Day 36 – Not much leaking

Wednesday 14th October 2009

I wasn’t going to get excited but my wound seemed to be hardly leaking. The dressing appeared to remain dry until about 4am when I checked and there was only a slight damp patch on the dressing. Maybe St Jude was working after all…

Mel, one of the auxiliary nurses, asked if I would like a bowl to get washed in.
“Am I able to have a shower”, I replied.
“Of course you can”, she said, who seemed a little surprised by my asking.
“I asked for one yesterday but was told I couldn’t because they were only two of them at this end and my dressing would get wet”.
“Rubbish!”, she exclaimed, “so what if there were only two of them, that still shouldn’t have stopped you having a shower”.
“Anyway”, she continued, “we always put a waterproof dressing over your original dressing to stop it getting wet so I can’t see what the problem was”.

My side room was next to the nurses station at the end of the ward, so not only did I hear everything what was going on, but I could see quite a bit. It was a great place for nurses to skive and quite often they would make sly phone calls to their husbands or mam’s either using the hospitals phone or secretly making calls or text messages from their banned mobiles. The nurses station was also a great place for them to do some internet shopping, their favourite sites being clothes and holidays...

Doctor Richard and a male nurse practitioner called into see me. I told them that my leaking seemed to be getting less.
“I’ll tell Mr Green”, said Doctor Richard, “He’ll be please about that”.

Sarah, one of the staff nurses, came to take some blood from me.
“You said you weren’t going to take anymore from me”, I asked.
“I thought I’d give it another go”, she said.
No matter how she tried, she still couldn’t get a sample. She was not a happy bunny and stormed off in a huff to get another nurse to do it.

I still had my arm outstretched when Doctor Zara popped in to see me. She asked what was the matter.
“I’ll be back in a minute”, she said after I had told her.
She returned with a handful of blood sample equipment.
“There”, she said, after she had taken the sample, “Easy”.

I later told Sarah what Zara had done and she wasn’t amused.
“If it’s any consolation”, I said, “she hurt, but you didn’t”.
She was pleased with that.

Zara had popped in to see how my leaking was doing. I told her but she didn’t seem that optimistic that it would clear up on it’s own.
“So it’s looking like another trip to the woodshed”, I said.
“To where”, she laughed.
I explained what I had started to call the operating theatre.
“That’s what I like about you”, she said, “you always seem to have a sense of humour about everything”.
“When you’ve been in here for as long as I have, you’ve got to”, I replied, “otherwise you’d get so depressed”.

I took my new antibiotic tablets about 15 minutes before dinner and felt extremely sickly. I didn’t know whether to ask for a sick bowl or just to let my stomach settle itself. I decided on the latter so wetted some paper towels and cooled my face as it had become really hot.

When the lunch trolley came, I didn’t feel like eating so kept refusing each nurses offer of food. Lisa, one of the staff nurses, was taking no for an answer so I explained about feeling sick.
“Are you taking iron tablets”, she asked.
“Yes”, I replied, “why”.
“Iron tablets taken on an empty stomach can cause sickness. It might be best to hold back taking them until you’ve eaten something”.

Andrew, the microbiologist, called just before afternoon visiting. He explained that normal blood had a count of 5. When I first came into hospital my count was 400. Now it was 40 so he was really pleased that the antibiotics were working to bring the count down to normal.

He then asked how I was feeling.
“I’m fine”, I replied, “just a little bored”.
“Would you like me to arrange so you can go into the main ward”.
I shook my head, “I’m ok here. It wouldn’t matter where I was, I would still be bored”.
“If you change your mind, just let me know and I’ll arrange it”, he said, “as you no longer need to be isolated”.
I asked why isolated.
“When you were first brought in, we didn’t know if you were contagious so had to isolate you from other patients”.

Charming !!!!!