Big Mistakes
Monday November 21st
Everything hurt.
I think I had overdone it – all my marching up and down the corridor – and this morning, every muscle in my leg and back was complaining. Today I had to pack, and I had not realised just how much of putting things in a suitcase involves twisting, turning, bending and stretching. I fought bravely on, in the belief that this was the right thing to do and that I would gradually loosen up, but everything hurt.
When they wheeled me off to the ambulance I was again back with the sense of helplessness – I could do nothing for myself. I was strapped in the back of a glorified van with obscured windows, unable to see more than a glimpse of the world outside- and I recognised none of it. When I had arrived, 10 days previously it had been mild and sunny; today was bitter and wintry. I was disoriented. It was a short run to reach the clinic and it was exhausting…this whole sense of being held hostage on unknown terms combined with the sense of bruising and muscular strain. Maybe now I would be coddled and nurtured.
They unloaded me after the short drive to Trevi and wheeled me in. The first impact was the view through a doorway to my right, an explicit Torture Chamber. All I could see was a vast hall equipped with racks, benches, wall-bars, weights, pulleys and incongruously colourful giant beach-balls. A coven of what appeared to be Women’s Institute committee members were huddled around a table engaged in a strange ritual. They were cutting up pieces of felt and ribbon and stitching them into extremely unattractive Christmas decorations. I came over all Jack Nicholson.
Surely it can’t be this bad – but we were only just starting.
The room had two beds and shared a bathroom with a similar room adjacent. It was quiet, as everyone was at their morning exercises. All my comfortable, home-making things – the computer, the headset, the Kindle and so forth were packed into the two suitcases so I rested, but soon became restless. After 20 minutes or so I stumbled out of bed and started to put away some of the bits and pieces to make space for unpacking the suitcases. I had just hung up my jacket when a nurse appeared at the door, arms akimbo. Her comments were along the lines of:
‘Well, Mr Harvey, what do you think you’re doing? Out of bed, barefoot, no walking frame and no crutches….! Get back in bed this instant!’
I climbed back sheepishly, upon which the nurse pulled up the sides of the hospital cot, leaving me completely trapped and imprisoned in my bed with a urine bottle should I need it, and a call button should I need anything else. She then wagged her finger and told me not to try anything like that again…and marched off.
I was completely held prisoner for most of the rest of the day while a selection of other officers and wardens interviewed me about my medical history and criminal record.
At four in the afternoon, two orderlies arrived to unpack my stuff. This process is undoubtedly one of the greatest insults to personal dignity as clothing and undergarments are held up, surveyed and commented on, together with all the other peripherals that comprise one’s packaged, travelling identity. Then came the next lecture: If I wanted to get out of bed for anything, I was to use the call button to summon someone with my wheelchair; I would only be allowed to move around on crutches later, as and when they thought my body was safely adjusted and coordinated.
Is that quite clear?
Yes, Miss.
So, will you be cooperative from now on?
Yes, Miss.
Right, you may join the other inmates for the evening meal in the dining room; Maria will fetch your wheelchair. What do you say?
Thank-you Miss.
And so it was that I was wheeled away and wheeled back, locked in my bed where I escaped to the internet on my computer and the story of Lord Sugar and the precocious teenagers on Young Apprentice.
Parrots and other birds
Tuesday November 22nd
The early-morning nurse asked for my parrot. Even if I had been wide awake, I would have been confused, but as it was, awakening in the bars of my cage in a still-unfamiliar room, I was totally speechless. And then she pointed at my side table, and I realised that the silhouetted profile of a parrot would be identical to the silhouetted profile of the urine bottle. So there’s new Italian language vocabulary that’s not in the average teach-yourself book. I asked for my wheelchair so I could go to the bathroom, clean up and shave. When it was brought I sat patiently, doing just as I was told, waiting for the patient from the adjacent room to vacate the bathroom.
When I heard the door open and close, I wheeled myself through and luxuriated with the tingle of toothpaste and the stimulus of hot, soapy water. After a few blissful minutes, I felt ready to face the challenge of the physiotherapy programme as I spun the wheelchair neatly round, climbed out and sat at the table where I had set up my computer. The nurse appeared again, and she was still not happy.
What do we do before we get in or out of the wheelchair?
Put the brakes on, Miss.
Yes, Bob, we put the brakes on, don’t we? And we don’t go to the bathroom alone until we are physically stable and competent, OK?
No Miss, I mean Yes, Miss.
Bathrooms are dangerous places and you might slip and have a fall, and then what would you do, and what would we do, Mr Bob?
Is that a rhetorical question, Miss?
I was determined not to let them get me down, and after my weak tea and dry biscuits I rang the bell for nurse to put my shoes on and help me into my wheelchair so that I could spin on down to the exercise room for my first session of physiotherapy.
The coven were in full session and had added gold ribbon and tinsel to their ingredients. They cackled away, mass-producing bows, stars and hearts. I wished I’d brought the Kindle, not realising that the physiotherapy would be in individual sessions, so all I could do was sit and wait. It was a couple of hours later when my turn finally came and one of the extensive team of nubile wenches introduced herself: My name’s Francesca and I’ll be your therapist during your stay with us here in Trevi. Rather like an American diner: My name’s Bonnie and I’ll be your server for this evening. Except that it sounds more alluring in Italian.
She led me over to a bench the size of a double bed, told me to lie down and stretch out and then climbed up next to me. I started to forgive the Kommandant. Then Francesca started to massage the thigh muscles surrounding my wound. The sensation was exquisite, I could feel all the tension floating out of my legs, and across my lower back. She worked on my calf muscles then lifted up my legs and had me stretch, raise, bend, lower. It was initially difficult, but as the hour progressed, my whole lower body started to regain some sort of sense of cohesion.
She paused for a moment and then took a decision and had me stand with my crutches, then told me to walk across the room. I felt a wonderful sense of OK – now I’ll show you! …and I stepped out confidently. Francesca called out to a colleague to look at me, and I knew that what they had said at Foligno was right – I had made a very rapid early recovery and with a bit of effort and application I could be a star pupil and stop having the warders tell me off for being too ambitious. When I returned to my room I was glowing with a sense of achievement and looking forward to the afternoon therapy session after lunch and the rest period.
Just before three I asked a nurse to supervise me into my wheelchair, and then I spun off and settled myself in the corridor outside the exercise room with the Kindle. I was enjoying the opportunity that my incarceration created to lose myself in a wide variety of reading and was getting to grips with a thriller set in modern Moscow. It wasn’t long before the girls arrived, passed me my crutches and told me to walk across the room. I was super-confident this time. I walked steadily and smoothly, then carefully manoeuvred a 180 degree turn to meet their alarmed stare. But it wasn’t my ambulatory expertise that had mesmerised them; it was the pool of blood by my feet.
Emergency Repairs
They hurried me back to my bed and within minutes a flurry of nurses and doctors appeared and together rapidly agreed that they would patch me up and put me in an ambulance back to Foligno. Foligno created the problem, let Foligno fix it.
So it was that I sat in the ambulance wheelchair in my exercise clothes, wrapped in a blanket. I was clutching the Kindle for two reasons: I couldn’t face the boredom of all the waiting around that hospitals always entail and secondly, I was dying to learn the next developments of the story in which I was totally engrossed. As the ambulance sped away, I was once again overwhelmed with that sense of being totally out of control and only partly conscious of what was going on around me.
As they took me back to the Orthopaedic ward at Foligno hospital there was much banter with the staff. I told them I’d come back because I didn’t like the food in Trevi, which caused great amusement. A doctor and nurse took me into a treatment room and they spent what felt like a painful hour reopening and cleaning my operation wound. Apparently there was a hematoma – a build up of blood and liquid underneath where it has started to heal over. They bandaged me up again and that’s when they told me I’d be staying overnight, and possibly for a day or two more.
An hour later a suitcase arrived with my phones and computer, three shirts and two pairs of underpants. No trousers. The tracksuit bottoms that I’d been wearing were drenched in blood, so once they’d wheeled me through to a bed, I draped these over a radiator to dry out – I couldn’t live in underpants knowing that relatives and assorted crows would be in and out, day and night.
Finally, I crawled into bed, wondering what the doctors would all agree in the morning.
Slowing down
Wednesday November 23rd
I decided, as soon as I awoke, to do everything I could to avoid being “hospitalised.” In my mind I was no longer a patient, I was now a resident at the physiotherapy clinic in Trevi, temporarily in Foligno hospital for a quick-fix to a minor problem. I didn’t want to get back into all the trauma and transfusion of being poked and probed by nurses and orderlies. I wanted to maintain a sense of transition beyond that and being well-on-the-way-to-full-recovery. I wanted out: I wanted to get back to Trevi, the Torture Chamber and all those lovely young therapists.
I removed the itchy tee-shirt I’d been wearing in the exercise room and pulled a clean shirt and underpants out of the suitcase; I took the track-suit bottoms off the radiator and satisfied myself that the bloodstains had dried into invisibility and pulled on my seductively comfortable fleece slippers.
While my fellow residents were still sleeping, I rearranged the room, commandeering the table and moving it against the wall and under the window beside my bed. The view of the road and car-park were all part of the psychological context of not really being in hospital. Then I wired everything up: the computer plugged into the mains, the mobile-phone chargers both hooked up and the dongle connected up to test the internet access. My pillow now became a cushion for the hard chair and I was as happy as could be expected while I waited for the poke and probe teams to start their rounds.
First the vampires took 4 or 5 blood samples (once they’ve got a good flow they seem to want to fill a whole row of little bottles.) Then it was heart-rate and blood pressure, which were both excellent. Later the sweet trolley arrived and the anti-biotics, anti-coagulants and whatever were checked, dispensed and logged. Finally, well into mid-morning, the three musketeers arrived, comprising Leonardo, my surgeon, with his boss and the human tailor who had sorted out the wound the previous evening. Together they inspected, clucked and tutted and Leonardo gave me a scrawled prescription for a special a waist-high orthopaedic stocking which is designed to protect against deep vein thrombosis. That didn’t sound too arduous, until he told me I’d have to wear it for at least a month. Ah well! It gives a whole new meaning to Christmas Stocking. With pleading eyes I asked whether I still had to stay in hospital, and they gave their unanimous verdict that they would keep me at least one more night. Understandable, I suppose; they didn’t want to be the laughing stock of the Trevi crowd if I started leaking again.
And so I started an extremely boring and disorienting day. I read till an inedible lunch arrived- sticky, over-cooked pasta followed by their speciality of meat-loaf disguised as cat food, or vice-versa. In the afternoon I listened to the BBC Radio Four podcasts I’d downloaded, Play of the Week, Saturday Live, Thinking Allowed and the Now Show. The isolation brought with it waves of depression, made all the more poignant by the constant flow of visitors and overnight campers who arrived to surround the other beds. The brain rejects logic in such situation and wallows in emotional weakness – looking back later, in hindsight, it’s all easy to analyse and dismiss: it just gets difficult to handle at the time.
Dinner was more appetising, though that’s a rather strong adjective to use, and in the course of the evening I finished my book, let Laurie Taylor provoke me with ideas on moral issues, and chuckled at Richard Coles’ guests on Saturday Live. I stretched out on the bed, itching from too much wriggling from attempts to find comfort in a bed that needed to be six inches longer, and finally dozed off, determined that this should be my last night in the hospital, if that could, please, dear God, be possible.
Escaping back to Rehab
Thursday November 24th
I put my marker down: I dressed and packed. Not without talking first with the various medics who checked me out on their early-morning rounds and verified that all was well with the way the wound was healing. I confirmed that my partner was coming at midday and would then purchase the special support stocking so that I would have everything needed to make the move back to Trevi. They confirmed that I could then make the transfer by ambulance. Sorted!
Sadly, nothing in Italy is that simple.
As soon as Fi and Gerry arrived they went off to purchase the stocking from the shop on the ground floor, but returned promptly with a list of the measurements they needed. I rang for a nurse to help with the measurements – to make sure we didn’t mix up ankles and knees on the list, but the nurse didn’t want the responsibility and sent for someone “official.” Another medic arrived and was meticulous in determining the essential statistics so that after another 20 minutes I was all set to go and asked for the administration to book transport, while Fi and Gerry grabbed some lunch
Another 20 minutes and the nurse returned to tell me that transport would not be available until next morning. I was sitting there packed and ready to roll, so I told them I could arrange my own transport (by having Fi and Gerry drive the 10 miles to Trevi.) The nurse said I’d need a discharge letter and went off to arrange it.
Another 20 minutes and Fi and Gerry came back and I explained the situation. Fi went to arrange a wheelchair, and in the confusion I thought she picked up the discharge note and she thought I had it, but in any case I was on my way down in the wheelchair, hugely relieved to be moving to a positive environment.
Another 20 minutes and I was belted into the front seat of our car with my luggage and longing to put the hospital behind me and get on with the recuperation and rehabilitation programme.
Another 20 minutes and we were driving round in circles around Trevi, as Tom-Tom tried to send us down disused, dead-end farm tracks. We switched off Tom-Tom and headed for signs pointing to Centro, sometimes the old ways are the simplest.
One final 20 minutes and I was in my room, happy and content, and Fi and Gerry (- many, many thanks, guys,) were driving off, up over the mountains homewards.
At least 4 specialist medics (I lost count) came and wagged a finger at me with lectures about not putting strain on my wound, always getting someone to help me stand and not trying to dress myself. I kept an attentive expression and nodded gravely. The truth is that Foligno hospital never told me anything – they just assumed I’d be OK and when I did try walking up and down, they applauded my efforts. I never broke the rules before, and I love the structured programme that Trevi enforces. Tomorrow I’ll be back in the routine… and relishing every minute on the way to regaining full physical independence.
Pain, Punishment and Progress
Friday November 25th
Next morning, there were fresh checks on my bandages and more stern words of warning about the importance of doing exactly as I am told, and I was finally back into the clinic’s rehabilitation programme. I waited patiently outside the exercise room till Francesca summoned me to wheel myself through, then I climbed up onto the massage table and stretched out.
Her fingers started to knead and manipulate my bruised and strained muscles. The sensation was truly exquisite. It was a strange combination of pain and pleasure. Sometimes I was almost reduced to tears, and at other times I thought I would stop breathing. After the massage, she started on the exercises, forcing me to push against resistance, or raise a leg that simply seemed immobile, or leverage my back up off the bench with my feet raised up high and balanced on a giant, inflated exercise ball. Each exercise was repeated ten, twenty times, then a pause to catch my breath before twisting into another improbable position and discovering more, new, previously unused muscles.
Finally, I swung off the bench and was handed my crutches and given marching orders: slow, steady, straight back, even paces, don’t stoop, not too fast….Bravo!
There was another session in the afternoon with further exercises that looked so simple, but were totally frustrating when my legs simply would not do what they were told. But I knew there was progress, and when I went to bed, I found that for the first time in 2 weeks I could lie on my side without every muscle in my thigh and hip screaming out in protest.
The message at the clinic is still the same. Rest: don’t try to do everything at once. The challenge is that all I want to do is get back to normal as fast as possible – and this gentle process is not an easy one to accept. Still, if I can just overcome the guilt around being out action then I’m sure I’ll get there in the end.
No comments:
Post a Comment