Lost Its Luster

Inspirational song: It's My Party (Lesley Gore)

I needed a lot of round the clock support over the last week, but I think today I am officially ready to take my ball and go home. I have been through a constantly changing cast of characters, some nurses and techs who were endearing, and some who seem to treat me like I am the one responsible for the critical failures of communication in their system. I don't know who answers the call button in the afternoons, but when she says "okay I will let your nurse know," she doesn't really mean it. Two days in a row, I had painful crises, and I am absolutely certain it was the same voice on the speaker in my room. The first one (discussed at length yesterday) caused me a major medical setback, with my pain wildly out of control, my fever spiking, and a very confusing change of personnel that was never explained to me. This afternoon, I finally had proof that my intestines were successfully reattached, but in order to take care of the sense of urgency it created, I needed to be released from my bed. I was plugged in to compression socks all week, and try as I might, I couldn't reach them to yank them free myself. I rang twice and asked for help to go to the bathroom, and at the fifteen minute mark, I tried to pull them loose myself and failed. At the twenty minute mark, a nurse I didn't know came out of a room across the hall, and since I was sitting up, I could see her clearly. I called out in a panic, "can you please help me? I'm about to have my first bowel movement in a week," and she waved me off and said she was working with someone else. But seconds later, my tech came rushing in the room, like she heard my cry. It was physically and emotionally traumatic, and I was upset for over an hour. My nurse came in not long after, while I was still shaking and upset, and starting to notice that my percocet had completely worn off right then, and she acted like I was being high maintenance and unreasonable. An hour later was shift change, and both nurses spoke quietly in the hall for a while before they came in to meet me. In the conversation, I made reference to the incident without assigning blame to anyone, but both nurses looked down their noses at me like I had just farted in church.

I consider myself a very understanding woman. I know I am not the only person here, and to some extent I have to wait my turn. But there is only so far down the queue I am willing to fall more than once. When I learn that my requests are being outright ignored, I stop having compassion for how hard the nursing profession is, and I start wearing the mantle of pushy bitch with confidence. Lucky for me, so far every night shift person has been gentle and cheerful. I think there is an excellent chance I will go home in the morning. I just have to make it through one more night here. I've been here long enough, I am afforded a little autonomy. It might make the next eight or ten hours bearable.

The man has started customizing our guest room for my transition space. He removed the box spring from under the mattress (and cut more slats to support it) so that the bed sits closer to the ground. The sheets were freshly washed, so of course the Minions walked all over the bed to sprinkle it with fresh cat hair. I'm ready to be back with my crew. Rabbit is the best nurse I know. She will never leave me in pain for hours. She'll drape her belly across my wounds and purr until it heals. The man will have more energy to devote to me when he doesn't have to drive an hour each way to check on me. I can't think of a single good reason not to move on to the next phase of my healing.