Coming back slowly

I was trundled around because I stayed over a long weekend. They had 70 emergency patients tucked into every corner where the machines could service them. In the cardiac observation unit, we were the low needs gang. Our night nurse was first trimester pregnant. Hammered by our Evil Mouth of Noisy Doom across the ward, our doctor confessed that she was two weeks off full term to have her baby. That’s a staff shortage.

I opened my eyes one night to the blue glare of the helicopter headlights sweeping the room, making the walls incandescent as it looked for the pad across the next building. Carrying God knows what burden of suffering.

Gradually my tubes were taken out. My colostomy bag came off early, on a day when Susie now tells me I didn’t wake when she arrived but just lay there weeping. A couple of days later, the tube came tickling out of my nose. Then my drip. Then my oxygen pipe with its nipples tucked into my nose. They left the catheter in my bladder for most of the time. My drainage tube came out by simple force, with a doctor bent over and yanking what looked for a moment like an artery. I look at this list and marvel how I could possibly be so festooned but at the time it seemed not only natural but comforting. In our cosseted times, I can’t imagine doing this without the drugs.

Once I was mobile, I was sent off to walk the corridors with stern instructions to get exercise. Since I couldn’t put my jarmies on over my wound, I wore a pair of hospital gowns mounted both ways. Fluffed up with cotton, I staggered up and down like a huge, drugged dandelion. I’d lost all sense of personal dignity, and it didn’t bother me at all.

Since each patient is covered by three shifts, each with its own intricate roster, the day carries an endless routine of small visits. A nurse for morning, for afternoon, for night. A doctor for very early, who I gradually realised had been involved in the operation. Various doctors randomly for later. Gangs to have looks at the wound. Someone with a trolley to take blood. A squad for special blood tests involving ice.

Best of all was a ghoulish, smooth faced triumvirate called The Pain Team. “Hi, we’re The Pain Team. Are you in pain? On a scale of one to ten, how would you rate it?” They reminded me of creatures from Miyazaki’s “Spirited Away”. It all seemed very stupid until I realised they could use my early use of the pain button to correlate my idea of a three or four with the amount of morphine I had pumped into my body. Smart, huh?

You learn quickly to judge the carer. On successive days, different people take the same blood, deliver the same shot, dress the same wound. They fiddle, or hesitate, or push too hard. They don’t want to hurt, or don’t care. Some of them have a magic touch.

You pick laziness as well. The surgeon wanted me sitting up and moving, so the morning shower was a big deal. I was pulled upright, swayed across the room, and trailed my drip and bags and air hoses to sit on the plastic chair and be scrubbed in a confined room. A good nurse didn’t flinch at getting wet. A great nurse soaped a flannel and washed my back. An ordinary nurse shut the door and let me get on with it.

The secret is a simple but saintly combination of self confidence and the ability to acknowledge my individual needs.

A couple of times the system worked so the nurses managed a handover in my presence. I lost their names immediately, but I valued the teccy talk, which made no sense but reassured me they understood my processes in complicated ways.

Even before I went into surgery, I was fascinated by the power and status system. I reckon a big public hospital is probably the place where the Australian culture of control and authority is most clearly displayed, since the hierarchy contains a myriad of disciplines, a huge variety of cultures, and an omnipresent accounting system.

There’s a sense of 21st century machismo about the whole thing, fed mostly by the doctors. You can see it being absorbed by the younger staff who are supposed to be An Elite, and to Live Up to the Responsibility, which creates a distinctively different sense of self compared to nurses, who may be the same age.