IV's, Nurses, Anal Swabs....Oh My!

Well, I’m excited to be back after my long hiatus from the bloging world. Yes, I’ve set my own personal record with 7 stays at the hospital in the first seven months of 2008. Thank you, your applause is unnecessary.

Wednesday started out fairly normal, my tongue hurt a little bit, but not anymore then is has before. I headed up to my appointment and noticed I was having trouble swallowing. This was perfect because that days appointment was a barium swallow to get some x-rays of my esophagus.

By the time I made it to the hospital I my tongue and throat were so swollen that I couldn’t swallow and I could barely speak. When I stepped up to the registration table I had my driver’s license and insurance card out so I didn’t have to say anything. This plan worked great until the lady helping me asked me to pronounce my name.

“wit–wow-see” came out of my mouth with a waterfall of drool.

Noticing I was having some trouble she took me into the back quickly. She asked me to strip down to my shorts and put on a gown. I went into the men’s room, put my clothes in a locker and started to look for a larger gown. I’ve been to this hospital enough to know that a dark seam means larger gown. Anyway, no dark seems today, just mini gowns.

So I’m waiting, no pants, in a mini-gown that isn’t even covering my boxers and I see two very short men each wearing two of the larger gowns. As I sit down in the waiting area I hear a snap and look down. I sat on my key tag and snapped in half. The man next to me seemed nice and tried to joke with me. He said, “Hope your insurance covers that.” Feeling like I had to respond I looked at him, smiled, drooled all over my gown and uttered “uuha”. The nice man looked away quickly.

Long story short I was sent to the emergency room and readmitted into the hospital. After five hours or so on a gurney between “food poisoning” and “head trama” I was transported to TN 672.

Tower North is my home away from home, my little piece of the transplant wing were I go whenever I get admitted. In a strange way it’s like Cheers, the nurses, assistants, and cleaning staff all know me by name and come visit me when I come in. Usually they have a longer bed ordered for me before I get there.

My admittance interview takes a few hours because of the speech problems I’m having.

My nurse for the night is Dorothy, and yes she is very old. She has a beautiful full mustache and very thin shaky hands. Over her top lip she has a beautiful silver and white moustache that she doesn’t shave or bleach, but does maintain with some sort of comb.

Dorothy is the type of nurse who’s been doing her job so long that peaked in her 40’s and decided that her skills don’t need anymore updating. She quickly updated me that even though I missed “Anal Swab Tuesday”, Newcomers to TN 6 need to get swabbed anyway. So at a little after 3 am in the morning, thin fingered, shaky handed, silver lip sweater’d Dorothy gave me an anal swab.

Luckily for me Dorothy works strange shifts so she didn’t stay to start my IV. Nothing’s worse then an extremely old shaky nurse trying to start a IV in the dark and 3 am.

Felix, my gay Asian IV superhero stepped in to save the day. Felix takes good care of me, but he is always a bit off. He has similar odd facial hair problems. On the lower right side of his neck is a large mole, nice and brown. He has 5 very long hairs that stick out in many directions and are hard not to stare at.

To top my stay at the hospital off when I ordered my meal in the morning the voice on the other side of the phone recognized my name and asked if I wanted my usual. After two days I started feeling a little better and my insurance company decided I didn’t need any more care.

I left the hospital with a swollen tongue, drooling, and not able to eat.