Briana, Rhys, Emily, Simone, Tyeison and the children!)
(A very special care package from the beautiful Bishop family)
(Very cheering balloons from Auntie Liz, Ian, Briana, Rhys, Emily, Simone, Tyeison and the children!)
(A very special care package from the beautiful Bishop family)
(A final shot of Kylie's exquisite pink roses)
And not least of all, I’ve now got a prime opportunity to sort through 6000-odd photos of sealions and tortoises, and get cracking on finally sharing our Galapagos adventures and thus completing our tale of American high adventure.Stay tuned!
(Starting to look MUCH better!)
