I have many fears, many irrational, and some very silly. For instance, I have a fear of grammatical errors and typos. Rather, I have a fear of making grammatical errors and typos and having other people see them. This fear has kept me from writing this blog for a long time. Today has been a scary day, because once I give some of my friends and family the URL for this blog, I start noticing my errors. Shock horror. My stomach is still turning.
I have been afraid to start a blog for another reason. You see, I tend to be at my funniest when things are going wrong. It has something to do with having a dark sense of humour. I got this courtesy of my dad. With this in mind, my thinking goes like this: I start blog in the hospital and people actually start reading it -> I feel pressure to keep people entertained with interesting material -> I tempt fate and inadvertently invite bad things to happen to me so that I can keep the material and laughs coming. I know all you psychologists out there are loving this and your insides are screaming "hello coping mechanism and self fulfilling prophecy!"
I am not sure how this is all going to work seeing as I am still in hospital and this is only my third post, but I am trying to defy my odd and long held beliefs and believe that I can find humour in a day in which nothing has gone terribly wrong. So here is my day, or the important bits, anyway.
Around 8 am Mr Breakfast Man is sticks his head through the door and asks what I want. I sit up and by the look on his face I know my hair has that crazy bed head look . Some people have sexy bed head. And then there is me. Hair going here, there any everywhere. It always looks like I have tried to pull off a cool Punk rock do but have ended up with a hairstyle that screams a blind hairdresser with a passion for Texas Big Hair circa 1980 has done my hair instead.
I quickly eat my breakfast and think of falling back asleep. I lay my head down but sleep is tricky with all the people coming in and out of my room and the jack hammer going off outside in the street below. A jack hammer, go figure.
The morning passes quickly and a little before lunch I am visited by Darth Vader's daughter. Before entering, Darth Vader's daughter spent a very long time outside the room getting ready to come in. She enters and then I see that she obviously has a part-time job with HAZMAT. She has on something that very much resembles a gas mask. I am very confused because I don't know the person under all the gear and I immediately start thinking crazy thoughts. First, I think she must be here to decontaminate me, although I am not sure exactly what I am contaminated with, besides a number of bugs in my lungs, and I can't really see what she is going to do about it. My next thought is that she is here to do my Swine flu test. The doctor told me the night before that this involves sticking a small tube up my nose and that it is uncomfortable, but not painful. A bit like "getting water up your nose," she said. So I think maybe she is a big liar and Mrs Hazmat Vader has come to pin me down and pump so much stuff up my nose that it is necessary for her to be in full protective gear. Note: Until this point I had always thought that I had a very poor imagination, but I guess I was wrong.
Turns out Mrs Hazmat Vader is really Mrs Bossy Physiotherapist. She sits down and apologises for all the gear. She tells me that it is necessary. I suppose she needs a heftier mask than most as she has come to make me cough up green goo, and this a very germy job, but I am not sure. Then the doctor from the night before enters. She has on no isolation gear. She says that all the doctors have talked and, because I have not run a fever since arriving, agreed that I no longer need to be in isolation. She tells me that if I had had Swine flu or some other form of flu that I am obviously at the tail end of it and that anti-virals would do me no good and I am no longer a contamination threat. So happy Get Out of Isolation day to me! I agree that this is a good choice, especially as I am sure I never had flu of any sort to begin with and all this isolation stuff has been a little over dramatic. Meanwhile, you know Mrs Bossy Physio sitting there in her HAZMAT gear is thinking, "And you couldn't have told me this ten minutes ago?!" Life is all about timing, right?
After all the HAZMAT gear has been removed, Mrs Bossy Physio starts discussing action plans for me. I can't stop wondering why she is here because I am very capable of doing my own physio and the other physios know this. She tells me that they have told her this but she wants to see if she can help me "optimize." She wants to watch me do physio but fortunately it is a bad time for me and for her so she disappears for a bit. She comes back later but I am saved by lunch.
Early afternoon has arrived and my friend Camilla has come for a visit. She is my first non Alastair visitor and I am thrilled, especially as she has brought candy (and some pineapple also so as not to be accused of giving me all junk). We are having a great time chatting away when Mrs Bossy Physio reappears. I have told Camilla of my efforts to shake her and, like a trooper, Camilla does her best to act as a road block. Mrs Physio says she will come back in half an hour.
True to her word, she comes back and poor Camilla is shuffled off to the guest room while I have my physio session. This session revolves around me breathing into my pep mask (the mask gives resistance when you breathe into it, forcing air back into your lungs and helping to open the airways) and then doing some breathing techniques to try to shift all the gunk. And I am a gunk producing machine. I am, after all, in the hospital for a chest infection. So within no time I have filled a sputum pot with lung snot. (CF is really not a sexy disease. You spend your whole day spitting out nasty phlegm, and when in the hospital, they have you spit it into a pot so it can be examined. Nice.) Towards the end of the session she starts discussing alternative devices for use. I concede that a new device could be good and that a visit with Mrs Bossy Physio may have not been totally pointless. But then she goes and says something about this all being useful and us trying some stuff next week. I scowl (maybe just on the inside, I am not sure) and decide upon the name Mrs Bossy Physio right about now.
You see, I am convinced that I should be sent home. I can do and have done IVs at home, and as I don't have flu or fever, I think home is sounding better and better and more likely. I am sure I have a strong case for going home but know my plans will be ruined if Mrs Bossy Physio starts telling the doctors that there is work to be done with me.
And then Alastair shows up (just in time to save me from more physio) and Mrs Bossy Physio says something about "my boyfriend" being here. I think something to myself along the lines of, yeah, you can be my boyfriend, you handsome thing, you. Grrr. (I am still madly in love with Alastair and so am prone to thinking things like this, especially when bored in hospital.) The room is small and filled with a lot of stuff , so everyone is trying to shuffle around stuff and each other when it happens......*Cue the dhun, dunt, dun music*.....
Mrs Bossy Physio knocks my bedside table and sends the sputum pot from earlier flying. This is one of those moments. ...You know what I mean. You know that moment that is always played back in slow motion when you remember it? A moment that if there was a movie of your life, then this moment would be a scene in it. A moment that seems to be a metaphor for your life. Yeah, it was one of those.
So phlegm pot crashes to floor and the green goo spills out all over the floor. More like oozes out really. Green goo, after all, is goo, so it doesn't really spill but definitely oozes. Dis...gus...ting....
Mrs Bossy Physio looks shocked and immediately starts flapping about trying to clean it up and making her apologies while saying "this has never happened before." For those of you who know me well, you know I would be a rich girl if I had a dollar for every time someone has said "this has never happened before" in a situation that involved me.
Mrs Bossy Physio is obviously flustered and Alastair and I are watching her with mixed looks of pity and amusement. Alastair, sweet guy that he is, tells her not to worry and that usually he is the poor sod who is having to clean up green goo mess. I am not sure this makes her feel better, but it was nice of him to say. Unfortunately, it is true, he is usually the one who (if not me) cleans up any mess I have made during a coughing fit.
Anyway, I think I am starting to feel bad for Mrs Bossy Physio, all caught up in an event that shall henceforth be known as "The Green Goo Incident," but then I remember that she, rightly or wrongly, may be the one thing standing in the way of me going home sooner rather than later and I start to feel not so bad for her. In fact, I start thinking about giving her a piece of my mind and maybe spitting a big loogie in her eye and telling her that she needs to reconsider her position on what I do or do not need in the next few days.
But in reality, I say nothing and there is no loogie spitting. She promises to come back tomorrow and I turn to Alastair and start catching up with him.
And then the day carried on and became night and I waited for day 3 to begin.
No comments:
Post a Comment