Wife Goes Through The Looking Glass (Part Two) - A de-I Family Health Adventure

 Wife is now fully assimilated in the Other Dimension of Reality that is the Hospital System. It is a world where communication is almost always incomplete and random. It is a world where long periods of inactivity are interrupted by a constant flow of activity. This is a world where facilitating that most important of healing activities - rest - is constantly assaulted by light, sound, and activity. Let's follow Wife's journey through the Hospital Dimension.

I get to the hospital at around 8:30am on Friday. Wife is a bit spacey. She's not had anything to eat. I brought here a cheese sandwich as I had a feeling that her nutritional needs would be lost in the shuffle. She's now been in the hospital for a couple of hours. Nothing has happened. 

At about 9am, the floodgates open. In come people to draw blood. At the ER, they had put in two ports in her arm telling her one was for the anticoagulant drip to go in and the other was for taking blood out for on going testing. However, they tell her they must poke her again in a separate place to draw blood. She tries to explain about the second port but no, the blood people are adamant. They MUST make a new poke. They will do this for the entire stay. (We will finally be told by her hospital doctor almost as she is leaving when we asked why, that it the extra port is to allow easy access to put things in her if a crisis should have occurred. Nice to learn this just before we leave!) There are all kinds of other comings and goings. 

They come in to do an ultrasound of her heart. This takes 30 minutes. The med tech tells us she can't interpret the results. HOWEVER, if she suddenly calls into her intercom for a doctor, that will the signal that something bad is happening. Great. the 30 minutes comes and goes. No call for the doctors.

With all this complete, we are left with a final message that the doctor will be coming and let us know what is going on.

It is a little before 10am. There is this kind of sigh of relief as the intensity of of activity has subsided. Wife tries to get some sleep. We're waiting for the doctor. We will wait a long time. He and his colleague from vascular surgery won't show up until around 4pm. 

We are waiting and waiting, wondering and wondering. We know this is no small matter. But we have not a clue as to what to expect. What kind of treatment will be recommended? What is her prognosis? And she still hasn't been fed! We were able to build a good relationship with her nurse, Anna Kai. She found that Wife had been put on a liquids only diet. Why? Anna didn't know. Those were just the instructions. And it turns out you have to order your food. So Wife finally gets a rather insipid meal of broth, a sugarless popsicle, and juice. 

Wife and I kill time by figuring out how to unplug her monitoring device so it runs on battery and she can get up by herself and go to the toilet. She has lucked out big time in the room. These are converted former one patient suites. They now hold two people because the hospital is desperate for space (lots of old sick people these days...I'm looking at YOU de-I...OLD). There are no proper curtains separating the spaces, just some flimsy portable screens that are in danger of falling over at any moment. The front 'room' has virtually nothing in it. But the back room by the window is grand with a big couch and a separate chair for Wife to get up out of the bed (which is killing her back). I make use of the couch to lie down frequently. Even though I'm hardly going through the trauma of Wife, I'm feeling pretty beat.

Finally, at about 4pm a doctor shows up. This is our 'hospitalist' or our hospital based caregiver. He is of South Asian descent. He is type A+++. It is exhausting to go through a session with him. BUT he cares. You can tell. And he gives you information. He answers all your questions. Shortly after him, we meet the representative of Vascular Surgery. She is equally energetic, though in a bubbly, friendly kind of way. You are not exhausted after being with her. 

We FINALLY now understand the majority of the picture. The short of it was they needed to see if the anticoagulant was working. If it wasn't, they would need to do some kind of surgery to remove the clot. Hence the liquid diet. But no, Wife was responding well. In fact they were lauding all her vital signs (Go Wife and your long efforts to keep exercising and eat right!). So no surgery. And they could move her to a solid diet, the 'heart friendly' (aka tasteless, bland) diet.

Now we finally have the picture. If Wife's blood work (which evidently provides markers that the anticoagulants are working and dissolving the clot) keeps going in the right direction, they could let her out on Saturday.

We decide it doesn't make sense for me to stay any longer. At 5:30pm, I head home. I do a bunch of laundry so Wife can have clean sheets and towels when she gets back. I eat some leftovers. I text Wife to make sure all is still calm at the hospital. Fairly early, I conk out. Hopefully, tomorrow, Saturday, she will be released.