092 SURGERY

Thursday night I was suddenly told that I was going for surgery the next day.  Doctor Baschu came in and had me sign the consent form and my signature was a god-awful mess as my hands were not working well and shaking.  Not from fear, but from the overall ravaging of my body by the infection.  The shaking has all but gone away after 3 months out of hospital, although the left hand is still close to useless.  I cannot close it completely, yet.

I was told I could not have anything to eat after 10:00 PM and nothing to drink after midnight.  I was expecting to go in for surgery sometime early the next morning.  During the night, I started thinking, not a good thing at this point, and I remembered what Doctor Bashu had said about amputation and started to get worried about what I had signed.

The next morning, Doctor Sunshine came in and I told her my concerns and worries about the consent form.  She went and got it and showed me, scrawled across the front of it in red letters were the words “open and clean only”, which made me feel much better.  I was really concerned with Dr. Buzzkill’s attitude that I was going to wakeup minus a foot, and that I had signed the consent form.

The next task or indignity I had to endure was to have a PICC line installed.  This was performed in my room by a team of two surgical nurses.  A PICC line is basically a semi-permanent IV line, which is threaded into your arm and ends up in your chest in the superior vena cava.  It allows for easy disconnection from your IV giving you more freedom.  It also allows for better “distribution” of medications.  A procedure which normally takes 30-40 minutes, with me took 90 minutes due to various complications.  I’ve always said, when they say that less than ½ of 1% of people will suffer complications or side effects, I’m that ½ of 1%.

PICC LINE INSTALLED

Breakfast came and went with me not being able to eat.  Then lunch came and went with no word on when I was going.  Finally, supper and still no word and I was beginning to think it wasn’t happening.  My nurse on this day was a young guy named “Waylon”.  He spent a lot of time visiting with me and trying to find out when I was going.  By the time his shift change came at 6:00 PM there was still no word.  He did find out that I had been bumped down the schedule by someone who had been critically injured in a car accident and needed emergency life saving surgery.

I had told everyone that I do not handle general anesthetic well.  I’m very difficult to wake up afterwards and when I do wake up, I tend to puke my guts out.  Probably a good thing I haven’t eaten in over 24 hours.  Just as I gave up, at 8:00 PM they came for me and loaded me on a stretcher and transported me down to the operating room.  There I met the anesthetist and told him about my problem.  He said to me, “I’m betting you get severely motion sick as well”.  I confirmed that was the case and he told me that’s why my problems with general anesthetic.

As I was waiting, I was introduced to the entire surgical team.  I have a new appreciation for Doctor Baschu’s attitude.  I had seen him up on the ward at 6:00 AM and here he was about to perform surgery on me at 9:00 PM.  The whole team had been working all day and evening.  Nurses and other Doctors had told me that Baschu is the absolute best orthopaedic surgeon but has a shitty bedside manner.

In any case, at 9:00 PM they started to put me under.  The next thing I remember is being semi-awakened at 2:00 AM and as expected I started to puke.  Gut wrenching dry heaves that hurt my whole body.  After a few minutes of this they gave me an injection of Gravol and took me back to my room.  

I spent the entire day sleeping and then slept through the night.  The following day I kept falling asleep as well as the residual anesthetic worked its way out of my system.  Finally, in the evening of the second day post surgery, I started to feel normal.  That’s 5 surgeries I have had, and 5 times had the same reaction.  Three surgeries on my left knee, dental surgery to remove my wisdom teeth and now my foot.

091 NICKNAMES AND SUCH

So, this was my introduction to Ridge Meadows Hospital.  My care team in Kamloops Royal Inland Hospital was so attentive and doting over me.  I was already missing them and then I get wheeled in and was basically ignored for the first 4 hours I was there.  It was kind of lonely, when I was used to having someone around all the time.  No matter, I’ll just log on to Facebook.  Oops, no WIFI in the hospital and none anywhere nearby that I could access.  So, I logged on by pairing with my phone and using cellular data.  Big mistake as I later discovered, but what did I know.

The next morning a Doctor came to visit and check out my wounds and injuries.  When he found out that I played hockey, he seemed thrilled saying that he is 59 years old and is also still playing.  He was very upbeat and positive and assured me I would be back skating by Christmas.  He also said that he was at the end of his rotation and he would have a colleague take over and visit me Monday morning.  Thankfully the daytime nurse was much more attentive and upbeat than Zoltan had been.  Things were looking up, a shiny new hospital, a private room and upbeat staff, what more could one ask for.

Breakfast that morning was certainly an eye opener.  It came in with a lid over the plate and looking like it was going to be special.  I lifted the lid and while the menu said wheat toast, it turned out to be warm bread.  There was a bowl of cream of wheat and when I tasted it, I swear I used this stuff to drywall the basement of my house.  There was apple juice and a brown liquid that they had the audacity to call coffee.

BREAKFAST LOOKS PROMISING

SURPRISE! NOT SO MUCH

It looked like hospital food was living up to its reputation, until lunch arrived.  Same covered plate, but when I lifted the lid, I was very surprised to see, grilled chicken breast in mushroom gravy, fresh green beans and mashed potatoes.  It was delicious, and I told Renee later it was so good I would have ordered this meal in a restaurant.  There was also a bowl of minestrone soup with crackers and a cup of tea.  A great meal.  Not what you would expect from hospital food.  Dinner was equally good.

SAME COVERED PLATE

SURPRISE! A GREAT MEAL

On Monday morning my new Doctor came in to assess me.  An East Indian lady who was all smiles and very upbeat.  She literally brought sunshine into the room every time she came in.  I just wish I could remember her name, although I had trouble with it even when she was there.  Her nickname became “Doctor Sunshine”.  Just her attitude and upbeat nature helped me to realize I could accomplish anything and that my healing would progress.

By contrast later in the day, I had a visit from the orthopaedic surgeon named Doctor Baschu.  His bedside manner was awful.  He was very negative and such a downer that he literally sucked the life out of the room, and made me wonder if I was even going to survive, let alone get my foot fixed.  He said to me that I must keep the foot elevated as there was a real possibility of amputation.  But at the same time, he said there would be no surgery on my foot.  This despite two other Doctors saying it needed surgery to clean out all the infection.  I nicknamed him “Doctor Buzzkill”.

I was told later by Doctor Sunshine, that Doctor Buzzkill is a phenomenal orthopedic surgeon, one of the best around and what he lacked in bedside manner, he made up for with superb skills.  His son is also a doctor and an orthopedic surgeon and his nickname throughout the hospital and elsewhere is “Baby Baschu”.  He also had wonderful skills, but a much better bedside manner.

Later, my nurse came in to dress my wounds on my feet.  There was packing put into the wounds on my left foot as well as to the wounds on my right.  This consists of a long strip of some absorbent material.  It made me thankful that I could not feel my feet, because even in that state there was pain involved as she pushed it in.

PACKING IN MY RIGHT FOOT

LEFT FOOT PAINTED
WITH IODINE

The purpose of the packing is to prevent the wound from closing over at the top and leaving a crater of infection inside.  The packing allows the wound to heal from the bottom up, before it closes over.  Initially this was being done once per day.  The wound in my right foot took a ribbon approximately 15 centimeters long.  One of the wounds in my right foot was measured at 9 centimeters in depth.

090 THANKS FOR THE MEMORIES

As proof of how fallible memories can be, especially when they are produced in a delirious state caused by major illness or injury.  Compounding that is the drug induced fog brought on by pain control.  I’ve done 8 previous posts prior to this one and thought I had it right.  My daughter Tamara phoned to set me straight on a couple.  She told me that when she arrived with Karl, Lizeth and Stephen that Caitlin was there as well.  She also informed me that Stephen came inside and visited with me that day.  He stayed outside to guard the car on the way back when it was loaded down with all their stuff and my stuff.  I corrected and reposted that page.

I swore up and down and still believe to this day that Caitlin arrived at the hospital on Sunday July 9, but, I was wrong again.  Caitlin confirmed that she was there with Tamara, Stephen, Karl and Lizeth.  She stayed overnight at Glenda’s house and then went home on Thursday morning.  The next time I saw her was when she, Trevor and a friend drove up to the lake to pick up and take my boat home and put it in the garage.

When she went home on the Thursday morning, Renee and Toby went with her.  Renee checked out of the refugee center and got Toby out of the veterinarian’s kennel.  He was not doing well at all.  He did not handle the separation from me well and then the anxiety of being placed in a kennel caused him no end of stress.  He became very ill and for a time it looked like I would never see him again.  Getting home and being with Renee helped him to rally and he is now doing well, despite his age.  He’ll be 12 in March 2018.

While it seems hard to believe that I could have good memories of my stay in hospital, I do.  I have especially had fond memories of Nurse Tim and all my care team.  I also have good memories of some of the other patients I met, including the first fellow and especially so after hearing his back story.  Now, names have not stuck with me.  Even Tim, I did not remember his name until Caitlin reminded me.  I did think of him all this time as Vince Vaughn though.

Once I came off all the heavy-duty painkillers and the sepsis and the fever started to subside my memories grew much clearer as well as my logical processing of things.  I did start to take notes on my iPhone of some of the more noteworthy things, after I got to Ridge Meadows Hospital.  Which brings me back into the whole storyline.

As I mentioned my right foot swelled up and broke open and a surgeon came in and opened two vent holes to help it drain better.  Two hours later, my transfer order came through and I was on the way to Ridge Meadows hospital by ambulance.  I guess the hospital administrator finally got her way.  The first I heard about the transfer is when two paramedics showed up in my room with a stretcher.  Nobody told me or my nurses that I had been transferred to Ridge Meadows to be closer to home.

My biggest fear of the ambulance ride was motion sickness, but they gave me Gravol and I got through it.  I am very prone to motion sickness, and this will come into play later in the story as well.  It’s one of the major and probably the only reason I will never go on a cruise as I can’t see paying all that money to puke the whole time.  I’m so sensitive that when I took a tour of the USS Constellation, the second largest aircraft carrier in the world, I got queasy and it was anchored in Vancouver harbour on a calm day.

The ride was very painful though and every bump went through my back and shoulder.  The first transfer ambulance took me from Kamloops to Hope.  We got there in good time and then sat and waited in the parking lot of Hope Hospital.  It was near the river and while we waited for an hour, the paramedics opened the back doors, so I could see outside and get some fresh air.

Finally, the second ambulance arrived from Pitt Meadows to take me the rest of the way to Ridge Meadows hospital.  We arrived there, and I was wheeled in to a huge private room, which was cool.  Although, I was met there by my nurse for the night, a guy named Zoltan.  He did my vitals, took my chart and I didn’t see him again for almost 4 hours.  In fact, I saw nobody at all and was feeling rather lonely and almost abandoned.  It was then that I also discovered that there was no Wi-Fi in the hospital, so keeping up to date and staying in touch was going to be difficult.

089 ONE

Once I became more aware of where I was and in fact who I was, I began to be aware that this could be a lengthy hospital stay.  I had no idea how lengthy it would become but I had to figure out how to get through it.  The crushing boredom is bad enough when you have mobility, but when you are confined to bed 24 hours a day, it’s tough.  I had my iPhone with me, but didn’t have my reading glasses.  I had them when I left the cabin, but between the ambulance, emergency and my ward, they were lost.

Renee brought me a spare pair out of my truck, but they were an old pair and not strong enough.  When the kids came back from the cabin, they brought along my iPad which made things easier to see.  Luckily, Kamloops Royal Inland Hospital has free full WIFI, which allowed me to entertain myself with Facebook etc.

Early on though, I adopted a line from Shawshank Redemption.  In it, I believe it was Morgan Freeman says, “you get through the longest sentence by breaking it down into days”.  So, I called it my “ONE” theory.  Just get through today.  Don’t think about what is past and don’t look to the future.  Just get through the day.  I had milestones to reach during the day.  Breakfast time, lunch time, dinner time and bed time.  Now granted, those goals didn’t work for the first five days when I was not eating at all.  It held me in good stead throughout what turned into an 8-week sentence.

Tamara, Stephen, Karl, Lizeth, Mat and Bridget had a good 5 days visit at the lake.  They made use of my boat for wakeboarding, tubing etc.  What impressed me the most, is that they did not take advantage of the fact that I was not there to take control.  None of them has their boat licence, and even though they could have risked it and taken the boat out, they chose to get my neighbour Perry to drive for them.  I couldn’t be more impressed.

As I was taken away so quickly, I had absolutely no chance at all to pack up my things.  Left in the cabin was all my camera gear, clothing, DVD’s, tools etc.  In addition to having fun, the kids all spent time packing up all my things and squeezing it all into Karl’s, Mitsubishi Lancer.  This in addition to all their gear as well.  When they left the lake, they dropped in to the hospital for another visit.  Stephen stayed behind with the car, because they did not want to leave it unattended with all that expensive camera equipment and other electronics inside.

My iPad has the electronic edition of all the Harry Potter books and I have a tradition of reading that series every summer while I’m at the lake.  In this case I did it while lying in my hospital bed.  I flat out forgot that I had the ability to watch TV on the iPad, and Kamloops hospital does not have rental TV’s.

Ten days in, my shoulder suddenly started to feel better.  It wasn’t better, but it hurt a lot less.  Enough so that I could eliminate pain killers completely.  I still couldn’t get out of bed and move around though.  Physio did come in and try to get me up, but it didn’t go too well.

While lying in bed one day, I was looking at my right foot.  Yeah, I know, I was bored for sure.  I was literally watching it swell.  There was no reason that I was aware of, for it to happen.  I was diagnosed with more diseases than I knew what to count.  One Doctor diagnosed me with gout which is what he said was causing my foot to swell.

MY RIGHT FOOT AS IT STARTS TO SWELL

I was also diagnosed with diabetes, which turned out to be true and in fact my blood sugar was so high they were giving me insulin injections 3 times a day.  I was also getting injections of blood thinners everyday into my very ample belly.  I had so many blood samples taken, I’m surprised I had any blood left.  My arms, hands and belly for so full of bruises, I looked like I had been beaten.

Back to the foot swelling though.  I watched my foot swell and saw a big “blister” appear on the top.  I mentioned it to one nurse and said, “doesn’t that look more like an abscess that needs to be drained, rather than gout”.  As soon as I said it, it broke open and pus was leaking all over the place.  They put an absorbent pad under my foot and it drained the rest of the afternoon and all night.

088 MISTER FOLEY I PRESUME

By now I was more awake and less drugged and was able to greet and remember visitors.  Tamara and Stephen had been due to come up on Sunday, but Renee phoned on Saturday evening and told them what had happened and to not come up, because there was no way to get them to the cabin and no place to stay in Kamloops.  Tamara was very upset by this as she had already purchased their Greyhound tickets.  Unfortunately, they went unused, but I later gave her the money for the unused ticket.

Karl and Lizeth were going to continue with their plans to go up to the cabin and agreed to bring Tamara and Stephen with them.  They did so and on Wednesday afternoon, Tamara, Stephen, Karl and Lizeth stopped in to see me.  It was a welcome sight to see all of them.  I was confined to the bed because I had tubes running in and out of me all over the place.  Not too mention the pain in my shoulder keeping me pretty much immobile.  After a long visit, they all departed and headed up to the cabin.

I had an oxygen tube in my nose, I had an IV in my left arm and in the back of my left hand.  I had another in my right hand.  My left hand was pretty much useless at this point and I could not even bend my fingers.  I was making out well with just my right hand.  Until it was rendered useless as well, so I was now helpless.  So much so, that I couldn’t even use the urinals that they provide you with, and I used those a lot.  Between the IV’s and the 4 or 5 liters of water I was drinking every day, it had to go somewhere.

That’s when the fateful decision to introduce me to Mr. Foley was made.  Of all the tubes I had, this was by far the worst.  I wish they had done it to me when I was unconscious.  A Foley, is a catheter for those not in the know.  It consists of a large bag and a tube the diameter of a garden hose, or at least that’s what it felt like.  They shove this thing in the end of my penis and into my bladder.  Except, they couldn’t get it in.  It took 10 different tries, with 10 different nurses before they finally achieved success.

That son of a bitch hurt like hell.  I’m sorry for the language, but it did.  On the bright side, I joked around with the kids saying, hey I may have a tube in there, but I had 10 nurses playing with my willy.  Unfortunately, it wasn’t in a good way.  The Foley is designed to empty your bladder on a constant basis, so you don’t have to worry about trying to use a bedside urinal.

The pain of it going in was nothing compared to what followed.  Every so often, I would have to pee, or so I thought.  In fact, it was happening all the time, except my bladder would go into spasm and I felt like I was giving birth, through that tiny little opening.  When it would happen, I would just say that I was peeing.  Except, I wasn’t, and the Doctor finally explained how it worked and what was happening with the spasms.

The days went by and I had a visit from Glenda and Ron again.  They live in Kamloops and are our next-door neighbours at the cabin.  Apparently, I looked a little more alive than when they first saw me, and we had a long visit.  It was so nice of them to take the time to come and see me.  They live in Kamloops are battling their own problems but still came to see me.

On another day another cabin neighbour who lives in Kamloops came to see me.  Clive, whose cabin is on the other side of Glenda’s cabin, is a retired Kamloops Fire Captain, and over the years we have kibitzed back and forth.  He was fond of saying, “they issued you a gun and gave me a pillow”.  Clive was there for a couple of hours just chatting and it was a welcome relief to the boredom of my lengthy stay.  I had no idea this was just the beginning.

Finally, I got a visit from Perry and Teri.  More cabin neighbours.  We always meet up and help each other out at the cabin and they had been due to arrive the same day as Renee, except they didn’t.  I finally phoned to make sure they were ok.  They had been delayed, but finally arrived on Sunday, only to discover that I was nowhere to be found, as I had been taken to hospital the night before.

087 RADIOACTIVE

I got a little ahead of myself with the last paragraph.  The surgeon did the drainage incisions on my last day there, but that was after I spent two weeks in Kamloops.  I started off in a semi-private room with a room-mate who always kept the curtain closed and was not very friendly, neither to me or the care team.  I didn’t care if he spoke to me or not, but I really didn’t like that he would hurl abuse towards the nurses and care aides.  I assumed that he was just another junkie.  Shows why you don’t make assumptions.

I was told by one of the nurses, when he was out of the room, that he was a young fellow, 20 years old who had been T-boned in an intersection by a drunk driver.  The impact shattered his pelvis and lower spine leaving him a paraplegic and confined to a wheelchair.  He was in constant excruciating pain and ever few months or so over the past two years had to be readmitted to hospital due to his skin breaking down and causing huge ulcers on his butt and thighs.  So, he was a little bitter.  I was suddenly transferred out of that room and as I was being wheeled out, he called me by name and wished me luck.  First time he had spoken to me and I was surprised he knew my name.

From there I went into a 4-person ward and I found out it was for infection protocol.  They weren’t sure what infection I was harboring and didn’t want to risk me cross-contaminating the young fellow.  In the new ward, I was with 3 other people who were all fighting major MRSA infections, which is what they thought I had.  When the tests came back three days later, they had ruled out MRSA on me and immediately transferred me to another two-person ward.

There I was teamed up with a woman who had lost her leg due to smoking and the resultant narrowing of the blood vessels in her leg.  She and I hit it off and we would chat and visit when we were feeling up to it.  If not, the curtains would be closed.  I had a few setbacks where the sepsis tried to reassert itself and they would hammer it with different types of IV antibiotics.

My shoulder would continue and while I tried to wean myself off he heavy duty drugs, there were times that I was left begging for it.  Nobody could figure out why it was hurting.  I was taken down for x-rays and they would come back negative.  Then I would get taken down for an ultra-sound which was also negative.  Finally, they did a tap of the shoulder joint, which consisted of a large bore needle which looked like it was two feet long.

It wasn’t really, it was maybe 4 to 6 inches, long enough to reach the center of my shoulder joint.  They jammed that thing into my shoulder and sucked out some of the fluid.  If I thought my shoulder hurt before, that needle made me scream in pain.  The purpose was to see if there was any infection in the bursa fluid.  There wasn’t and to this day, nobody knows what was wrong with my shoulder.  It still hurts a lot when I move certain ways, but it is much improved.

In total I had three x-rays of both of my feet, 2 CAT scans of my feet, two ultra sound on my feet, two x-rays of my shoulder, one ultra-sound and a joint tap.  I had two x-rays of my left hand, which had become totally immobile.  I also had an x-ray and ultrasound done on my left knee which had also swollen up.  As I said earlier, I’m surprised I didn’t glow in the dark.  These tests were all done in the two weeks I was in Kamloops, there would be more after my transfer.  One reason I was worried about the transfer of rooms, was that I had such a great care team and I didn’t want to lose them.  It turned out though, I was still on the same floor, so I kept the same team.

By now I was conscious and had weaned myself off the major, heavy duty pain meds and had dropped down to Tylenol 3’s and was more capable of having and remembering visitors.  I’ll get into that in the next segment.

086 A WEE GLIMMER OF HOPE

I don’t know if it was survivor’s guilt or depression or what it was, but a darkness settled over me and I almost wanted to give up and just slip away. I had to consciously and with determination, fight that feeling. The pain in my shoulder was not helping at all and I kept having to be taken for various tests.  I was unable to move on my own and they would strap me into a patient lift to move me onto a stretcher to take me for x-rays, CAT scans and ultrasound tests.  I’m surprised I didn’t glow in the dark from all the radiation I absorbed.

NOT LOOKING OR FEELING
TOO WELL HERE

The patient lift, or as I called it, “The Crane” caused me intensely new levels of pain.  No amount of drugs could help that.  Not injections of freezing or painkillers would do it.  I just toughed it out as best I could and cooperated in every way possible.  I never complained, I just wanted to help my care team, as they were helping me.  I always worried if I was being a pain in the ass and felt guilty anytime I was forced to press the call button.  I even asked the nurses if I was annoying and they told me I was amazing, a model patient and a pleasure to look after.  That made me feel better.

There was an underlying worry among all of them that they were going to lose me as I was still in extreme danger of slipping over the edge.  The danger was all too real, and in some cases of sepsis, no amount of anti-biotics will work.  Apparently, I was fortunate as I am still here, but it was a complete unknown at this stage.

Food was something I did not want at all and I went 5 full days without eating a thing.  At lunchtime on day 6 Nurse Tim, who I greatly respected, got mad at me and gave me shit.  He told me if you want to get better you must start eating.  He then sat down and began to feed me and stayed until I finished the meal.  I can’t even tell you what that first meal was, but I ate it all and I started to feel somewhat better almost immediately.  Better is a term I use loosely here as I was still in extreme danger.

FEET ROUGHLY THE
SAME SIZE

To illustrate the difference between medical personnel and bureaucratic administrators, I had the hospital administrator come into my room within a few days.  I’m still extremely sick and heavily drugged and she’s asking where I live and preparing to have me transferred closer to home.  As she left my room I heard my nurse and a Doctor arguing with her.  She’s wanting to transfer me, and they are trying to explain to her that I am still touch and go and too sick to move unless by helicopter.

She wasn’t prepared to spend that kind of money and said it would be done by ambulance.  Things were getting quite heated outside my room and I heard the Doctor yell at her that if you move him now, you will kill him, and it will be on your head.  I guess the Doctor must have won that argument as I ended up staying two weeks until I was much more stable.

Initially when I was brought in, it was my left foot that caused my sepsis with the skin off my big toe and the ball of my foot.  The photos show both my feet at relatively the same size.  Very quickly however, my right foot began to swell for some unknown reason and I was being told it was gout.  There was mention made of Charcot Foot.  I literally was diagnosed with so many diseases and disorders that I couldn’t keep track.

In any case my right foot swelled up like a balloon to about three times its normal size and one afternoon as I was looking at it a giant pus bubble formed.  I pointed it out to the nurse and said, “doesn’t that look more like an abscess that needs to be drained?” and as I said it, the bubble burst and started draining.  They put an absorbent pad under it and it drained for the rest of the day and all night.  The following morning, a surgeon came into the room and put two small incisions in my foot, one at the top and one at the bottom to help it drain.