Medical

needs: Hospital and why I use Facebook (it’s not you, it’s me.)

When she is in hospital, I have bandwidth for her, my dude and my beloved. After those three people, the next in line goes something like this: The Consultant Dr who is treating her, and there are usually a couple of consultants if she is presenting with a medical mystery. Each consultant has an underling who does most of the question asking and is more available for answers, and there is sometimes a baby doctor under the underling.

Somewhere between the Underling and the Consultant is the Nurse actually looking after my girl. I get to see her the most, she takes the Obs, knows where the tea and coffee can be found and holds the pain relief. From time to time, the people coming to take blood, or to wheel my girl away for imaging or bring her food or juice get a special access all areas visa to jump the queue. Then there are all the techs who administer the machines that divine why we are there.

Beyond that, I don’t really register other people. Beyond that, I don’t have a grasp of what other people need to know. Beyond that, if someone calls me it only registers as an interruption.

This doesn’t stop the queue. Family and close friends. The friends of my dudes and their families. The longer we are in hospital, the longer list grows. School, coaches and anyone else whose class we are missing. It’s a wide web of love and hope and kindness.

We are only ever at the hospital because something is so wrong that she needs help. If you don’t have clean undies, a toothbrush, dinner for my beloved, pick up my other dude from school, or send a balloon or flower to the hospital, it doesn’t register with me.

It’s not you, it’s me, scratching about for the means to meet her needs. In this case, a Facebook post meets those needs.

needs: Hospital- what I wish I knew.

Oh! for a time machine that switches out my small acts with streetwise moves I wish I made. I normally undertake each of these small things on auto-pilot, which is why I continued to do so, despite being in hospital with my girl.

I brought my big mama bag into ED.
I knew she was going to be admitted after the merry go ride that is ED and feeling pretty clever for having a hospital bag, I took it into ED. I didn’t realise then that there is no room (or rooms for that matter) in ED. There is only room for her, and the people that help her and the machines that help them do that. There is barely room for me and all my folds and curves to fit in the slithers of space around her. I moved the bag, I apologized for the bag, I shifted the bag and even though I needed the bag much later, I wished it wasn’t there.

I went to the toilet.
This is not a crime but the security in ED meant that after two winding corridors, my throbbing bladder cancelled the part of my brain that remembers the way back. I had crossed some yellow line, a barrier spell and forgot to leave breadcrumbs on the forest floor to find my way back to sleeping beauty. The return trip had me standing in line with waiting families at Triage, searching for elusive eye contact, to buzz me in. My girl was safe and sound, but she was without me for longer than a tinkle.

I went to get food.
It had been hours, and we were waiting for more tests and she was in and out of sleep. From the minute she went down, a trigger for chips, a burger and a shake (not the kale kind) had set aflame inside me. As a not so undercover Olympian comfort eater, I was constantly hungry in hospital so when a nurse said “You should eat, she will be fine”, I took her professional advice feigning indifference to the burger calling me. I pulled the curtain back on my return, bearing all kinds of sweetness and light, to find my girl and her bed had vanished into not so thin air.

I answered my phone.
All the people that loved her, and me and some that just wanted to know, and all the people who didn’t, were calling, flashing, vibrating. All the usual calls that I normally take, some demanding information and consolation, I took them all. I took the calls even though I was wired tight. I took the calls out of habit, despite the worry rippling over the contours of my wrecked brain. I assumed I could engage in my ordinary life and I could not.

I didn’t speak up.
She was admitted late, very late, just before midnight, 11 hours into our stay. The ED nurse rattled off the events that brought her into that bed, brace and blue gown and I remained silent. There was more to say, more for them to know and I was not sure if I should say so.

I had a shower.
In the morning, while she slept, I stretched my crumpled body and found a shower. There is nothing like that first shower. The water rolls down covering me with calm. Elation for someone’s left over body wash, a hospital towel, turning my undies inside out, making me feel fresh-er and new-ish. By the time my tell-tale wet hair arrives at her bedside, she has sunk low into her bed. My girl is surrounded by a gaggle of doctors at the end of rounds. Her panicked eyes settle on mine and with a woosh they are gone, and while I soothed her worry, I realise I didn’t have any of the wisdom they had had come to impart.

I said come and visit.
And they did. And it was too much. And it was not why we were in hospital or what she needed.