June 18, 2009

12:50 PM
Daniel writes:
The long slow road to recovery has begun. The rhythms of the hospital have a certain perverse logic: Make the patient as uncomfortable as possible with the breathing tube so when it comes out the relief is so great that the myriad other insults seem more acceptable. Get him so mad that he breathes on his own. Let the frustration build to distract him from his pain. He's doin' great! (He's ready to bite your head off! But he can't because there's a tube jammed in his throat)

Cheryl writes:
I woke up every two hours to call the Post Anesthesia Care Unit and speak to the chirpy nurse who must have been getting shit all night from Joshua because she was less than informative...each time I called she told me, without being questioned, that they could not take the tube out just yet, maybe in another hour...finally I told her that I was not calling to ask her to remove the breathing tube, I just wanted to know how he was. He was "fine." Blood work fine, pressures fine, urine flowing fine.

In the morning they had (finally) removed the breathing tube and we got the story from Josh, who was too sedated to give us the full brunt of his anger but here is what he reported to me:
the breathing tube was hanging to the right and causing him to gag, which made his stomach muscles clench and that was really painful, so he needed more pain meds, which of course suppressed his breathing. He tried to tell them and they tried to hang the tube up, it but that didn't work, either. So then someone decided he needed an Xray, which they said would come in 20 minutes, but that took over two hours to get in the morning. He finally got them to give him a writing board which said: "Why do I need an Xray? It's stupid, Just get this tube out!"

I can't judge what was stupid and what was smart, but what's past is past, the tube is OUT, and now he was transferred the "liver" floor in Room 1629 (private room! with a view of the 59th St. bridge which you could see if they'd clean the birdshit off the window) and sleeping nicely, and feeling nauseous with an epidural and a PC pump for pain control, and itchy from the pain control. They say the nausea is from the anaesthesia yesterday. And they are going to split the local and the general pain controllers in order to figure out what's itching, and change the meds to oxymorphone.

Josh says "Can I have some underwear?" (Catheters and underpants? Nah.) Maybe later.

And, for those of you interested in hospital flow, the transfer process was exceptional: two men came in and did two jobs at once: cleaned the room and got Joshua ready to transfer: they wiped all touched surfaces, wiped, detached and/ or replaced all cords, wrapped them neatly to where they were going to go, or stay, put the drips and pumps on a pole on the bed, wrapped the medical record in a rubber band, put it at his feet, and brought Josh in the same bed up to the room where he is now. So no physical transfers from bed to bed. And no double staff to do transport, then cleanup. Very efficient and antiseptic and thorough. Pretty quick, too!

If any of you want to visit, please text message me to arrange it: 650 380-6080
Cheryl