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.

093 AWAKE? REALLY?

The next day, I woke up fully, sort of, with a soft cast on my foot and under instructions of total bed rest and no weight bearing.  I also had to keep my foot elevated, which essentially left me flat on my back.  This literally meant I was confined to bed for everything, eating, sleeping, awake and bathroom duties.  I pretty much had been for the past couple of weeks anyway, because I couldn’t get up.  Of course, peeing had been taken care of by Mr. Foley, but doing the major business required a bedpan.

SOFT CAST, POST SURGERY

Using a bedpan is downright uncomfortable and at times painful because it digs in in spots and you cannot get comfortable.  The first time I used one, was kind of embarrassing, but after a few more times, I commented to the nurse, “I have not got a single shred of dignity left in my body”.  It’s bad enough to do it and have the poor nurse empty it, but she must clean you up after.  Think baby having a diaper change.  I apologized every time to every nurse or care-aide who had to help me, but they all laughed it off.  The comment I heard the most was, “that’s why we get the big bucks”, and then they would laugh.

I didn’t wake up fully until two days post surgery.  I kept falling asleep with the remains of the anesthetic surging through my body.  I kind of suspect that because of my size, they tend to give me a higher dose, thinking I would need it.  Little did they know that I’m a total wimp when it comes to mind altering substances.  The rest of the week was spent relaxing and trying to find a comfortable position to lie in and follow instructions.

MY FOCUS AND RALLY POINT

A week later, I was taken downstairs for “cast clinic” where they were going to put me in a full hard cast.  I begged them not to as I knew that would mean no walking at all until it came off.  I don’t know if my pleading had anything to do with it, but Doctor Baschu opted to put me in an air cast or as they are more commonly referred to as a walking boot.  This made it much easier to keep track of the healing of my incision and to change the dressings.  I was still on total bed rest, but there is a light at the end of the tunnel.

MY WALKING BOOT, EXCEPT I COULDN'T WALK

The hours passed and turned into days and days turned into weeks.  All through this I kept up with my “one” theme which was focus on the day and get through it.  Don’t look back, although that was hard as I was constantly having to relate the story of how I came to be here.  Don’t look forward as it causes time to slow down.  I had milestones that I looked forward to each day.  Breakfast, even though it wasn’t the greatest, lunch and dinner.

LOOKING LIKE A GRIZZLED VETERAN

It was always great when I got visitors.  Renee came almost every day for what I nicknamed “drive by visits”.  She would bring me fresh fruit and later a clean T-shirt every day, when I started wearing clothes for physio.  She didn’t stay more than a few minutes as the weather was very hot outside and with Toby in the truck, we couldn’t risk it.  Caitlin came at least twice a week, and Karl came once a week.  Mixed in were surprise visits from an old work mate and hockey friend Robby Christensen and his wife Traci.  They would play an important part later.

I also got a visit from an old academy classmate in Wayne Cope.  We used to carpool to the academy together.  He brought me a big bag of Burger King food which I couldn’t eat because of my newly diagnosed diabetes.  Neil Thompson, my old corporal and more recently real estate agent came by.  Finally, an old partner I worked with Griff Simmonds who visited twice, including my discharge day.

We made the decision of not bringing Toby into the hospital, even though he could come in.  He is so smart that if he came in once, he would not stand for being left in the truck in subsequent visits.  It made it hard on him because he had no idea where he was.  Renee would have me talk to him on the phone and she said he seemed to recognize my voice, even though it was very weak, and he would give the phone a “kiss”.  I missed him a lot too.

Renee gave up all the shifts she was scheduled to work through the summer to stay with and take care of Toby.  She stayed at my place, because her place doesn’t allow dogs.  She had the use of my truck to run errands, but because of the heat of the day, she would have to do them early in the morning and then get them done quickly with Toby in the truck.

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.