A Few Hours of Firsts - Part Three

FIRST #5: I was admitted to hospital.

Tuesday was pretty much a write off. I dozed in a morphine induced stupor. I was woken only for my blood pressure and temperature checks.

I do remember throwing up when one of the nurses came to introduce herself to me. I apologised for that later.

Dinner was delivered, despite a big, red, NBM sign hanging from my bed. The smell taunted me, and brought on waves of nausea, but didn’t bring anything up. I was very glad when it was removed.

At 8.15 the lights were turned out. I vividly recall making a comment about being on a ward for 12 year olds and the Sri Lankan lady opposite giving a belly laugh. The weird thing was, they then left on the bathroom light that lit up the whole ward. They also continued to visit us with pills, arm cuffs for BP and ear thermometers.

About 9.30 a nurse came to check my vitals again and put the cuff on the same arm as my hand canular. Bearing in mind that I was still on IV fluids, she pumped the cuff up to get a reading...as it filled with air I could feel the pressure in the back of my hand building. Just as it released it pressure on my arm I was about to swear at the nurse to ‘get the fu*king thing off me’, she was spared by a fraction of a second.

The following morning she did the same thing at 0515.

I requested nicely that she use the other arm. She apologised and moved to the right.
By now all my dignity had deserted me, so it wasn’t an issue that I had to let the nurses know when I needed to pee. They had the strain it to see if there was anything in it. After my nine am constitutional the nurse came back and rattled a pot at me.

‘It’s out!’

‘Squeeeeeeeee’. I was very excited. It meant I didn’t have to have a stent put in. That sounded really nasty.

This meant I could go home. Yeah!

A 3mm ball of calcium deposit caused so many problems in a short amount of time and so much elation in even less.

FIRST #6: Passed kidney stones