I suppose this will be the first post on SheThought ever written from a hospital bed. If nothing else, heavy narcotic use (legal) will probably make for an interesting post. I ended up here at the local hospital last week when I was sent to the ER for a CAT scan. I only had one symptom, extreme pain. Intestinal blockage caused by a severe attack of diverticulitis was the diagnosis. For the first few days I simply just dealt with pain. The lovely staff assured me as best they could by saying “we can’t legally give you any more morphine!” I never imagined there would be a pain medical science could not fix.
Still, after a change in antibiotics and a kindly staff, I began to feel better and became aware of something horribly spooky. Hospitals are dangerous places. Despite our skeptic confidence in science and modern medicine, the human element cannot be ignored.
Morphine does weird things to your blood pressure. My slightly elevated normal blood pressure became quite low. Nothing like having your blood pressure taken at night and wondering if 54 is a good number.
Each medicine change is followed by much finger crossing on my part, as I wonder if a new med will be added to my list of 6 drugs I am already allergic to. IVs are carefully watched and changed at sign of infection. The hospital is also filled with lovely older people with the flu or horrible coughs, something that is not exactly a great combination with my current low resistance. My assurance that I had a flu shot was met with “whew.” Even the cleaning staff causes alarms as I wonder if one mop that is a greyish mold color is really just doing more harm than good. Over the weekend visiting grandchildren were parked in the little visitor’s room across from me. One mom was spooning in cough syrup to her kids explaining, “The nurses will kick us out and not let us visit grammie if they hear you coughing!”
What makes you better and what makes you feel better are not always the same thing. Staffing shortages meant that I did not have a chance to shower and wash my hair for over 5 days. While this had no bearing on my getting better, it caused me much mental distress. I wanted to feel clean. I knew I looked like a bad Lindsay Lohan mug shot. My husband helped me try the old camping trick of baby powder brushed through my hair. Soon I looked like Lindsay Lohan playing George Washington.
As skeptics we have to remember that medicine is not just about living, it’s about the quality of how we live. On Day 6 a first year nursing student looked at me and said “would you like me to help you shower?’ She had too little training to do much, but her setting up a shower and walking me there and back was worth as much to me feeling better as all the more highly trained but very busy nurses and staff.
During the day it was the cups of tea, not making me feel badly for projectile vomiting red Jello all over the EVERYTHING, and the quick chats while incredibly busy that allowed me to survive. Strangely, I found the night time nurses easier to endure (“It’s 2am, time to take your vitals!”); the nurses were friendly and wearing funky scrubs with neon chili peppers and able to joke around. I had an actual conversation with someone that took my vitals about how “wouldn’t it be great if there were a drug like heroin that made you really thin, but without all that making you high and maybe killing you?” Trading dieting fantasies with a staff member I suspect might be gay in the middle of the night livened things up a bit.
While too ill most of the time to check the internet, the concern and care of my skeptic friends was a constant source of comfort. A lovely box of Skeptic magazines arrived to be read and then left in the family waiting room. Since all that is there is old issues of “Golf Digest” and “Country Living” I know they will be read. I have to admit a Harriet Hall (Skeptidoc) article about modern medicine was not a comforting read, but I’ll just skip her lovely column whilst in medical limbo.
I am healing. That’s the good news. I am on clear liquids (yes, even the Jello now stays down), and look to go home soon to continue to heal there. The bad news is that as soon as I am healed, I have to come back and have surgery. The thought is that if I have the operation while my diverticulitis is calm I may only need to have one operation, not “the bag” and then another operation in the future. To say the last thing I want is to go through the pain and misery and frankly danger of being in the hospital again, and probably soon is an understatement. The thought of kind staff, maybe some nice cards and pressies (my dear friend Naomi sent me an iPod nano with pod casts, heaven!) will get me through it.
Health care is a combination of science and kindness. It’s the medicine and remembering it’s often a very scared human being that is getting that medicine.
As I am facing healing only to soon go through this again (though I’m told the pain after surgery will probably be less than my initial pain with the blockage) my mind keeps telling me “I can NOT do this!” But I know that I have to do it. Honestly, the hospital refuses to let me just donate my body until after I’m dead.
Did I remember to mention skeptics are so wonderful? No one offers to pray for me, but people DO stuff. Books, magazines, lovely words, just not forgetting me. It felt so good just to be told by my daughter “mom people really are pulling for you.”
I am not an atheist, but the only nurse I do not get along with was clear in his disapproval of my reading choices. He was the only nurse that offered to “pray for me”. I couldn’t resist and asked “Oh? To which god?”
Hopefully this was not too narcotic crazy. Please feel free to keep your fingers crossed for me, pray (your choice of God or gods), or just think of me, and always remember the tiny gestures that make life worthwhile. The small things you do to show that you are thinking of someone can go a long way to making the foray into the world of modern medicine more comfortable and more effective!
This lady is just about my best friend, and her post lets you see why. I was the recipient of late night and nearly incoherent text messages, done under the influence of her opium derivatives, and they brought me a lot of laughs. Even in her pain, she was thinking of other people.
I noticed she did not mention the ‘special photos’ she was sent via text from some of her skeptical friends, so I won’t comment on those.
:D
I hope you are feeling clean & well soon Kitty, I am not the praying type so I will let you know I am thinking of you & hope that your health improves & you feel normal & hope that you don’t go that long without a shower again!
Clairepie x
You seem to be making rather too much sense for someone on morphine – make sure they aren’t watering it down! Look forward to you being on the mend and out of hospital, we can swap morphine stories. (Have you’ve been woken by someone screaming – to find it out it was you?) Take care – a lot of people will be very annoyed if you don’t!
It is wonderful to hear that you are feeling better! You do write quite well for someone on drugs. Maybe you should ask the nurses for some extra, just in case you want a change in tone in your future writing?
<3
So glad you are feeling better. I remember morphine when I had my hysterectomy. You still hurt like crazy, but you don’t always give a shit, until you realize that you still have 2 hours to go till your next dose.
I wish you speedy healing and hope that you can upgrade your diet real soon to something better then jello and beef broth. I do not have pleasant memories of that combination. Does anyone?
There’s always room for jello.
Feel better :)
Kitty, thanks for the email, and thanks for the nice article above. Get well soon, and I also think I don’t want red jello for a while. Hang in there kid.
Wow. I thought that this was a surgery you had scheduled for this year.
Let’s do a little editing and remove some extraneous words, so we can simply say that in the hospital, Kitty looked like Lindsay Lohan.
I’ll take the bold step and say that I’ll pray for you too. In fact, I did. Out loud. In church.
Kitty, get way better real soon, K? Nancy says so too!
Glad you’re feeling better and happy to hear about all the support, concern and care going your direction. And sorry about the budget cuts at the hospital, no fun at all and props to pool boy!
Oh, Kitty, it is SO FREAKING wonderful to read you! We all miss you in chat, and are all… uh… yeah… “pulling” for you.
Ouch. Kitty! Get better. No kidney stone stories will be related for the time being.
But get the operation as soon as you can! Get better!
Thanks everyone. The hospital is filling up with broken femurs and hips. (snow storm aftermath) So I am to be kicked OUT simply because they need the room…though under strict orders to come back if things backslide. Having to EAT instead of a drip is scarey.
Yes this was a to be scheduled operation, so this was a known condition, but the antibiotics I was taking to keep it in check decided not to work…
Jan 20th is the surgeon meeting. Have to stock that waiting room with some decent magazines. Also having switched to oral pain killers, I have come to realise that a giant talking bald eagle that was outise my window telling me about how much he likes eating fish, was probably not real. No I am not kidding. At least it wasn’t aliens….
He WAS real, Kitty. I asked Stephen Colbert if his eagle would come and visit you and talk to you about other things for a while. I’m glad he made the flight in the snowstorm and that you enjoyed it.
Kitty, you must be doing better if you make me laugh out loud. Did you get the slippers?
Kitty, Dear, some of us ARE praying for you! Wish I could do more from across the country. We all love you lots and hope you are much better soon!
I just wanna know one thing: Have you had any Jesus sightings while on drugs?
Those “special” photos weren’t from Ducky, were they? *shudder*
Glad to see you’re well enough to write this. Surprisingly coherent for someone on drugs.
Figures you’d manage to get kicked out of the hospital. We let you out of our sight for 2 minutes…
Seriously, get well, I’m praying for you, and hope to see you back on JREF soon.
*hugs*
Thanks for all the prayers! I have to say, I love them…but only when they are from people that don’t just assume I’m an atheist because I’m reading “Skeptic” magazine (and planting it in the waiting room).
Ellie got the slippers today, and can’t wait to use them again. They cracked up the old people in the hospital.
OK another morphine moment. Someone in the next room was screaming at the nurses “I don’t WANT to be HERE!”. My nurse was giving me my medicine and claims I yelled out “YOU HAVE TO BE NICE TO THE NURSES OR THEY WILL KILL YOU”. (I’m told the man shut up after hearing me yell that, poor guy must have been terrified).
well, you know, they WILL.
Glad you are improving and that your operation is soon! Hopefully that will finish it. Good luck and thinking of you.
Kitty,
You made me laugh out loud with the “You have to be nice to the nurses…” comment. Look on the bright side, better a talking eagle from the morphine than a couple of dozen tarantula-sized spiders marching around your bedroom door from the fever. (Influenza A — I recommend against catching it.)Your taste in hallucinations is much better than mine.
We are studying the digestive tract in Anatomy and Physiology in school right now, so of course an expurgated version of your story was shared. We all agreed that it is a Bad Thing and that you should get better soon. Also, as healthcare professionals, we want you to get a second opinion on the surgery and–this is the big thing–several different suggestions as to *where* to get your surgery. Different surgeons, and different hospitals–specialize in different things and, as in most fields, practice makes perfect.
Love you a bunch! MK
Encouraging news, Kitty. You missed your calling- Should have been a writer. (Maybe a second career?)
And will echo what MissKitt said- get second or third opinions and ask around for the best hospital for such surgery. (I did that when facing cataract surgery due to complications from iritis. Asked my “contact” for “the best eye Doc in New England”. A good move.)
Keep improving and for sure keep writing.
Kitty;
I’m SO relieved to hear you’re on the mend. Ken and I are thinking about you. Was Stephen Colbert’s eagle nice? I hear he can carry on a pretty good conversation.
You just rest up and keep getting better.
Maybe they could use Dr. Novella’s Teaching Company lectures. I got the CDs a couple of weeks ago, and they’re up to his usual standards. I wonder if I can get my friends who really need them to consider them. At least I can “innoculate” my wife with them.
Here is hoping things are better at home than in the hospital. And good for you, putting some decent magazines out there! It needs to be done in my area too. There is only so much of the “Taos Hum” and “Roswell Aliens” that one can take! Here is hoping for a fast recovery. Happy trails!
Skeptic/atheist male nurse checking in here to say I always offer hygene services to each client every shift, because nobody likes feeling like they have furry teeth/face and stinky pits.
. . . and I prefer the smell of roses rather than the product of bacteria feeding on your sweat when I come in to give you lots of painkillers.
Oh Kitty!
I’m so mad at your diverticulitis! My mother had the exact same problem two or so years ago. She waited too long to seek treatment and ended up needing those two surgeries with a five month bag in between. While she hated the hospital part, she is now back to her old ornery self, healthy and symptom free. It sounds like you are getting great care. I hope your recovery is super-humanly speedy and that you’re knitting alien hats again before you know it!
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