Musings from my Hospital Bed - part four

The Mamas and the Papas were famous for a few songs. One of them went “a little” like this:


”Monday Monday, so good to me.
Monday, Monday, it was all I hoped it would be.
Oh Monday morning, Monday morning couldn’t guarantee.
That Monday evening, 
the hospital 
would not kill me.”


You can check it out here if you want.





You might notice the tiny change in lyrics I made. In truth, kill might be a little strong. It was more like, neurologically alter. But that would sort of mess with the tempo of the song and . . . well, I’ve already TALKED ABOUT THAT!


Back to my Monday. While it started out good, it went horrible awry around 6:00 pm-ish. Remember how they’d hooked me into the red pill? The one that had been dripping into my arm since noon. Well, 6ish is when the really nice nurse with the cute hair and the cute clothes came roaring into my room (where I’d been finally able to catch a bit of sleep), woke me up and unplugged the Conivaptin.


“We’re cutting this off!” she said with a smile.


“Why?” I asked with a frown.


“Because you’re at 133!” And she left.


Now I’m not really good at math but I counted on my fingers really fast and figured out that the difference between 133 and 116 is a tad beyond the safe escalation rate. What freaked me out the most was the case study I’d read earlier on-line about a woman whose sodium had been escalated 7 points in a 4 hour period. Ten days later, she was back in the hospital with little of her former self left.


Needless to say, news of my impending “death” came as a bit of a shock. 


Not one to take bad news alone, I called my husband who, along with my son, were on their way for a visit anyway.


“I think they just killed me,” I said (expletive omitted).


They were there when Dr. Salt Pounder (bless his tenacious little heart) came in for the second time, saying things like “uncharted territories” and “wasn’t suppose to do that” He defended his orders to the nurses, even showed his hand-written notes to my husband. How a 2 hour blood draw was ordered . . . and missed. My first draw had been 4 hours after the drip started and then it took another 1 1/2 hours to get the results back.


Hence the need for panic. 


I have to tell you that, when the doctor is a little freaked out, it’s not very reassuring for the patient. Dr. SP went away to devise a plan, leaving the three of us to laugh at the absurdity of it (me) or cry at the severity of it (okay, me again). The Ron Squared held up pretty good and were completely supportive while we waited for a plan.


And a plan there was! I was admitted to ICU for two nights and a treatment of rapid dilution.


My first nurse was wonderful. Here he is, Nurse Fred whom I came to adore over the next couple days as he took wonderful, gentle care of me.

Our first experience together was of him asking me to change out of my lovely clothes (damn it . . I sort of liked being dressed!) and dawn the sexy gown again. So I took my gown, my re-installed drip line, my skinny pole on wheels and myself into the tiny bathroom and tried to maneuver my way out of my tank top. It went over my head just fine. After that though, it just hung there, limp from my drip line. Then there was the gown - I couldn’t put my arm through the arm hole because of the drip line so I had to unsnap the shoulder and then try to re-snap it with one hand. Which wasn’t working at all.


Fred knocked. “Is everything okay in there?”


“Well I’m having a little bit of trouble.”


Fred’s seen worse, I’m sure and he saved me right away, got me plugged into the heart monitor (annoying thing that hated the way I’d keep rolling over and unplugging a line). And then we all begun what I like to call the pincushion effect. I had blood drawn every hour for the first 6 hours and then every 2 hours, reduced down to 4 hours by the time I was released. I had one young phlebotomist who told me that he just had to come up and see me.

“When I saw the order come through, I thought, who is this poor woman.”


Meanwhile, in an attempt to dilute my wildly askew sodium, clear water dripped into me at a very rapid rate.


Settling into the next leg of the journey all I could think was how this was where I wanted to be:

While this was where I really was:

More to follow. 

Oh, yes. It does continue.