Tag Hospital

My Day

Michael 6 Comments

I’ve never done a “day in my life” post and you should be thrilled. Unfortunately, all good things must end and your thrill just ended.

Today is not a just any old day in my life though. Today I went to the hospital. For the first 57 years of my life I never spent a night in a hospital unless I was working there. I never even had an outpatient procedure until I was 55. Wait. That’s not completely true. I was born in the fifties in the USA where childbirth was a minimum three day hospital stay. But after that, all my sleep was in my own bed or one of my choosing. Ok, that’s not 100% true either. There were some nights the U. S. Army insisted I spend away from my favorite pillow. But otherwise…

ADIL

Back to today. Don’t worry. It won’t be that traumatic an event. We’re just going for a simple procedure to open the fistula used for my dialysis. A fistula is a piece of artery and one of vein sewn together and pulled to just under the skin so the dialysis nurse can more easily jam a pair of needles roughly the size of a ball point pen into it. With all the puncturing and high velocity blood flow, the inside of the fistula scars and it slowly narrows, raising the pressure of the blood flow through it, decreasing the efficiency of the dialysis treatment. To correct this, because my fistula is in my upper arm, the surgeon will cut a small hole and enter the vein just below the fistula and thread a catheter through the vein into the fistula. This will be tracked by a scanner mounted over my arm transmitting images to a monitor above me. Once the physician finds the narrowed space he’ll pass a balloon into the catheter, up to the fistula and inflate it, pushing the occlusion against the vessel wall. (If that sounds like what you’ve heard as coronary angioplasty that’s because it’s the same procedure except on a fistula rather than a coronary artery.) While all this is happening I’ll be half asleep making incoherent conversation with the surgeon. It’s ok. He’s a friend.

MPH

Breakfast

I woke up a little after 6 showered (no, no pictures there), dressed comfortably, and got breakfast. This morning’s breakfast was two mycophenolate capsules and a sip of water since I will be anesthetized to the point of being half asleep. About 8:30 my sister came to take me to the hospital. She will be my accompaniment for the day since I will be anesthetized to the point of being half asleep. Because we’re Italian she brought food.

Traffic was light and we got to the hospital a few minutes after nine for my 9:30 report time. The nice lady in registration breezed me through and sent me off to the outpatient department with a stop at the lab for a quick blood draw. We arrived in the outpatient department at 9:45. By 10:05 I was changed into a hospital gown (still no pictures), had vitals recorded, an IV started in my left wrist, and left to wait for someone from the cath lab to come get me at 11:30. This was a boring 85 minutes and I read the paper. Did I mention it was boring?

 

Fistula_Before

Before

At 11:40 I got picked up for the procedure I already described, it went off without a hitch, and I went back to my room in the outpatient department where they said I looked great, go home.

Fistula_After

After

We went home, had lunch (a late lunch since it was then 2:30) my sister went home and because we’re Italian, I gave her food. Then I sat down and wrote this.

You know what? These things are really dull. Who came up with this idea anyway? In case you’re wondering, I am now just wonderful and when I go back to dialysis I’ll have the smoothest flowing blood of anyone there.

And you heard it here first!

A Cheesy Story

Michael 5 Comments

Yesterday I made a grilled cheese sandwich for lunch. For me that’s a rare treat. I used to do a grilled cheese, with or without tomato soup, almost weekly for years. And years. And even some more. Now I make one a couple of times a year.  I have a complicated relationship with grilled cheese.

Grilled cheese doesn’t hold one of those warm, fuzzy spots youth’s memory. I’m sure my mother made them but I don’t have a real recollection of them. I do remember eating grilled cheese at my elementary school cafeteria. Mostly I remember them being greasy.

I remember in college grilled cheese hitting a new level. There the cafeteria put ham or turkey with it! Who knew? And, I discovered with the help of some aluminum foil and the iron my mother insisted I have in my dorm room that I could prepare a nutritious and alcohol absorbing pre-weekend snack. Even considering the food service’s meaty additions, college level grilled cheese was more utilitarian than culinarian.

I remember making grilled cheese for my daughter. But I can’t say they were the things of lifelong memories. They were mostly things that could be thrown together quickly between her dismissal time and band practice.

Throughout my childhood, my young adulthood, and my adult me’s child’s childhood, grilled cheese was just there. It wasn’t until many years later that grilled became more than a pasteurized processed cheese product between two slices of bread.

In March of 2015, after a 4 month long hospitalization, I was admitted to rehab to learn how to walk again. For the next several weeks I went through physical therapy seven days each week working to the day that I could shuffle my own way out of there. To make a long story short, eventually the day came when my doctor said I could be discharged soon. But first, for lack of a better way to put it, I had to pass several tests. Among them I was to prepare my own hot lunch. I was given two to pick from. I don’t remember the other choice but I picked the grilled cheese sandwich.

GrilledCheeseIt took a while, but eventually I had the required pasteurized processed cheese product, two slices of bread, and a stick of butter on the table in front of me. I assembled them into a reasonable sandwich like fashion and placed it into the medium hot pan on the very hot stove. About 4 minutes later I divided the sandwich into two triangles and passed one to the occupational therapist who had been watching my poor imitation of Jeff Mauro. Three days after that I was propelling my walker to the entrance of the rehab unit where, per hospital policy, I was transferred to a wheelchair to the outside world.

Now every time I make a grilled cheese sandwich I think of those days in that unit, trading half of a sandwich for my freedom. And that’s why I now make grilled cheese only a couple if times a year. Yeah, I guess it’s not that complicated.