From 9 West with love....

Thursday morning came, Dr C, the resident was in and checked on me. All systems were go... except peeing. What in the world?  I did not have this trouble in TN. Katrina was eager to help me and since I had permission to get up it would be my first attempt to get to the bedside commode. I was all for it. Well my mind was, my body- not so fast! Katrina and an NA came to my room and literally worked with me for a solid 30 minutes to sit, get to the side of the bed. My body wasn’t not cooperating. I kept getting light headed and nauseated. We kept trying. Up on my good foot, turn and bam. Lights out. I woke up back in the bed and had one nurse that I think wanted to beat my ass. To hear her tell it she literally threw me back in bed. Lesson: DON’T scare or piss off Katrina. Nonetheless she left me in my bed with my head down. I felt like I was going to slide right out out the top of my bed. Honestly though I love Katrina. She is a compassionate, caring and a high quality nurse, and she took excellent care of me. I appreciate her for basically telling her boss that she would be my nurse and ensuring that I got to 9W where the staff knows how to work with hip patients.

I think PT came by Thursday but they were like uh no thanks.

Let me tell you about my other nurses, aides and staff I encountered during my 9 West adventure.

My night nurse for three nights was Shelby. She and I bonded over my Kermit doll and my inability to pee. She is also a very skilled nurse and I think I made a new friend while in her care. We laughed plenty at night. I tried being a good patient and not cause them extra work. If it hadn’t been night shift and I needed to sleep we probably could have chatted more.

Tweety- the dayshift NA. Love this lady. She probably gets complaints from people who want lovey dovey kiss ass caregivers, but Tweedy was exactly what I needed at times. She was the perfect person to help me up because she would help when she needed to then protected me from doing anything stupid. She was not shy to tell me no or tell me to stop scratching my back and butt (for some reason the chucks pad made me itch). She also was the one who put me in the bathroom one day, said sit here until you’re finished with your toileting. She had slid the bedside table in in front of me with a wash pan, wash cloths and a clean gown. “Pull the cord when you’re done baby, I’ll come right back.”

Tweety was also in my room when I told the dietician off. Now y’all didn’t honestly think I was all sunshine and roses during this stay did you? Well Debbie the Dietician wandered into my room one morning to lecture me about my food intake. I supposed I scored poorly on some metric in the chart so she trots her ass into my room and basically asks me what my problem was with eating. Now mind you I’m picky to begin with two days post-op, Ralph and Earl have visited, I wasn’t hungry, the food sucked and I felt like shit. I kindly, well maybe not so kindly, informed Debbie that I would eat when I was good and ready to eat. I told her I was picky and had ordered turkey and grilled chicken for my next two meals. I also asked her what the hell the problem was that it was June and was fruit forbidden? Do you not have cantaloupe or watermelon? I don’t think Debbie liked me so she turned around and trotted her happy ass out to go harass another patient. The next morning I had a banana on my tray, but thankfully my mother went to the store and got me some watermelon. Geez heaven forbid you not eat shitty, hospital food.

I know I had another lady as NA who I really like JP, PJ something like that. She was very nice and good at her work. I know one day she came in when they were short which speaks well of her character. I had two men as NAs. One was formerly therapy aide so despite his small stature he knew exactly how to help the much taller me. The other guy was a young black guy at night. Absolutely one of the most polite, gentle and caring people there. He was a float pool staff member.  There was one not so good NA. I’m not sure she knew how to use the bladder scanner. I knew all about how that thing worked thanks to the other skilled NAs.

I had a travel nurse the day I got my blood transfusion. I think that was Saturday. I was feeling worse by the day, no energy and very tired. This might have been the morning my doctor walked in and said, “Wow, you are white.” I know I looked at my palms, showed them to him and said yea, no kidding. My H&H was not recovering from blood loss and two surgeries in 3 weeks, so the blood was ordered. OMG creepy! I’ll share that experience in the next post and discuss my freedom ride thanks to Sara!!!

Next episode: Visitors, Kermit, Sara...