Day 35 – A message to St Jude

Tuesday 13th October 2009

I was not getting my hopes up but my wound hadn’t been leaking as much during the night. I think it was probably down to the extra padding that was put on my dressing yesterday.

I still think another trip to the woodshed for a washout would be necessary. I made a prediction to myself that I would be home on 2nd November. I would have loved to be right, however knowing my luck I would still be in on the 2nd December….

Seeing has ‘Him upstairs’ wasn’t listening to me I asked John last night if there were any Patron Saints I could ask for help. John replied that there was a Patron Saint of Lost Causes – St Jude. Perfect !

Since I had been in hospital I had had only 2 showers and three hair washes. I could only be thankful that I wasn’t the sort of person who freaked out if they didn’t have their daily shower or hair wash. When you are in hospital, you have to be prepared to be ‘low maintenance’….

Sister Clarke, the Ward Manager, called into say good morning and to ask how I was getting on with my tiger cross stitch. She had noticed it yesterday when she accompanied Kermit on his rounds. That was the first time Sister Clarke had done anything like that. Normally she didn’t have anything to do with patients.

Doctors Zara and Richard both popped to tell me that my antibiotics were changing. Thanks guys but I already knew…

I asked Sarah, one of the staff nurses, if I could have a shower.
“No”, she replied, “we don’t have the staff”.
“But I don’t need any help in the shower”, I replied.
“That’s not the point”, she said, “your dressing will get wet and there is only myself and one auxiliary nurse working down this end of the ward. We can’t drop everything just to change your dressing when you come out of the shower”.

That was me told!!!

I mentioned to my mam that afternoon that my ‘contraband’ was getting low so I would ask John to get me some more when he went shopping.
“I’ll bring a banana in tomorrow if you like”, she said.
That’s not quite what I had in mind….

One of the nurses asked if I would like John to take me down to the little café or the restaurant for a break from the ward. I said thanks but no. I didn’t want to see people in the café or restaurant, knowing that they were able to go home and I couldn’t.

The new antibiotics I started taking yesterday ran out at lunch time. The pharmacy department had only sent enough for three doses – I was to take them for until 5th November…
The nurses were hopeful that they would arrive sometime that afternoon. I had been here before so I didn’t share their optimism.

“Here’s your antibiotic”, announced one of the nurses at 7pm.
She handed me the tablet.
“What about the rest of them”, I asked, “don’t they normally go into my medicine locker”.
“They only sent two”, she replied, “one of now and the other to be taken at midnight”.
She then explained that I was to tell the night staff that I had missed lunch time’s doze so was to take it at midnight.

I mentioned this to the night staff but they refused to give it to me. Apparently they couldn’t guarantee that it would be given to me at precisely midnight. A minute or two after midnight would mean it would be into the following day, and I was only allowed to take them four times a day. As none of the clocks in the hospital were right, what did a couple of minutes matter !!!!

When the night shift nurses were briefed on what had been happening to the patients on the wards, I heard Sarah mention that she thought my wound wasn’t leaking as much as yesterday so was hopeful it would stop shortly.

Could my message to St Jude be working….