Suzanne Carillo

con’t from I Can Survive If I Don’t Have To Do These Two Things

Catheter and IV in place I am wheeled out of the storage room and placed in a hallway. From here it gets a bit blurry. I was taking more and more Dilaudid while waiting in the hallway.

I got the CT scan.

Was placed back in Emergency in a hallway not too far from the nurse’s station.

How I wished I could just pass out from the pain and nausea. No such luck. I couldn’t close my eyes for too long because the dizziness would take over and that was far worse.

My surgeon appeared. She was rushing off to Radiology to get the CT results.

Thank God! I thought. Maybe now I could get out of this hell hole.

Laying in the hallway…for hours. Slowly the stretchers were being taken closer to triage and the nurse’s station. I was moved up right in front of the glass room where the Emergency nurse’s station was. All around the nurse’s station were triage units, tiny caves with three walls and a curtain to pull across the front. All the curtains were pulled back. There would be no privacy here. All the caves were full of other suffering patients. How I longed to leave the bustle of the nurse’s station and have my very own three walls.

We waited.

And waited.

Time passed.

A death march.

Refusing to be rushed despite my silent pleas.

In the evening my Dr. appeared,

“I’ve got news!” She exclaimed in her bubbly perky way.

Hope. I had hope.

“It’s not good news.”

I have no hope. Wipe that smile off your face then if it’s not good news.

“I am so very, very sorry to say that somehow during surgery I ruptured your bladder. I don’t know how. It could have been one of my instruments or when I was burning the endometriosis off of your bladder I may have gotten too close to the organ itself. The first time in fifteen years that this has happened to me. ” It didn’t happen to you. It happened to me.

“So now you will be taken care of by a urologist by the name of Dr. Kwan. He has deemed it necessary for you to stay in the hospital for 7-10 days to see if your bladder will start to heal itself. If not, then he will need to operate on you. Once again I am so very, very sorry about this. Now I will go home and cry.” You will go home and cry but I will apparently stay in this hell and suffer.

My heart sinks. I feel depression pushing my body down further into the iron stretcher. I cannot face the thought of one night in the hospital let alone 7-10.

It is now close to 8 pm. Robert needs to go home to look after Zoe our pug.

One of the nurses taking care of all of the “hall patients” stops and tells me I will be admitted and will staying there.

“Where? What room?”

“Right here.”

“Here???” My face falls.

“In the hallway?”

“Yes. Right here. We have no rooms or extra beds. We are too full tonight. You will need to stay here.”

I can’t stay in the hallway.

I won’t sleep.

I won’t get better.

I’ll get worse.

The nurse explains the only way a bed will open up is if someone gets discharged in the night (it never happens) or someone dies.

What do you say?

What do you think?

Nothing. That’s what.

You say nothing.

You shut up and suffer like everyone else around you.

Dr. Kwan shows up. He looks to be around 30 or so. Fresh faced but serious. He explains that he isn’t 100% sure that my bladder hasn’t been damaged in more than one place. He will try the first method of allowing the body to heal itself, but if by tomorrow my blood results haven’t changed (the bladder is now affecting my kidney function) then he will need to operate. He seems too confident and too keen to get me on his operating table.

I’m reeling at the thought of having another surgery.

I can’t.

I won’t survive.

It’ll be worse.

I don’t have faith that they can heal me.

Robert must leave me now. He has picked up a few things from the drug store so if by some miracle I can get off my stretcher, I will have a toothbrush and toothpaste. He has bought me two books. He knows I won’t be sleeping tonight.

I tell him, “Go ahead, leave me in this fresh hell, I’ll be fine.”

But really I don’t believe that.

I hadn’t properly slept in five days and not sleeping at all might finally push me completely over the edge.

I have been taking Dilaudid and Naproxen non stop for five days. It felt like my body wanted to shut down.

I worried about my sanity.

I didn’t think I could keep it together much longer.

As I turned my head as best I could from the stretcher to watch him leave I took a deep breath. How would I last?

I started calculating the hours. Fourteen hours until I saw him again and countless hours until I left the hospital. I focused on the closest goal.

Fourteen hours.

I started counting down.

Oblivious to the disturbing night that would ensue.

Continued here… “Hell At The Hospital”

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con’t from It Went Just Fine Up Until The Surgery

How I managed to get through the night I don’t know.

Monday morning the Dr.’s office was contacted. I had an appointment for 11.

Robert laid towels down in the car since I was still leaking like the Trevi fountain from my pointy navel.

I had 6 maxi pads strapped to my waist and another towel I held in front of my stomach.

I kept a cold cloth on my forehead trying desperately not to spew. It wouldn’t matter really. I hadn’t eaten in 5 days by that time. Only Dilaudid and Naproxen were keeping me moving.

I was dizzy.

I had sharp pains in my shoulders from the C02 they’d injected into my stomach.

I had unbearable pain in my entire torso. Like my belly is going to burst.

Seriously.

Right now.

My stomach is going to explode all over everything and some alien baby is going to come out and overtake the world.

The clerks at the Dr.’s office seem surprised by my state. And by that I mean I looked like one of the extras on The Walking Dead.

I’m lead into a waiting room.

The Dr. appears about 5 minutes later.

She is surprised.

“It was such a routine surgery. Yes I did lots of work on you, I removed a very large cyst from your left ovary and a very large polyp as well. I had to extend the opening in order to remove them they were so large, but otherwise it was very routine. I will call the hospital to talk to a specialist just to double check that everything is okay and then we can proceed from there.”

Thirty minutes later she finally gets through to the specialist. It is deemed that I need to head straight to Emergency where they will be expecting me and already have orders as to how to proceed.

I am to have a catheter inserted and then have my bladder reverse filled with a contrast dye for a CT scan to see if the bladder has been damaged. I will most likely need to be admitted to the hospital.

One thing you need to know before I go on here…there are two things I asked the surgeon before I decided to have this surgery…will I need to stay overnight in the hospital and will I need a catheter?

No I was told.

I figured I could get through the surgery if I could avoid those two things. These were the two absolute top items on my bucket list of things I never wanted to do in life. Now here I was facing both of my greatest fears without a choice.

My surgeon works out of her own clinic, but the hospital she works with is one of the oldest and smallest in all of the greater Toronto area. In fact it is so old and small that they are building a newer one and will soon bulldoze the other one. The one where they were expecting me.

We get to the Emergency.

My pain hadn’t receded.

Thankfully Robert finds me a wheelchair to help me into Emergency. I can barely move.

I’m rolled in.

Robert tells reception that they should have been contacted in advance etc. but that doesn’t matter. I will still need to wait.

And wait.

Finally after what seems like a million eternities I’m “chosen”. My new id bracelets are replacing my old id surgery bracelets and I am handed over to a nurse to prep me.

When I stood up from the wheelchair to go onto the stretcher it was like three water balloons had broken below me. My skirt was literally soaked and dripping on the floor.

Was.

Horrified.

Embarrassed.

Disgusted.

The nurse wasn’t phased. Some bleach will clean that up…no worries. I’m sure she thought I’d peed.

This prep nurse must have been all of 20 years old. I could have been her first day for all I know. She was sweet and had a lovely demeanour, but as I was soon to learn…utterly incompetent.

I was wheeled into a sort of storage room on my stretcher. It was here that I would have my IV and catheter inserted. They were so busy that no other rooms were left. We had to make due.

First things first…I explained that I was leaking from my belly.

We needed to find a better solution for containing this pink liquid that had grown lighter and lighter pink.

She found some new extra absorbent sterile pads and added about 8 of them. The medical tape that comes in huge sticky pieces was then added on top of that. In the end the result was a bit of a mess, but better than having a bunch of maxi pads taped to my stomach. I hoped it would hold for longer than an hour.

The fact that I’d had surgery only 4 days ago meant I was still bleeding from the surgery. We needed to find a solution. The only one she could come up with was adult size diapers.

I was barely in the hospital 4 hours and all of my dignity was already gone.

I was too sick to argue. Too tired of leaking from everywhere to disagree.

Once the hideous thing was on me I heard her say, “Shoot!”

Oh yeah. She had totally forgotten about the catheter. I was wondering about that but thought she might just forget the catheter.

No such luck.

The diaper was ripped off.

The catheter kit was opened.

It is all meant to be sterile. Organized and sterile.

She had no space and opened the kit in this storage room on a side counter that was full of other stuff. The disinfecting solution spilled all over the rest of the stuff in the kit. Dark brown liquid went everywhere. What a mess.

“No worries. I’m just going to wipe you down with this and then insert the catheter.”

I had my doubts.

The liquid was cold.

I was too sick to look.

She was down there for a good 5 minutes. Rummaging around like someone looking for her lost keys in the bottom of her purse.

“Sorry. So sorry…but I just can’t seem to get this. I need a urine sample and I can’t get anything. I’ll try again.”

Nope.

In fact I think she had missed the hole. It felt like she was in the wrong place.

I didn’t say anything.

I felt like I might pass out. I silently hoped and prayed I would pass out.

She tried again without success. It was decided that she would find someone to help her.

There I was splayed out on the stretcher in the storage room waiting for the next team member to arrive. So this is what they call vulnerable I thought.

A ridgid intense looking nurse arrived with the younger one. I could tell there would be no messing about with this one. She meant business.

A new catheter kit was opened. I was being prepped with sterilization liquid again.

Some guy in a red shirt opened the door to the storage room…sees what is going on and closes the door quickly.

The one nurse turns around and says, ” Who was that?”

The other one says, ” I don’t know, just some guy in a red shirt.”

Seriously? Are you f***ing kidding me?

Apparently my humiliation knows no end.

Ah yes…I think…it just keeps getting better.

Continued here…“Now I Will Go Home And Cry”