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This chapter will give you a short but accurate detail of the humiliation that I endured during my hospital stay. Let’s start with the beached whale rescue. Now, you may think that this is a gross exaggeration, but I assure you it is the closest analogy that I can make being the truth.
It was one of my first days out of the CV ICU. I was by all accounts not likely to die anymore, but still not healthy enough for home. So where do they put me? The regular ward. I was transferred mid afternoon the prior day and spend rather uncomfortable night. Upon waking the next morning, I pushed my call but for the nurse. To be frank, I had to pee. I was a clock tick off minutes while my bladder screams for release. Three minutes passed, four minutes, five minutes…Eternity when one has to pee. So, I push the call button again and once again I commence waiting. One minute…Another minute. I’ve been waiting for about seven minutes by this time and I crane my neck just hoping to catch a glimpse of someone walking by my door. Don’t get me wrong I would love to watch myself to the adjoining bathroom, but it was not physically possible at this point. Let’s get into a bit of digression shall we?
You remember that whole chest cracked open twice incident from about a week before? Well, apparently after that happens, the patient, me, is not allowed to lift any weight. Even pushing up my own body weight on my elbows and shooting shards of hot spasming pain across my chest. So lifting up to get myself better access of actually seeing someone walk past my door is just not feasible.
Now, you may be thinking to yourself, just roll over like a slug. Be willing to leave a little pee trail as you roll. Ummm…NO! By rolling over my own weight would literally be crushing my own chest as I rolled. Let’s say that I am brave enough to actually roll into this kind of pain, I would only end up in a useless heap on the floor. My leg, you remember the one that was operated on twice and filleted open wasn’t exactly working properly. That is to say I couldn’t feel it at all. So, I really was dependent on others simply just to do pretty much everything including pee. Enough digression; back to the story.
By this time I really have to believe myself. It’s quickly becoming a Defcon three situation so inspired, I quit my call button and then SOS pattern. Three long clicks followed by three short clicks followed by three long clicks. It is than 11 min. and a young woman literally pops her head into my room. Now, I’m assuming this was actually attached to body but just ahead appeared to ask, “Did you need something?”
” Yes, I’d like to pee. Can you please get me a nurse?”
“They’re changing shifts; she’ll be in the sooner she can.” With that she left. I didn’t ever get a chance to ask the floating head to help me herself. She just vanished.
I try to concentrate on something else. I noticed the TV remote, but there is no way I can stretch to get it. I look out the window and I watched the bird hopping on the ground. This is good, I’ll watched the bird. It worked for a while. The bird was hopping about. Pecking at the ground. Granted I still had to pee, but Tweedy was actually helping me take my mind off the immediacy of the problem. Then the sprinkler started. That’s right, drip… drip… drop… Little sprinkler showers. Ahhhh!
I was getting pretty desperate. I was debating on pushing the call button again. It was either that or pee all over myself and the bed. Before he could actually make up my mind, a big, burly, truck driving, logger of a man came into the room. He was dressed in light blue scrubs. To be honest I knew a moment’s hesitation. If this was my nurses and I’m sure he’d be professional and I wouldn’t be the first being female he assisted to the bathroom, right? However, it was a little bit disconcerting. Then walked in another bigger, burlier, and hairier man in light blue scrubs carrying some sort of metal contraption. I thought to myself, “Huh, this does not bode well.” I may be handicapped, but surely only takes one man to help me go pee.
Why were the ZZ Top linebackers in my room? They were not both here as my nurse to assist me in facilitating my bladder depletion. They were here to weigh me. Burly Man #1 told me it was time to get weighed and that I would need to stand up and step on the scale. I’m pretty sure I said, “Huh?”
I told the Burly Man #1 that I was physically unable to stand on my own and I could not put my weight up on that step in because my leg was immobile. Burly Man #1 started talking to Burlier Man #2. I interrupted and asked Burly Man #1. If he would please go get a nurse for me. I told him that I’ve been waiting almost twenty minutes and I really had to use the restroom. Burlier Man #2 silently left the room. Burly Man #1 assured me that he would find someone after I got weighed. Again,”huh?” Then why did Burlier Man #2 just leave the room?
Did not just give this man a Christmas list of reasons of why I could not stand up on my own leg to get weighed? Had I not explain to him that my leg was immobile? Did I not mention that I could not support my own weight much less step onto the scale? Did he not know that heart patients were not allowed to pull themselves up? I had not even yet mentioned that my hospital gown that had come untied during the night and was currently wrapped around my midsection. I was sure to moon the entire room upon actually rising from the bed. It looks like I would have to embarrass myself further and tell the good Burly Man #1 all of this. Halfway through my stuttering explanation of my bare backside and untied hospital gown, Burlier Man #2 reentered the room carrying a sheet with chains attached to the end. “Huh?”
Without so much of an explanation, both men begin working in tandem attaching the chained sheets to rods above my bed. Then Burlier Man #2 lifted the sheet that I had been lying on from the bottom of the bed. He was unmaking my bed. Burly Man #1 placed the sheet that was attached to the chains under the sheet that I had been lying on. They were inserting the chained sheet under the one on which I was currently lying. My legs were dropped. Ouch! The breath left my body. For the leg that I could not feel, I could actually feel that. It was as if shockwaves of searing lightning bolts raced up my bad leg with laser precision to extrapolate every bit of pain available to my receptors in my leg. At least the pain overrode my increasing need to pee.
Now both Burly Man #1 and Burlier Man #2 stood on either side of the head of this hospital bed, then lifted me and tucked their sheet under my own, and dropped my head back to the bed a bit more gently than my feet thankfully.
The beached whale lifted from her resting place to swing in the air is a pretty accurate description of how this must’ve looked from anyone walking past my door now. I’m sure this creates quite a picture in your mind’s eye, but in actuality it’s more terrible than funny. I was more than mortified. This sheet folded my shoulders into my chest; my arms are trapped under my rib cage. This was the complete and utter surrender of my pride to Burly Man #1 and Burlier Man #2. I was immobile. I was in pain and I was embarrassed.
How dare they? How dare they do this to me? I am a human being. Why didn’t they tell me this is what they were planning to do? I had already suffered humiliation upon humiliation up to this point in my hospital stay. I’ve had people move me, bathed me, clean not only the bed but me of both urine and defecation. I had been dropped on the floor, slipped off the bed, and poked and prodded and talked over and down to. I did not need this! I did not want to be hoisted up like an animal has no will-no pride-new dignity. To them I’m sure I was just another patient to be weighed. But dammit I’m a human; I have feelings. Now I ache all over. I’m humiliated above and beyond what is humanly possible to endure. At least I waited until the men unhooked me and lifted me and dropped me and rolled me and left me before I started crying.
It was twenty-two minutes since the first push of the call button and I peed myself. I laid there for another nine minutes. That’s right nine minutes of getting colder and sadder and madder. Thirty-one minutes after my first push of the call button a woman finally showed up. I have been silently crying for a while now. Who cares? Who’s going to notice? She thinks that all the tears stemmed from my urinating all over the bed. Fine. Let her think that. Let her think I’m embarrassed over key and not being treated like an animal. I’d much rather be ignored than have no say over the treatments I have received.
Even writing about this now. I am furious. The rage pulses through me as I remember the feelings of reliving it all over again. It makes me so incredibly angry that I need to constantly remind myself to unclench my job and to stop grinding my teeth as I type this out.
My mom came in shortly after the mess was cleaned. I related the peeing incident and she had a very animated talk with my nurse in the corner of the room just out of hearing range. The words must have been passed on from nurse to nurse because never once did I have to wait more than five minutes after pressing that call button. To be fair, I was not a nagging patient. In fact I only pressed my call button two times after this incident. The first time was again for another potty break the next morning. The second time was because a machine the next my bed began beeping so incessantly that woke me up in the middle of the night. After waiting for when I deemed was long enough, I press the call button so that the nurse could stop the infernal beeping.
Now let’s get something straight, I was not calling a nurse for water or ice. I was not calling a nurse to fluff my pillows. I did not call the nurse simply because I wanted someone to talk to. I called a nurse because I was in need! This I am sure is what my mother was telling that first poor nurse who had to endure the very animated conversation.
The next day, Burly Man #1 and Burlier Man #2 came in the room. However, this stage they were followed by a less hairy, skinny man carrying the chain sheets into my room. Before anyone could speak, I informed all three of them that they would not weigh me that way ever again. I adamantly refused Burley Man #1 entreaty and even Skinny Man’s threat. In fact, I told all three of them to get out. If recording my weight was paramount to this moment then they would have to find a nurse, or help me get out of this bed themselves and onto that scale. They left the room, and never returned that day. I win! In more ways than one.
Later that day, the miracle worker, Dr. Savage, came into the room to ask where I refuse to be weighed. I began the story quite calmly about being hoisted up like a beached whale or cattle for some transportation but by the time I ended my story. I was in tears. He could tell that I was sick and tired of being sick and tired. I was tired of the hospital bed, the noise, the nurses, the x-rays, blood draws, and sick of the same for walls, sick of the strangers coming in at all hours to look over my charts… Look at me… At the chart… Ask me… The chart and ask the same question. How are you feeling? Fine. Time for another digression.
Granted at this time I did not understand that I was a living medical miracle. I do not understand that everyone just had to see to believe that I was still alive. I just felt like one of those sideshow acts at the circus. Come one! Come all! Be one of the few to gaze upon the new mom who scars resemble a roadmap. Whose leg is filleted open, and is so hideous that people of actually fainted at the sight of it., Come all, see the spectacle. She lived she breathed she talks watch this 29-year-old woman use a walker just like woman three times her age.
To put it simply, I wanted to go home. Not to a rehabilitation facility but my own home with my own family my own friends. My own bed and my son, who still doesn’t know his mommy. Dr. Savage promised to release me from the hospital the next day. If we could prove that I would be looked over in a manner that would not cause a relapse.
The next day, Burley Man #1 and Burlier Man #2 entered. However, Burlier Man #2 only carried that metal scale contraption. It was the last day of my hospital stay and I’m sad to say that I haven’t missed either of those men to this day.
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