Reality · Bites

Sometimes people just need to cry and vent.

It doesn't mean they are feeling sorry for themselves.

I read somewhere crying actually calms your muscles when you vent that you feel better afterwards. I'll listen to that instead of the nurse.

One annoying thing about trying to lose all this extra liquid in your body by being on all these pumps to make it come out is the only way it can come out is getting sent to the bladder, and you know what that means?

Constantly running to the washroom attached to all these pumps.

It may seem funny, but man is it tiring.

As some might know I am in the hospital yet again to remove a lot of water weight that had built up after surgery and was never properly taken care of.

One thing about removing the extra liquid in your body is your dry out like a raisin, and with no showers or baths around you get all gritty and feel uncomfortable.

With my luck finally looking up, the nurse I had today was given permission to take me up to the 13th floor of the hospital to shower me. Although I still feel terribly dry, itchy and irritated, it was quite the relief to just feel clean and feel water all over me.

Sometimes there are great nurses out there that make your experience a good one. They are just really hard to find.

So I have this sore on my right wrist from restraints that should never have been on.

Restraints are put on a violent patient if the patient seems at risk of hurting themselves, and I'm sorry, but a half sedated girl who just wants to scratch her nose doesn't seem at all violent to me.

The hospital policy is that is restraints need to be on the family is contacted in four hours to approve and if they aren't approved, they are taken off unless the patient is really violent. In that case the restraints are put on and the family is contacted right away with the situation. Usually these people are hillusonating and so on and pulling out their lines and causing strokes.

Since I did not fall under any of these categories, why was I restrained? I have no idea.

Also, when restraints are put on there should be a cusion like band between the skin and the restraints. This was not put on me, thus tearing and burning skin. It is now about the size of an elogated dime, but quite painful.

When doctors saw it, they blamed me and said I was banging my wrist against the bed. I'm stronger than I am now, and not restrained and when I lie in the bed I don't have that much strength nor the ability to do that, so how was it possible then?

Yeah thanks again.

So I will be more spcific on things that I had recieved when I was in the hospital. Now, a bed sore can develop just by sitting in one place for six hours straight. But that's for someone with really poor nutrition and seriously no moving at all.

Your lower back/butt area may seem like a convenient and comfy add to your body to help make you more comfortable, and it is, but unfortunately there really isn't a lot of fat and skin there. It's basically a fat bubble and then your tail bone. Although it is like that, proper turning, moving, and care can easily prevent a bed sore. I mean, look at people today who sit at computer desks and don't get anything.

So when I was sedated in the intensive care unit, which was an expected two month stay (it was a little less than that but it was predicted it would be long) the hospital should have put me on a high end bed. Now, a high end bed is a moving and gel like bed that helps move you to prevent a bed sore since you will be in the hospital for so long. This was not done. Instead, after a week of being on a normal bed and not being taken care of properly (turned by the nurse or cleaned right away when I did my business obliviously) I was put on a semi-high end bed. Well, the bed sore had already developed, so what was the point but whatever. Then after a week it was decided my body wasn't tolorating the bed and I was back to a normal one.

The lack of cleaning, care, and turning continued leaving me with a massive bedsore. A debrinement (sp?) was suggested, which is when all the dead tissue is removed from the wound to have only healthy tissue exposed. When this was done, voila! everyone could see my tailbone. It was that deep.

It's been five months now, and the wound is about the size of a loonie (thickness and roundess) but still not healed. I have another month or so to go. Five months or itchy pain because some nurses couldn't take five minutes out of their day to do their work.
Yeah thanks.

This is the first post in my journal. Basically it will be an intro post about me and hopefully everydate, maybe once or twice or more, I will post about my experience here in the hospital and my recovery and everything that is going on and how I am feeling.

Sometimes, people need to just escape and write about what is going on in their lives and about what is happening. Sometimes it feels better to tell people you don't know and will never meet what you are experiencing and feeling. I don't know why life is like that but it just feels better. It's almost like there is less judgement or something along those lines, or maybe you just don't want to involve people you know. All I know is I really want to do it so here I go.

The basics: I am currently nineteen years old. I was born with a very complex cardiac condition and have had surgery more than once in my life. Unfortunately back in 2005 I got a bacteria in my blood from an unknown source that caused my world to crumble and fall apart. I had a pacemaker at the time and the bacteria had attacked it. Luckily, I never really needed this pacemaker so it was easily removed. I had a pain in my lower right stomach for weeks prior to me entering the hospital and it still hurt when I was in the hospital. On my day of discharge I had a CT scan scheduled for my stomach to finally find out what that pain was. A nurse walked in and took the dye from my hand saying that she didn't want to see me in this room anymore and to just go home and the CT scan wasn't that important. Of course I was thrilled so I bolted.

Around Christmas break from school I started to feel really sick again. "Damn," I thougt, "I've got the flu for my break and then I might have it for New Years". I basically spend my vacation laying on the couch dying to get better. Things started looking up when I was eating and I got my monthly visitor. Then on Christmas day things started crashing. The last thing I remember is waking up, walking into the living room to open gifts, my boyfriend came over and I was all of a sudden in a dark intensive care room with a pain on my lower back, a pain on my wrist, a really dry and scared feeling, and in dire need for my mom.

I couldn't talk. Where was my voice? There was something in my neck. A tube of some sort. I grabbed the side rail of the bed and started shaking it for dear life. Where was I? Why couldn't I talk? Where was everyone? Someone came in and asked me what I wanted. I indicated my mom. I want my mom. Get me my mom. "You have to cut the cord. Your mom has more important things to do with her life than come and see you right now," says the lady (who turned out to be a nurse). Of course I knew this was false. My mom would want to see me, and would be somewhere around me no matter what. In fact, she was in another room waiting to see me. I eventually got to see her.

Turns out:
- on Christmas day my oxygen levels started dropping causing my memory to fail, hence me not remembering anything
- on New Years eve my entire system was shutting down and I was dying because the bacteria that was in my stomach that was not caught due to the cancelled CT scan had attacked my heart valve
- my parents had rushed me to the hospital and I was in the OR by 8pm that night for an ememergency surgery that thank goodness I survived but with half a spleen, kidneys that needed dialysis, and a pretty beat up liver, and of course the heart wasn't that great but the valve was replaced by an amazing surgeon
- I had a trich, which is like a tube in your neck to help you breathe if you can't use the vent thing
- the pain on my lower back was a massive bed sore that went down to the tail bone from improper care from the nurses and being left dirty
- the pain on my wrist was because I was put into restrainsts against my parents wishes and knownledge because while I was sedated after the surgery for recovery, I had an itchy nose from a feeding tube and kept trying to scratch it (not violently at all)

Lot's of things happened afterwards which I will add in my next entry but that's basically the sum of it all for the first few days, of the new rest of my life.

Thank you for reading ♥