094 RAMP IT UP

Toby had a really hard time in Kamloops and was literally going downhill quickly and then Renee took Toby home with Caitlin.  He began to rally immediately being with Renee and in his home surroundings, but he was having real trouble with stairs.  This is where Robby Christensen comes in.  Renee determined that a ramp up the backstairs would help him.  I made some calls from the hospital and after trying several other people, Robby came over to the house with his wife Tracy and they and built a ramp for Toby to get up the stairs.  It works marvellously well, and Toby can get up and down the stairs.  I owe them a Keg Dinner as a thank you.

Of course, it means he can’t get up the stairs to cuddle on the bed and Renee started sleeping on the couch, so she could be close to him.  This has continued even after I have come home.  When Renee is here, she sleeps downstairs on an air mattress and I sleep in my own bed.  During the week when she’s not here, then I sleep downstairs in the recliner.  Just because, if I manage to get down onto the mattress, I can’t get up again.  At least not yet, anyway.

PRE-SURGERY LOOK

 The physio rehab people kept coming in and wanted to get me up and moving, but being under strict Doctors orders for no weight bearing on my foot, I was stuck.  I really wanted to get up and I kept asking them to get clearance from the Doctor.  He never gave it.  What we settled for was a series of bed exercises using large rubber bands.  I subscribe heartily to the Mythbusters motto of “If it’s worth doing, it’s worth overdoing, and I did.

I was supposed to do 1 set of ten arm raises once or twice a day using the therapy bands for resistance.  Well, I was doing 6 sets of ten, 5 times a day and ended up reinjuring my left shoulder.  I hurt it bad enough that I had to stop, and I was back on major painkiller injections.  Of course, narcotics have some serious side effects, one of which happened to me.

During this time, I experienced something I have never had happen before in my life.  I became constipated (I told you I wasn’t going to pull any punches here).  If anything, I have more problem in opposite direction, than this.  Narcotics tend to make you constipated, especially if you aren’t moving around and mobile.  This is something I don’t want to experience again, it was so painful that I literally begged for an enema.  Also, a first for me, but it worked.

So again, I was lying in bed with my shoulder in agony and unable to move around.  Thankfully, it only lasted a couple of days and I didn’t need the injections for long.  Some anti-inflammatory drugs really helped.  So, did the ice packs that I lived with constantly.  It’s kind of funny really, that the most pain I experienced throughout this entire ordeal was from my shoulder and my butt.  The more major injuries were to my feet and I could not feel them.

ONE WEEK POST SURGERY

Shortly after this ordeal, I was transferred from my private room into a four-person ward.  It didn’t start well.  There was a guy next to me who never stopped complaining and was abusive towards the nurses and care aides.  Across from me was a woman, who could have been this guy double.  She would sleep a lot during the day and then be awake most of the night.  She would constantly ring her call bell and if a nurse didn’t respond in less than a minute she would start to fake cry and start yelling.

The third person in the room was a guy who was nicknamed “The Wanderer”.  He was up all night and wandering around the ward.  He used to walk past my private room and stare in at me.  Now, I was his room-mate.  I was fast asleep one night at 2:30 in the morning when I felt a presence and woke up, to see “The Wanderer” standing next to my bed and fiddling around with my IV pump.  I hit the call bell for the nurse and asked him what he thought he was doing.  I used much stronger language than that.  He said he was fixing it.  The nurses and security led him out of the room and down to the nurses’ station where he was sat in a chair and put in restraints, since it was threatening behaviour.