The Bloody Doors Off

(continued from “ICU, do you see me?“)

I got no deeds to do, no promises to keep
I’m dappled and drowsy and ready to sleep
Let the morningtime drop all its petals on me
Life, I love you, all is groovy

Simon & Garfunkle

Normally, if I wake up in the middle of the night needing to take a piss, I stumble out of bed and into the bathroom. An easy activity.

When you’re in ICU, with too many damned wires attached to your torso, and an oxygen monitor on your finger, getting out of bed is an impossibility.

Thankfully they replaced the bedpans.

With compostable, biodegradable jugs.

I was not looking forward to this. Hell, I’d been holding it in for several hours because of it. Not that I could miss; the spout was large enough to fit, well, you know. (And ladies, I’m sure you’ve had a similar experience when in the hospital, and I have no idea how you accomplished this. Kudos.)

No, it was the feeling of defeat.

I was bedridden. I’d had a heart attack (or not, depending what hour you asked the doctors), and no way in fuck they were letting me be vertical, let alone use the loo by myself.

It took a few minutes to relinquish control.

I’m just glad the night nurse didn’t come in to check my vitals at that exact moment. Though she did more than a few times during the night. I wore the blood pressure cuff for the first 12 hours. Did I mention my blood pressure was 180 when they brought me in? (I know I could go back and check, but I’m not in the mood to.) I drifted in and out of sleep until the day staff came on and woke me up at 8:00 am.

Breakfast was a fun-sized box of Cheerios, coffee (?!), a banana, and apple juice. (Lunches and dinners typically swapped coffee for tea, and some kind of chicken with rice (or, in the case of Tuesday, Salmon and rice).)

As vivid as Monday night was, which seems strange as you’d think suffering a possible heart attack would make your recollections less reliable, I don’t remember a lot about Tuesday. I remember they brought in an ultrasound machine — twice — to look at my heart and then my left calf (I’d complained of pain in my lower extremity and they were concerned about blood clots), visits from various doctors, residents and their Cardiologist. They told me it wasn’t a heart attack but they weren’t sure what landed me in hospital. They offered (false) hope that I would be going home by the end of the day.

Other than that, and I was bored.

So goddamned bored.

Thankfully, Marlo had brought my phone charger so I could remain connected to social media to wile away the time. I ended up using a crap ton of data, as WiFi was non-existent on the 7th floor.

One memory I will never forget (and this is classified as TMI, but I’m gonna tell it anyway): an hour or two after breakfast, I needed to take a shit. And there was no way in hell I was gonna remain horizontal and use a bedpan.

And there was no way in hell the nurse was gonna let me walk (20? 30? feet) to the bathroom. A compromise was struck: if I could stand and take a few steps, I could sit on a raised chair with a hole cut out of the seat, with a bedpan underneath. But it was to be a few feet from the bed. At least I could face the window, with a curtain drawn for privacy.

Oh right. I couldn’t strain or push. So, it was gonna happen, or it wasn’t. End of story.

Yeah.

It didn’t happen.

Not until the afternoon anyway, when the on-duty nurse allowed me to use the bathroom proper. They even had movable handrails. God, that was satisfying.

They were pretty insistent that I wear socks, because I was still unstable on my feet. As I hadn’t brought any (I didn’t put socks on that day), they gave me a ‘no slip’ pair for the rest of my stay.

Later that afternoon, I got another visit from one of the doctors. A specialist wanted to take another look at Monday night’s scans and the ultrasounds.

An hour later, he told me the specialist had ‘concerns‘, and I wasn’t going home after all.

(Concluded in I know you are, but what am I?)