Regaining your life inch by inch.

Posted by Pointman on July 18, 2020 · 31 Comments 

You may have noticed a certain dropping off in blogging activity of late. This was caused by me being in hospital for three weeks. I went to bed as fit as a fiddle but when I awoke the next morning, I felt as weak as a kitten. My usual reaction to catching flu or something viral is to go back to bed and stay asleep while my body fights the infection. If I sleep long enough, my body will always fight it off.

This time, it didn’t happen. All I did was sleep day and night and on the occasions I came to, felt even weaker. By the end of the week, I couldn’t even walk. Much as I hated burdening an already overstressed health service, it was obviously time to call for an ambulance.

The old nostrum that every story has to have a start, a middle and an end is very practical advice for any writer. You’ve had the beginning and since I’m alive and writing this, then this serves as the ending of this particular tale.

My memories of what happened between those two points is disjoint, fractured, fragmentary and at times hallucinogenic. The boundary between dream time and what I’d see in the brief moments when I’d awaken became blurred. The doctor handling triage at emergency reception gave me a thorough hands on examination and ordered a barrage of tests. His conclusion was it wasn’t a stroke or heart attack but I was still essentially paralised. Paralised is probably not the right word – more like so tired and weary that I could barely move. Not corona either but something viral, in which case – “Get him out of here and into isolation straight away.”

I woke up momentarily in a nice room containing only one bed, though it had what looked like a nice en suite bathroom. Since I couldn’t move, it would be of little utility to me. By this stage I’d a cannula installed in each arm with various bags drip feeding various liquid medicines into my system. When one bag was empty, it was replaced by another one containing a fluid of a different colour. I could get pills down, but only with the greatest difficulty.

My blood pressure, heart rate and temperature were measured on an hourly basis and while those activities weren’t being done, a lot of blood samples were being drawn frequently. I was beginning to feel there was a very hungry vampire secreted somewhere in what is a very large and labyrinthine hospital. I was wheeled out in my bed for a barrage of tests involving various types of scanner which as far as I could see just made a variety of irritating noises when I was either shoved inside one or just being scanned by one.

Having worked my entire life on problem solving, I recognised what was happening – the shotgun approach. You try everything and observe carefully the results of each one. If there’s no noticeable improvement, try something else. If it seems to be working, double the dose. I was finding I could stay awake in the day, which was an improvement.

After a few days in purdah, I was wheeled out and into general population, which is to say a ward containing several men of various ages with various ailments. It was better because at least I had some company, but in my condition, couldn’t interact much with them. There were a couple of old men living in the dementia zone who spent most of the night either wailing nonsense for hour after interminable hour, which made sleeping difficult, or them trying to get out of bed and leave the ward to go home.

They were carefully ushered back into bed until they’d try the exact same same thing 10 minutes later. Over and over. I had to marvel at the patience of the nursing staff. They were well-trained, professional and above all cared. Later on in another ward, a man beside me had just been diagnosed with having a brain tumour the size of a grape. He looked to be in his late forties but was a lot older according to my wife, very fit, cycled 10 miles a day, two lovely daughters and a grandchild. The nurses, about the same ages as his daughters, had obviously been told to keep an eye on him in the aftermath of the bad news and as the three of them listened to him talking about whether it would be operable or not, he suddenly burst into tears in mid sentence. In an instant, all three were over him, cuddling, and patting his back and saying soothing words until he quickly regained control again.

All three had moved as one without a moment’s hesitation.

In my time in what I called the scream ward because of the dementia sufferers, some strange things happened. The first was upon arrival there, I was told I needn’t wear a mask. All the staff did, but none of the patients did. The second, which I hadn’t heard about, was that towards the end of my stay there, they’d backed off the no visitors rule. I woke up to see a man diagonally opposite me had his wife in his bed cuddling him while their two children about 4 and 6 took turns hugging their daddy. Until I found out later about the change, I thought I was seeing things. That would come later. That rule change did a lot for morale.

I felt envious as I’d given orders that I didn’t want any visitors at all and kept my mobile turned off. If it was going to be bucket time, I wanted them to have better memories of me than some wretch immobilised in bed. At times, I just wanted for it to be over. Clean and quick. That night, the screamers woke me in the middle of it. or maybe they didn’t. To this day, I’m not sure which. By this time I’d mastered all the ways my bed could be adjusted and arranged it so I was sitting upright and with the aid of the night light could read. It was Michael Crichton’s autobiographical piece Travels. I was fortunate to be reading it when my wife stuffed an emergency rucksack with it. Some books resonate strongly.

I was deep in the book when I felt eyes on me. Looking up, I saw three women were standing in the aisle dividing the beds on either side of the ward. They were ordinary, comely women and they were all staring at me and smiling in a kindly fashion. It was as if they knew me well and were showing understanding of what was at times a very lonely fight with some hard choices.

I knew they couldn’t really be there so either I was seeing things – next step permanent residency in the scream ward – or it was a dream. I once told friend that I didn’t dream and he replied rubbish. Everybody dreams every night, it’s just that your head scrubs them away just before you awaken. It’s a protection mechanism. There’s also a biochemical reason, which I won’t go into. Thinking it over, I suspect he was right. Some of those lucid dreams are not good, so with no prospect of ever going back to sleep after one, I slip downstairs, make a coffee, put on some quiet music in the study and begin writing until the dawn chorus announces itself.

Knowing they couldn’t be real, I’d get back to reading but every time when I looked up again, they’d have been replaced with a number of new people gazing at me with the same small smiles on their lips. At one point, a little 6yo was standing with them. I reached out to my side table and split open one of those mini-packets of Gummy Bears one of the grandchildren had sent in for me. When you’re 4yo, giving away a packet of your precious Gummy Bears to cheer up granda is a generous sacrifice.

Having split open the packet, I spread the sweets out on it. She took one step towards them and stopped with a big smile. I knew she wasn’t real, she knew she wasn’t real and therefore couldn’t eat a Gummy Bear, but when I awoke the next day, the opened packet was there on the side table which I invited the nurses to help themselves to. I come from an old islander race who believe in signs while at the same time dismissing them because I know we live in a deterministic world, but when they occur, we always pick them apart carefully looking for meaning.

I remembered every detail of the incident, and although I recognised few of them, the ones I did, I knew for sure were dead. I wasn’t sure if it was a sign saying be prepared to join us, it’s not so bad, or perhaps the direct opposite. Don’t worry, this isn’t your time yet, you’ll pull though. At that stage, I felt the former outcome much more likely. I never saw them again, and thereafter when I awoke in the night it was always with a faint hope they’d be back again. I’d warmed myself on the affection they’d somehow beamed at me.

A few days later, I was moved to my third ward. Why? I don’t know. First impressions weren’t good. When you’re lying immobile on a hospital bed, people begin to forget you’re there. You become the invisible man. There was a young man in the bed beside me, about 24yo I’d judge, who was getting the diagnosis from a consultant. He’d leukemia and the most aggressive variety. To his credit, the consultant was doing a lot of reassuring – don’t worry, there’s a lot we can do nowadays. It brought back memories of me saying variations of the same comforting BS to someone I knew wouldn’t see another sunrise. Ghosts don’t haunt you, it’s memories that do that, and there’s none worse than the tragedy of a boy dying so young.

Although there was a curtain drawn around his bed, I could hear every word, every pause. I was at my lowest at the time and didn’t want to hear that conversation, but I couldn’t run, I couldn’t close my ears. At the end of the diagnosis, the kid thought about it for a while and asked if the could see his parents. With that at times immediate acuity of youth, he could see the writing on the wall. “Of course, I’ll arrange it immediately” the consultant said. A trifle too quickly. When I woke up next morning, he was gone and replaced with the brain tumour guy, who turned out to be a very personable man. He was knowledgeable about a lot of topics and we both enjoyed many conversations, laughs and jokes together.

Going around the ward, there were no screamers, one empty bay on our side of the ward, opposite us were three beds. One filled with what looked like a very young man who was actually 29. He’s just had a very big operation for scoliosis, was now waiting for a heart valve transplant and couldn’t have weighed more than 7 stone, but he was quietly cheerful and liked to chat. He made custom guitars for a living.

In the middle bed was a builder guy who was recovering from an operation to fuse two spinal disks. His back had been giving him hell for years but work was work. His immediate problem was he wanted a smoke. To my surprise, all he had to do was fill in a form and then he could have a smoke outside the hospital boundary. Instead of walking miles, he found out where the staff had a quick puff and joined them as the need arose.

In the third bed was a young man who worked in the computer business and was being treated for Lymphoma, which is a cancer that attacks the body’s immune system. Sometimes a diverse group of people click, and it makes life much easier. If someone dropped something, someone else got out of bed to retrieve it for them, small things like that. Despite all the ailments we were a happy bunch, because each of us had no illusions, we all had a long and rocky road to recovery ahead of us, if we made it at all.

Apart from a steady stream of drips and tablets, I felt I was going nowhere, especially as any time I tried to move about in the bed, a nurse would appear and tell me to just lay there and my strength would come back. I set a trembler alarm on my mobile phone for 3am at night. It took me three exhausting nights just to learn again how to sit up in bed by myself for the first time in two weeks. You’ll never know how good that felt. The next thing to learn was how to bum shuffle myself down the bed where there was a break in the bedside barriers to stop us falling out.

Eventually I could work my way down the bed and sit with my feet in tantalising inches from the floor. These things are all about making what is subjectively a massive effort for very small gains, but they all get easier with practice and start to mount up as they connect up together. It’s baby steps stuff. Just keep repeating that little step until you’re confident. The next big one was sliding off the bed to stand with the back of my thighs resting against the bed and a fierce grip on the side and end barriers of the bed. “Be careful mate”, came a voice out of the darkness. My secret shenanigans weren’t as secret as I’d thought.

My next target was not leaning against the bed and after a few days, not holding on so tightly to the barriers. When I was comfortable with being able to stand unaided, I started walking a “U” course around my bed keeping a grip on the bars all the way around. After completing the first one, I had to sit down on the bed for a half hour to get my pulse and breathing back under control. After a few days, I could do a lot of “U”s without either a rest between each and not holding onto the bed bars but still in grab distance. My first solo was walking to my neighbour’s bed. I got there slowly and very carefully, a whole four feet or so, and after a rest, made the return journey. When I was comfortable with repeating that adventure over several nights, I walked to the second bed and back.

Within a week, I was up and ambulatory, and just trying to build back up my stamina and distance. In a way, I became a victim of my own success. On the same day I was moved to the physio ward, which I knew was the last stop before checking out, my friend was checked out purely so he could attend the surgery of an oncologist who specialised in tumours of the brain. As we reached the ward’s exit doors, we both turned around as one to wave bye bye to the other lads. The shitty feeling we both had was we were breaking up something good and leaving behind us three good men who were down.

I did two nights in the physio ward before a physiologist freed up to start working on me. Compared to the last ward, it was a bit depressing because it was exclusively populated by the bedridden. There but for the grace of God, and some natural stubbornness, go I. In my time there, I never saw anyone get out of bed. I spent my time walking up and down the long corridor, working on my stamina and balance. It was coming along, albeit slowly but the going was getting easier.

When a physio finally turned up to examine me, I told her I could walk unaided. “Show me.” I dutifully walked the length of the corridor a few times. “Have you tried stairs yet?” “No, none around for me to practice on.” That got a quizzical look but she chose not to enquire further. She took me to the physiological exercise room where there were various bits of apparatus, including a construction of a stairs. I shot up the stairs, turned around at the top, and walked back down. She said “If all my patients were like you, I’d be out of a job.” She gave me some booklets accompanied by some solid advice, but she obviously signed me off.

I was discharged that afternoon.

©Pointman

A stay in hospital.

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