Thursday, January 14, 2010

Sit-Com moment of the Day

Christian was hanging out with me in the afternoon; he was going to favor me by taking my car in for an oil change, but there were no open appointments. He had brought me coffee anyway, and I was dozing in and and out of sleep due to the amount of meds they were feeding me at that point, So I am sure my company wasn't that great.
The whole day I was just "working at breathing" so I was very tired, and Chris got to see the irony of so many people coming in to see every fifteen minutes and asking me the same questions over and over, only to leave by saying "you should get some rest". X-ray, blood, vitals, repeat.
They inform me that they are going to take me into ICU. Maybe. If they can find a bed. If they can't, they perform the keg-tapping right here in the room in which I lay.
"We'll know in ten minutes", is the word we get at 1:50. So it's no surprise that they come in and say they will do the procedure in-room at 2:15. Then again, no surprise, when at 2:30 we are told they've got a room, and we'll be going, like, now.
The RN loads up my bed with a traveler Oxygen tank, my IV, and drop the side rails so we can navigate through the narrow doorways to ICU. Christian and the NSA on duty start packing up the room of accumulated items gather in a short week and realize that we may need a bellman's cart. Not wanting to need a map as well, Chris asks the RN if he can come along to see where the steamer trunks will be forwarded to. No Problem! Chris then hops on bed-moving duty and we carefully navigate our way through the twisty hallways. Only to find that Chris will not be allowed in ICU right away, and he gets left at the "front gate" and I am wheeled through, down to the room waiting for me.
The room is there, there are two nurses waiting to accept me, and three residents. They line up my "old bed" with my "new bed", raise it to a matching level, and more docs pile into the room, getting into their game faces. I am asked if I can slide over onto the new bed by someone and proceed to do so, then someone begins lowing the of head my bed down, and I ask "I am laying down for this? That's not gonna happen". "oh, yeah, oh yeah", while continuing to force me into what I see as certain death. (they tried making me lay down earlier in the day and the pulse-ox dropped from 93 to 76 IN THE PROCESS of laying down). "Up, Up, Up", I yell and finally get compliance.
Sliding over, I get a minor cramp in my left leg, and holler out "OOh, cramp, cramp", which brings a nurse running toward me from the doorway. She almost makes it to me, when she stubs her toe on and kicks over my oxygen tank. "Does this belong here?", she asks to the room and is largely ignored by the roomful of Drs. I would have answered her, but I was busy writhing on the bed with my leg cramp and a sealed oxygen mask that used to be connected to that tank she was carrying out the door.
I get the mask off of my face and start gasping at the thin air in the room, only to have the nurse return and notice my dance, red face and manic behavior.
She gives me my Oxygen and I get to suck that invisible gas like the first beer after work on hot summer day.

The whole scene plays in my head now like a missing clip from "Faulty Towers"