Little Sleep, Short Walk, Long Drive
Off and running...
26.04.2024 - 26.04.2024 75 °F
Three times last night, back-up beepers from heavy trucks begin sounding inside Beryl’s West Palm Beach Good Samaritan Hospital Room 570. Or, at least, it so seemed.
Beryl remained hooked to an IV delivering 5% Dextrose to maintain hydration. Nurses also used that IV to provide her with medicine that is introduced directly into her bloodstream. The fluids so delivered eventually find their way to her bladder and she must unhook from the IV, maneuver herself to the left edge of her hospital bed, grasp her walker and make her way to the toilet. Evacuate, repeat.
When the IV is unhooked between our patient and her CareFusion system, the CareFusion Alarm Attachment, fearing the worst, begins emitting an audible alarm that resembles the construction industry’s vehicle 1000 Hz pure tones and seemingly approaches the 100 decibel level so as to make certain that nurses as far away as Fort Lauderdale can immediately intervene.
Yours truly, having opted to remain by Beryl’s side on a Naugahyde covered couch (rather than a king bed at the nearby Ben Hotel featuring “Luxurious 100% Turkish linen bed ensembles”) found himself in the path of the bulldozers—or the IV interruption alarm which sounds the same.
The National Highway Transportation Safety Administration “requires electric vehicle warning sounds to alert pedestrians in electric and hybrid vehicles manufactured after 2018, for both forward and reverse travel at low speeds.” Apparently so too does the Good Sam Hospital. The National Institutes of Health, however, as part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services recommends sleep “as important for good health…” To quote the Captain in ‘Cool Hand Luke,’ “What we’ve got here is failure to communicate,” as it relates to dialog between NIH and NHTSA. Or that’s what it seems to be. The effect is the same. The person in the path of the vehicle or on the couch in the hospital room panics, jumps, twists and turns and otherwise is, to say the least, made alert.
When later released from the hospital to undertake our drive back to Vero Beach—90 minutes with no traffic—we will both be forced to work hard to stay awake.
The morning, then, birthed itself prematurely. Breakfast, like an airline flight, was delayed without explanation.
Not to be outdone, however, at 9:00am (still unfed) our girl, assisted by physical therapist Karen, undertook far more than her frequent sojourns to the commode and attacked the fifth-floor corridor with gusto. Both her sleep deprived caretaker and her physical therapist are proud.
Paul has been amazing and his timeline is very accurate as we would all expect. From me a few words on what a hip replacement is to the patient, at least to this patient. I've not been able to walk normally and without pain since August, so this was a very welcome surgery. How lucky am i to live in a time when they can just replace your hip joint, the biggest joint in your body, and in roughly two weeks you are close to back to normal. That said, it is not without pain and you have to help yourself by doing all of the PT that is needed....and there is a lot of it. Walking with my trusty walker is actually the easiest thing for me to to right now. It's slow going but i can do it. While today is better than yesterday and tomorrow will be better yet, i have a way to go for full recovery. My left leg is something of a dead weight. getting into and out of bed is really difficult and painful every time I try to move my left leg. I am told that is normal and the 2 inches i was able to move my leg for the Doctor this morning he told me was great and that put me in the top 90th percentile of patients. Maybe he tells that to everyone but it made me feel good and yeah for me and great empathy for the others because i know how much it hurts. Swollen and sore, the ice bag is my best friend. I am not used to needing help for everything and I don't like it. On the other hand.....its pretty nice. Paul is a saint, literally. But for whatever the pain is, it's all a short term inconvenience and worth it to be able to walk again without pain. So if you are feeling groin pain and/or having a little trouble walking steps, get yourself a hip exray. There is no cure other than a replacement. Without the replacement, it only gets worse.
Breakfast, perhaps more properly referred to today as brunch, arrived with countless apologies but little justification, at 10:15. WebMd says "When you wake up, the blood sugar your body needs to make your muscles and brain work their best is usually low. Breakfast helps replenish it." So, add that source to NHTSA and NIH as ignored wisdom on this beautiful sunny day. At 10:30, Kimberly came with a menu so we could make our lunch choices. "I'll make sure lunch is here between 12:00 and 12:30," she says. Perfect. We'll be starving in two hours for sure...unless we're gone before then. (PS: we were!)
By the way, for the weight conscious among us, know this: the titanium hip that she now carries around with her beneath that 7 inch incision weighs just about the same amount as did her jettisoned bones. This illustration is representational; not her actual hip.
