Not One of My Favorite Things

A nurse walks into a bank totally exhausted after a 20 hour shift. Preparing to write a check, she pulls a rectal thermometer out of her purse and tries to write with it. Upon realizing that her pen isn’t working, she looks at the flabbergasted teller and without missing a beat says, "Well, that's great…that's really great. Some asshole's got my pen."

(A nursing joke)

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When Julie Andrews sings about a few of her favorite things, you’ll notice that being in the hospital is not on the list! It’s never been on my list either, but Monday, on my way to the doctor’s office to request a quick check-up on some weird chest pains I was having, I turned left into the emergency room and just got back out today. Seems that when an older woman shows up with chest pains, she isn’t leaving until it’s been firmly established that she hasn’t had a heart attack.

Since last Friday, I’ve been dealing with unusual chest symptoms: clenching/releasing heart action, including throwing off a little extra blip, accompanied by severe crushing chest pains that radiated across my back, all of which were announced with a sudden rush of Niagara Falls sweats. Pretty much said to everyone in the medical profession “heart,” but guess it’s not, which is good to know. I especially like knowing that the little pieces of plaque merrily blocking the arteries in the TV ads have not taken up residence in my body. I also don’t have high blood pressure. Of course, I don’t know what caused my episodes, but we take it one step at a time in the medical profession by ruling out something that could kill the patient first, and then not worrying about whatever else could be causing the same symptoms because someone else will—eventually—figure that out.

According to both my doctor and the cardiologist, the symptoms could be gall bladder, so that’s the next organ to be examined, but it will be done as an out-patient, require tons of time and more tests, and then may turn out to be … nothing, after all is said and done.

I did learn through practical experience that waiting for tests is a euphemism for patient patience training; if you are told the tests/procedure/medication will be in an hour, you may assume it is a hospital hour, which is defined as an unspecified amount of time occurring on any given day. Unfortunately, the majority of non-hospital personnel, such as patients, believe an hour means a specific period of time comprising 60 minutes. In the hospital, “in an hour” means it happens when it happens, and if it’s not during this shift, it may occur during the next shift, but it may also happen tomorrow sometime. It just depends.

I did learn that hospital personnel can come and go 24/7, taking blood pressure, measuring oxygen saturation, drawing blood, replacing the IV drip, and I can sleep right through it. When I woke up yesterday morning with a sore arm, I reached over to check it and found the adhesive and cotton ball confirmation of a blood draw some time during the night. My heart monitor went off indicating that one of the attachments came loose, but the nurse just reached under my gown and fixed it without my stirring. The IV drip finally stopped, and the attachment was removed without my being aware of it.

However, wide awake and out of toilet paper is another story: I asked 3 separate people for toilet paper, to no avail, so had to use up the tiny box of tissues that are provided for every room. As I was dressing for the walk to the wheelchair, I was finally able to convince the nurse to restock the toilet paper!

Regarding the whole food issue, suffice it to say that not only was I not fed, but when someone's left-over dinner was finally brought to me last night, following the angiogram, it included jello, pudding, juice, a huge white roll, and a handful of dried beef. Requiring diabetic meals does not seem to compute at the local hospital facility. Nor does the fact that a diabetic needs to eat about every 4 hours as I went 15 hours without food the first day and 24 hours without food following that meal.

I was treated to a bit of humor, courtesy of an embarrassed male nurse who, yesterday, came to take yet another EKG. He was a big guy, somewhat uncomfortable with having to attach the leads to my naked chest region. The direction he gave me was to “raise my chest,” which I did—right off the bed, to be sure it was high enough.

“No,” he said, “raise your chest.”

I looked at him quizzically and confirmed that I had, indeed, raised my chest. That’s when he averted his eyes and pointed at my left breast and said, “no, that. Raise that.”

I laughed and told him he must have missed anatomy class because “that” is a breast—or, for most guys, a boob or tit! If he had wanted me to raise my breast, he should have said so! He did the quickest EKG in the history of cardiology and was out of my room in a flash.

I’m home. Everything seems to be okay, except it does hurt where the catheter was inserted into my femoral artery for the angiogram, but by Friday, that should be good to go and I can drive again. Still haven’t taken a shower as that’s another activity reserved for tomorrow to protect the insertion site, but I have sponged off and taken a really nice, restorative nap.

Mia is curled up on the couch next to me, glad to have her mom back home, and I still have balls of cotton yarn to turn into more washcloths, so life is good.