Being admitted to hospital has been as unpredictable as riding a rollercoaster. Entering my third day of being resident on H3, I finally feel well enough to ponder this experience. I have barely touched my laptop until this morning. I have played Spider Solitaire as an escape from this weird reality when I have had the energy. Mostly, I have been too exhausted, too scared, too frustrated or too annoyed to attempt much at all.
Monday was, generally, a blur of fear of the unknown. I woke with severe palpitations and extreme breathlessness. I lay at home in our bed, with Michael and Sir Chop, willing these awful symptoms to pass. Except they didn't. Showering and dressing was like a marathon of endurance. Then I woke Michael...
Driving the exceedingly short distance to the local doctors' surgery and walking through the door nearly felled me. The place was already chaotic. Only one doctor was in residence, with patients piled up in the waiting room. I really felt like I might die.
An ECG, a conversation between my GP and cardiologist, a letter written and we returned home to Station House. With Michael's help, we packed enough gear for an Antarctic expedition and set off for Joondalup Health Campus. To my utter amazement, I was still more or less upright.
With arrived at Emergency just after two in the afternoon. Triage took my symptoms very seriously, I was whisked in a wheelchair into a cubicle and donned the ubiquitous uniform of the hospital gown.
The pain relief was wonderful. For a time, a sensation of floating and calmness replaced the fear and pain. I was poked, prodded, x-rayed and observed. Surprisingly, I felt strangely secure and comforted. Couldn't have that for too long, could we?
Eight hours on an Emergency bed was a torture test for my arse. As time dragged, I began to wilt. Tidbits of information were drip fed to me. I was admitted but still very much in a twilight zone of what was actually going on in my body. And the hospital was at capacity, so finding a bed for me was a monumental task.
Eventually, we moved to H3. I was rung out with exhaustion. I was settled on the ward, a folding bed found for Michael and finally sleep.
Day 2 was disjointed and jarring. Medications had been stopped with little explanation. Was I moving to the Telemetry Unit or to H4 or was I staying where I was? A trio of junior doctors attended my bedside, asking questions, flipping through my file and woefully unable to answer my concerns. Was an Atrial Septal Defect of 13 millimetres considered large? What was happening? What was the plan?
The pharmacist visited, tut-tutting at the state of my drug chart. Apart from the standard four hourly obs, I barely saw anybody else. I showered, divesting myself of the bloodied and dirty hospital gown and dressed in a clean nightie. We realised Michael had run out of one of his drugs and didn't have a repeat script. In a hospital full of doctors, as a boarder, he was unable to obtain one,
I found a local GP clinic and made him an appointment. I also signed a pile of other repeat scripts so he would be able to get all his meds. I asked him to shop for a packet of raw sugar, some teabags and jelly beans. That flurry of activity sent me into another oblivion of exhaustion.
A black comedy of errors followed. He couldn't find the clinic and was half an hour late. After about ten minutes of frantic interaction using my phone's Google maps, I was able to lead him to the destination. I rang the clinic and explained the situation. He was finally seen and left clutching the precious prescription. Shopping was a rather hit and miss affair. He arrived back with my tea bags, clumpy brown sugar (instead of raw), no jellybeans and only two of the medications he actually needed. He tried to feed the meter in the carpark with the card that had no money in that account. After changing to the card that did have funds, the ticket machines in the carpark gave up the ghost completely...The hospital reception advised him to try to pay for parking in the morning.
In the interim, I was seen by one of the more senior doctors in the cardiology team. He was personable and far more knowledgeable that the flurry of young doctors I'd seen earlier. A transoesophogeal ultrasound (tube down my oesophogus to look at my heart from the top under sedation) was going to occur on Thursday. Then, I would have to wait to see Professor Jenny Deague at the end of February as the operation to close my Atrial Septal Defect had to be booked as an elective procedure. Why? Because, that's why...
A final excitement was the return of chest pain when I decided to attempt a walk to the kitchen with Michael. I was ordered back to bed, stabbed twice by the After Hours on-call doctor and ECG-ed. By seven thirty, I'd had enough and gratefully sank into sleep.
And so to the Third Day. I woke at five-thirty for observations and another ECG. I have been awake since then but am slowly fading once again. I woke Michael out of a deep sleep to feed the carpark meter. I shall last until breakfast but then I think I will need a morning snooze. I just wish this endless fatigue would ease.
Being able to write without appalling spelling mistakes and punctuation would be an added bonus. Stay tuned for the next installment!
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