Side effects and a timeline

So there are two weird side effects from my time in the hospital. One is the track marks and bruises up and down my arms from the IVs. My right hand still doesn't work right and has a big red lump on top that hurts like a burn. The other side effect is my tongue. It's yellow and blotchy and feels like I have hair on it. No matter how much I brush, use rinse or eat, it just feels icky.

So here's what happened after I was admitted.

Sunday

Morphine, antibiotics, a horrid incident where they poked around in my wrist to get some arterial blood nearly killing me with pain. I'm on clear fluids.

Monday

Nurse Ratchett is a student and decides today is the day she is going to kill me. She makes me get up (I don't want to get up) to get bathed. She unhooks my IV and blood and saline starts splurting all over the bed. It was horrid and she should never have touched my IV. I pinch the top of my nose with my fingers and she says "Are you crying? Don't cry."

"I'm not crying, I just want you to stop the blood from coming out my IV." It was all I could do not to start screaming. Seriously it looked like an axe murder had attacked my bed.

She 'bathed' me by taking a cold facecloth and rubbing my back. Then she took the water away so I couldn't possibly finish what she had started. I didn't want her near me.

She kept coming back and poking me with things. She accidentally pulls my hair. She pushes too hard on my stomach. She scratches my mouth with the thermometer. She tried to re-wire the existing IV by twisting it while it was still in my veins. This should not happen.

Everything hurts. I started getting agresssive. "No, let's wait until someone who knows what they are doing comes back." She's scared I'll tell on her about the IV so she goes away after taping the IV to my arm so I can't move the arm without screeching pain from the tape.

One of the other ladies in my room keeps calling out "Oh, I'm so constipated." I'm afraid this won't end well.

I'm on clear fluids and the doctors won't give me any timeline for going home. "We'll just see how you feel," they keep saying. I feel better. I feel like the nurses are trying to kill me. Let me go home.

They bring me onion soup for dinner. My family has gone home but everyone else's in my room has arrived. I open the bowl and smell the onions and can't stop crying again. I'm trying so hard to be quiet but everyone can hear me.

The intern-doctor comes in the room. She's shocked and doesn't know what to do. "Is this a bad time, should I come back?" she asks.

"They gave me onion soup," I bawl. "I HATE onions. I know it's stupid but it's just....onions."

We laugh together and she gets me to lie down and she pushes my stomach in. It feels better but it's still swollen. She won't give me a timeline for going home. She tells me to ask them for non-onion soup. I sleep most of the day

Tuesday

Nurse Ratchett is back. I hide out for much of her shift in the TV room and downstairs. When she does have to poke me she tries again to undo my IVs -- I shriek. Her trainer comes in and says "You can't work those, only the RNs can work with those ones." I give her the dirtiest look I can muster. It's not mature but it comes straight from that place of "You hurt me. You hurt me a lot and you should know better. You are a bad, bad person."

It doesn't matter, by mid-afternoon there is already a swollen hard lump where the IV is, a bad sign of infection. They will have to move the IV. I don't IV easily and every time they move it it takes two attempts to get it right.

She convinces me to take a shower. Since they don't have shampoo or a hair dryer and since I want to go home soon, I don't wash my hair. They have a little shower room that runs hot and cold water but never both at once. She promises to come back in five minutes. I wait ten and toddle back to my bed still dripping wet and looking for a clean gown. I watch and it takes four days before someone in cleaning picks up the facecloth I left hanging on the handrail.

I call Monika and cry. I call Chris and cry. I call my mom and cry. I call my boss and try my hardest not to cry. I have no news. I sleep a lot.

Wednesday, Thursday, Friday:

The days merge. Chris visits, Dave visits, Tamara visits, Mark visits, my parents visit. They bring me more onion soup and I throw up. Nurse Ratchett doesn't come back.

They have to reinsert a new IV, I flinch and the vein pops and they have to do it again in my hand. It hurts so much. I'm trying to "relax" and the infectious disease doctor comes by and wants to talk about my condition. I'm trying to relax and not talk and she's poking an IV in my arm and he wants to poke my formerly sore stomach.

I watch a lot of daytime TV. The nice thing about having the IV is that you need to sit by a power outlet and I'd sit in front of the TV and ask if anyone was watching the TV and all the families would let me change the channel. Not that there was anything worth watching.

They think I'll get out after five days, that means Friday. No, I have to stay until Saturday. I have a deadline of getting out. I feel better.

They wash the floors every second day and the bathrooms weekly. Can you imagine how DIRTY bathrooms get when washed weekly? Particularly at the hospital. I notice the grunge on my hospital bed. They stop changing my sheets.

The constipated lady in my room starts to go and it gets stuck and they "remove" it. I thought I was going to die from the smell and she was dying from embarassment. She becomes incontinent and two or three times a day she "messes" herself and it takes a long time to clean and it smells horrific.

I start staying up past 8 pm and watch the nurses play facebook and hotmail. I want to play facebook.

I refuse to take a shower. Whenever anything on the IV changes it hurts and needs to be moved. I wash in a basin in my bedstall. My hair is horribly greasy. I don't care, I just want to go home.

The IV ends up in my wrist. For fun put your thumb on your wrist and wiggle your fingers. It doesn't matter how flexible the needle is, I can still feel it everytime I even think of my hand. The top of my right hand is still swollen.

I get on a solid food diet. The bowls smell of onion soup so I stop eating anything from a bowl. I got to the cafeteria and eat muffins. Someone steals my clothes between checking into emergency and now. Everything just gone. There is no lost and found.

Everyone in the room is sent home after a night or two. Everyone except me and Ms. Poopy. I talk to her husband -- she's been healthy her whole life. She hates being here. So do I. But she's sick and by Friday, I'm not.