So... where to start this story?
From the very beginning, I suppose!
About two weeks ago, I was babysitting for a family I know from dancing and while the kids were asleep, I was lying on the couch with my neck resting on the arm of the couch. I remember thinking I was uncomfortable, and that my back was hurting, but I was too tired to move!
Anyway, fast forward a few days, and my back was so sore I could hardly sit down! It felt like I'd done something to my tailbone, so I made an appointment to see a physio. After the first session, he tells me it's a pretty severe injury from what he can tell. Keep in mind that all he's been doing is massage and heat therapy, so he doesn't actually
look at the area.
Well, two sessions later, he's surprised when I tell him it's not any better; in fact it's worse. I can hardly walk by now. He starts talking about going to see my GP, so I make an appointment with her.
Skip forward a few days, and I'm at the doctor's, telling her all about my physio, and she interrupts saying it's weird that I have sustained such a bad injury considering I can't remember falling or hurting it in any way. She asks to have a look (the first person to do so), and immediately goes "Well, no wonder it hurts so much, you have a huge infection".
Now, I can't really see, but I strain my neck around to see where she's pointing and she tells me I have a tiny boil (about the size of a pimple) that's pressing right on my tailbone. She explains that because that area doesn't have much fat underneath it, the pressure from the infection is pressing right onto the tailbone, which is why I'm in so much pain. She prescribes some strong antibiotics, and tells me to come back in 2 days and she'll lance it.
Well, I don't even make it one night! By that night, I am in agony. My mum rushes off to the chemist to get some strong pain relief, but by 1am I am throwing up constantly and can't keep anything down. This goes on for a few hours, and finally we make the decision to head to the hospital, just for the simple reason that I can get some anti-nausea drugs and pain relief intravenously.
We had no idea what was coming.
Once we got to the ER (it must've taken us 20 minutes to walk from the car to the lobby, just because I was in so much pain walking) I pretty much got in straight away because my heart was racing and they were worried I was tachycardic. I tried telling them it was just because I was freaking out, but it turns out that my racing pulse was the most efficient way to get a bed in the ER!
I got some anti-nausea meds pretty quickly (they jabbed me in the butt!), but the pain was still there. While we waited for a doctor to come and assess me, we passed the time by "people watching", except it was more like "people listening" because I was in my own room and we had to go by conversations we could hear from out in the hallway.
My heart rate was still pretty fast, so the nurses came in to do a full set of obs. During the neuro obs, the nurse asked me where I was, what year it was, and who was the leader of the opposition. Going on next to no sleep, I had to think hard about the last one! I replied "Malcolm Turnbull. That's right isn't it???!" and looked for confirmation. (If you know anything about Australian politics, you'll know that our federal Opposition Leader has changed quite a few times!) The nurse laughed and said she only threw that question in because everyone knows you get asked where you are, what year is it, and who's the Prime Minister, so she made her own version and asks patients about the Opposition Leader!
The nurses do their obs every hour, and in just a few hours I'd noticed that the infection had gotten a lot worse. When I checked in the bathroom mirror, I could see two pus-filled abscesses that were bigger than my thumb! All this in less than 24 hours. You could say I was grossed out by my own body!
In the morning, I was starving, so I sent Mum down to the vending machine to get me something, anything to eat. I had just started on a bag of Doritos when the nurses changed shifts, and the new nurses rounded on all the patients. I had literally eaten one Dorito when the head nurse asks me what I'm doing eating. I tell her I'm hungry, and she says "You can't eat! You're nil by mouth! You might be going into surgery!"
I was like "Surgery?! What do you mean surgery?! I don't want surgery!"
I'd never had even mild anaesthesia before, so the whole thing freaked me out. Mum tried to calm me down by saying that it might not be bad enough to require surgery, so I held onto that hope.
After a few hours of being in the ER, I got seen to by a young ER doctor, who was really nice and sweet. I told her I didn't particularly like needles, and she told me neither did she! She put an IV in my arm, and soon I was feeling a bit better thanks to some pain medication.
Nurses continued to up my doses of pain relief until finally one of them told me to stop being brave and just accept the morphine! The doctor came back and told me she had called for a surgical consult, because it was pretty bad and they didn't think I'd be able to handle having it touched without being under general anaesthesia.
There was a whole team of surgeons and interns trolling through the ER looking at the possible surgical cases. It felt a little bit like Grey's Anatomy, except I didn't particularly want to feature in this episode,
thankyouverymuch.
Anyway, on one of my many bathroom trips (they were pumping a lot of IV fluids into me!) I missed the surgical troupe coming into my room. Kinda good, that I didn't have 20 pairs of eyes basically analysing my butt, but kinda bad because now we were in for an even longer wait.
More hours pass (there's a lot of waiting around in hospitals) and finally a (singular) surgeon comes to consult. He has a look (by now I've lost all modesty because so many people have looked) and tells me I'm definitely going to need the surgery because it looks like the infection runs pretty deep and they might need to make an incision to drain it all out.
Lovely.
And did I mention this all happened while I'm on uni holidays?
Hospital visits for me always happen when I'm on holidays. Murphy's Law or something.
The bad news? There's apparently 6 pages' worth of patients in front of me who are awaiting surgery. And they stop operating at midnight. Which is like twelve hours away. He seems doubtful that they'll be able to fit my surgery in.
So, I get comfortable, and try and catch some sleep. I listen to my iPod. I wake Mum up because I need to go to the bathroom again.
Finally I'm in a comfortable position (this was a triumph in itself because it's really hard to not be able to sleep on your back, because of the abscessces; or on your stomach, because the IV gets in the way; or on your side, because the leg on the bottom goes numb and then moving to the other side is always an ordeal because I can't just simply roll over on my back....) I hope you get the idea. Then, a doctor in full surgical gear arrives with a bed on wheels to inform me that I'm off to surgery now. This was at only 3 or 4pm! I was expecting to have to wait until the next day! I tell him I'm not ready; I have to go to the toilet, and I'm not ready!
Expecting a meltdown, Mum tells me that they did warn me I could be given only 5 minutes notice if an opportunity for the surgery becomes available, and I tell her that wasn't even 5 minutes! And the doctor seems annoyed that I've had to run off (okay, walk very slowly off) to the toilet. But too bad. He can wait.
When I get back, I get on the bed and tell Mum that she is coming all the way to the OR with me - well, as far as she can go anyway. The doctor wheels me down all these corridors and in elevators, we pick up a nurse along the way - the one familiar face I'll have in the OR- and finally I have to say goodbye to Mum. We go into the little room off the OR, and I tell everyone (and there's a lot of people in there) that I'm really nervous and this isn't anything like Grey's Anatomy at all, and I'm rather disappointed. I'd like to blame this on the morphine, but the truth is morphine never makes me talk crazy, but nerves and anxiety sure do.
The doctors and nurses are all really nice, and pat my hand and get me to talk so I feel more comfortable. They all ask me the same questions over and over, and I feel like saying weren't you listening when I answered that other dude? They all laugh and give me a funny look when they read my chart and see that it says that I've eaten "one Dorito" in the past 24 hours. I tell them I was busted by the head nurse. Finally, the surgeon arrives (and I get the impression that he's a bit of a bigshot because the nurses keep saying "Has The Surgeon arrived?" but I guess you want The Bigshot to be on your team, seeing as you're going to be totally out to it and all) and he laughs over the lone Dorito note too. (For the record, I did ask why you have to be nil by mouth for surgery, and the nurses told me it's so when you're intubated, you don't aspirate or choke on the food in your stomach. Lovely. I wish I'd asked
after the surgery, and not before. The vision I had of me intubated and paralysed on the operating table
did not help with the whole anxiety thing.)
I'm wheeled into the OR, and the first thing I notice is that the room is a pastel green, not the stark white like in medical dramas on TV. I comment again that this isn't anything like Grey's Anatomy, and before I know it, I'm on the other bed, on my side with my arms stretched out onto this arm board thing and I think they put a mask onto me and tell me it's just oxygen but I know it sure doesn't smell like oxygen; but I can't be sure because the next thing I remember is waking up in the recovery room.
Mum told me it's not anything like the whole "count backwards from 10" thing, and the "I'm so drowsy when I wake up I can't keep my eyes open" thing, and it wasn't. I don't even remember falling asleep, but I do remember waking up. It was just like "Bam! I'm awake". I remember trying to read the time on the clock on the opposite wall, but I'm short sighted and I obviously didn't have my glasses with me, so I had no idea how long I'd been out to it. The nurse notices me awake, and tells me I was only under for 20 minutes. I'm pretty impressed with this, and I then I realise I'm lying on my back, and I'm pretty impressed with
that, because I'm not feeling any pain!
I remember meeting Mum when they wheeled me out of the recovery room on my way to the ward, but I have no memory of how we got to the ward. It's like that part has been erased from my memory. Oh well. it wasn't particularly important! The ward was definitely a reality check. I'm feeling all "woe is me, I just had my first surgery, let's have a pity party in my honour" and then I find out the guy across from me had his abdomen cut open from one side to the other because he has cancer and had to have half his liver taken out. Talk about a reality check.
The ward wasn't as well staffed as the ER, there were only 2 nurses on, and 1 doctor. That meant a lot of waiting around. It took hours to get my IV removed when it clogged up. I could tell a lot of stories about the public hospital system - waiting hours for discharge papers; getting penicillin when I'm allergic to it; having to wait 2 hours to get said wrong antibiotics. The ER was great, but the ward- not so great.
The biggest drama by far though was the post-op procedures. The surgeon (after telling me "You had so much pus!
So much pus!) warned me that they would have to keep the wound open, rather than stitch it shut, in order to keep draining all the infection out of my body. This meant that they had to "pack" it with special absorbent material that's apparently made from seaweed. if you're thinking sushi - that's what I first thought of too. But rest assured, it doesn't look like that at all. In fact, it's not even green, it's yellow.
Anyway, so when the surgeon came around to discharge me, he told me two things - it was a staph infection that was responsible, and that I was going to have to get the packing changed now, and it was likely that it'd be pretty painful. And I'm like "Oh, but I've already had the packing changed twice! Last night, two different nurses changed it for me. It was fine, it didn't even hurt!" He looks at me skeptically and asks me if I'm sure. I am sure. As they were changing the dressing, both nurses talked me through it and told me as they were pulling out the packing and putting new packing in. It was uncomfortable, but not painful.
Mistake number 1 - the ignorant nurses.
Mistake number 2 - the surgeon didn't even look at the wound for himself!
So I'm discharged, and after waiting a few hours for someone to find a nurse who's qualified and high enough up the food chain to pull out my IV (who knew only certain nurses could do that?) and another few hours waiting around in the transit lounge for my (wrong) antibiotics, I could finally go home after 2 days in the hospital.
The next day was when the fun and games began. The hospital organised for the Outreach Service nurses (like the District nurses) to come over every day to change the packing and keep an eye on the wound. The first nurse to come was a little bit perplexed by what she saw. She asked Mum if it usually looked like that. Now, I can't see the wound, so I'm starting to freak out a little bit, when they realise that it is the original packing from the surgery. The packing that they shoved in without a care because I was totally out to it and couldn't feel a thing. The packing that had been left in for two days. Let me tell you, taking that out and replacing it with new packing was no picnic. In fact, I distinctly remember lots of crying and screaming and hysterics. It was so painful. Because I was sure the packing had already been taken out, and it didn't hurt at all, I hadn't taken anything for pain.
The next day, I took 2 codeine and a valium. I was so traumatised by it. Luckily we had to go and see my doctor that day, so we organised to have the packing done at the hospital, where the nurse was very gentle and understanding, even though I must've stood by the bed for about 5 minutes before finally giving in and lying down on it. I was so scared that it would hurt just like the first day, but every day it got a little less painful.
By the tenth day, the Outreach nurses told me I was healing quickly and so they scaled back to only coming every 3 days. After that, I was officially discharged. I still have to have salt baths every day to keep the wound clean and promote healing and I still have to wear a dressing to stop any further trauma occurring to the area, but otherwise I am doing really well. I finished two courses of really strong antibiotics that killed off the staph infection and the wound has closed up and is level with the rest of my skin. In fact, when I went to my doctor earlier this week she told me I was over-healing and so she had to use some silver nitrate to burn off the excess skin that had grown over. It didn't hurt at all, but it did turn the flesh around the area a lovely green-grey colour. But it doesn't matter, because after that hospital experience, it's not like I have any modesty left!
