Hospital Survival

Within the day, I was loaded up on more drugs and then had a group of doctors sticking me with syringes to draw off as much excess fluid as possible. This, they hoped would allow a useful MRI. I do recall hearing the phrase that “this wouldn’t hurt a bit.” HAH! Imagine having a five inch long needle directed into your stomach. Do you think it might hurt even just a little? Since no one explained how this might hurt or what was involved when they stuck a the five inch needle in your my stomach, my addled mind created its own scenario for what was happening to me. This was my first experience with a metaphysical component of operations. None of the doctors told me what was involved, so my mind convinced me that I been moved to a local park and medical students were practicing on my immobile body. I was sequestered in the trees and I couldn’t talk. It was like being imprisoned in your own body undergoing unusual medical experiments (Twilight Zone music, please). I felt if I could only raise my head I would be able to see the hospital from the operating table through the parks trees. My mental acuity at this point was almost non-existent. My family was worried that I was making less and less sense, and they were treating me more and more like a child, with simple instructions and the removal of any dangerous equipment such as cell phones or glasses. The operation to try and aspirate the fluid was both painful and a complete failure. Very little fluid was removed from my system. The doctors decided on a much less invasive technique, where I would be loaded up with antibiotics to combat the infection and diuretics to remove the fluid. One thing did occur, when they attempted to aspirate my hip, they scraped the bone and found an infection. When this infection was cultured, it was determined to be staph (probably MRSA- the flesh eating variety). They began immediate treatments with heavy duty antibiotics. It wasn’t until much later that I understood the limitations associated with this kind of treatment. (Since they had not discovered the source of the infection, there was the chance that they would miss the underlying cause of my disease.) The addition of lactulose meant that I had now been given a laxative without any ability to move to bathroom. This meant many a panicked call to the nursing staff for assistance, always without time to get to the bathroom. 2nd Recipe for Disaster •Take one patient unable to walk •Feed them a laxative •Watch the area between the bathroom and the bed for surprises •Laugh outside of the room