What is Hopefully My Final Escape

Yippee ki yay, I'm back on the bedpan again!

But by the fourth day I was no longer suffering that old C. Diff diarrhea. I was actually feeling much better and this was the day they let me bathe myself.

More importantly to me, was at the 7:00 AM staff change. My night nurse brought in the new day shift nurse as they did at every shift change. It was a man, the one and only male nurse I was to have at Christiana Hospital after a long line of female nurses. I immediately perked up, not because I had something for male nurses, but because when I had been in Wilmington Hospital I had but one male nurse as well and he came on duty the morning of my last day there.  Could history repeat and this be my day of discharge from Christiana? I took this as a promising omen.

I began my morning with a series of doctors paying me a visit, Manny, Moe and Jack; or was it Moe, Larry and Curly? No, one

was a lady from the Infectious Disease Center because yes, I had an infectious disease, one they told me was very much so. Anyone coming into my room first had to don a gown and gloves as a precaution. She explained to me that I could get the C. Diff again going forward, it was a stubborn disease and it would forever be a part of my life, like some sneaky criminal lurking in the shadows of my bowels. There was no real cure either and nothing I could do or eat that would prevent it if it choose to strike again. All this because my Primary Physician had put me on an antibiotic for sniffles. Curse you, Cefdiner!  (That's the antibiotic, not my doctor.)

Not long after she left, Dr. Wetherill popped in. He was the attending physician for the hospital. Because of the similarity in the names,  I kept wanting to call him Mr. Weatherbee, the principal from the Archie Comics. Actually, he even looked a bit like Mr. Weatherbee. He told me they were considering discharging me either today or on Saturday. He asked me how I felt about it.

I told him I would love to go home today.

Did I feel strong enough to go home?

Yes, I felt strong enough.

He left with a "We'll consider it."

Consider it well, in fact, put on your Nikes and just do it. 

I called my wife and told her I might be coming home and I'd call her when I knew anything for sure.

Sometime around noon the nurse came in and told me I was being discharged in about a half hour. He took out my IV, which entailed more ripping off of tape and hair. He noted who ever put it on was a bit of a sadist. It used to be a sign of virility for a man to have hairy arms and chest and I guess I was a viral man, but boy it hurt to have tape ripping off that hair. If I want a wax job, I'll go to a salon.

I called my wife again and the phone rang and rang until the voice mail came on. I hung up and tried again. It took 4 tries before my wife answered. She sounded weary and said she had been trying to unclog the vacuum. She sounded so upset I didn't even think to ask her to bring me fresh clothes. I fished through a paper bag on my counter and put on what I had worn into the hospital, shorts and a T-shirt, but still better than the open-backed gown.

I didn't want a repeat of when we left Wilmington Hospital and she  had to wait in the heat because they couldn't find a wheelchair to bring me down. I told her when the wheelchair came I wanted her to go down with me and then get the car. However, things did not go so smoothly this time either.

When the nurse came in to go over my discharge instruction and have me sign the release paper, I asked if he would order the Vancomycin (oh yum, I get to drink that poison four times a day even when I get home) from the pharmacy so we could pick it up on the way out. He did so. He came back and said it would take an hour to prepare, we could wait in the room where we had TV or we could go down and wait in the hallway outside the pharmacy. We choose to stay in the room.

My wife does not have much patience with waiting. The hour seemed to never end and she was getting more and more annoyed, but then the nurse came in and said the hour had passed and he was ordering up a wheelchair.

My escort appeared right behind him, a young lady named Poon. The three of us set off for my exit. Poon then rolled me into the pharmacy and Lois left us to get the car.

Poon assisted in my buying the bottle, which cost $124 because it was not covered by any insurance, and then she rolled me out to the large window fronting the pick up area. 

There we waited and waited, but then a man came up and told her he would watch me. He was the traffic director for the pickup place. Since it was a nice day, he rolled me outside and there we waited and waited.

And waited.

It was like the Philadelphia Airport, car after can pulled in to pick up the recently discharged, but no sign of our red Fit. We waited there, although the guy went off to aid some other people occasionally, while I grow more and more panicked.

I know she walks slow, but even at her pace she should have reached Parking Lot B long ago and it was not a long drive from there to here. Where was she? Christiana Care is a large complex with multi-lanes throughout the parking lot, perhaps she was lost. Or what if she went to the wrong exit?

I asked the guy if there were other entry/exits. At first he said no, but after a bit of prodding it seemed there were at least four: the heart division, but that was just down the driveway in our sight and she would have had to drive past where we were to get there. There was the Emergency Room, where we had originally entered, but I really didn't think she would go there. Then their were two other smaller points.

What if she went to one of those? How would I contact her if she was sitting at pint B and I was at Point A? For that matter, how would I contact her if she were lost in the parking lots? The guy asked about a cell phone. First of all, I thought mine had gone home with her after they admitted me. Second, I didn't think she ever set up her phone when we got new ones a couple months previously, and if she had and had it in her purse, I wasn't sure she would answer it.

It was growing later and I pictured myself sitting alone in my wheelchair as the sun set. I was really wondering how we would ever hook up again when suddenly she came around the bend into the pickup area.

She was pretty frazzled.

We left and I again told her to pull over and let me drive.

She was very upset and blamed the problem on construction they were doing at the hospital. She couldn't turn up the drive she wanted and then she did get lost in the confusion of lots, eventually ending up out on the main road heading toward I-95. She turned around and still had trouble finding the proper lane to the pickup point. 

I kidded about it being like the mazes they use to feature in the children's books, like "Highlight's" and "Jack and Jill" when we were kids.

She didn't really see the humor in it.

I didn't care. I was heading home again, hopefully for good this time. I had no desire to return back to either hospital.

Deja Vu All Over Again

 I had arrived home from my Endoscopy and I felt pretty well. My Home Health Nurse, Leo, showed up in the afternoon and ran the usual check of my vitals. He looked at me and said,
"do you know you have a 101 fever?"

No, I didn't. He took out his phone and called the doctor. He got done talking then told me I was to immediately go to the emergency ward. They thought something had happened during my procedure, like a tear or infection.

So we headed down I-95, my wife driving, but this time we passed Wilmington. I had decided I wanted to go to Christiana Hospital instead. Wilmington and Christiana Hospitals are all part of Christiana Care, but the big complex at Christiana is the mother ship.

We came around and up in front of the emergency ward. I was struggling a bit, but there was no one coming to help. Some people were standing around, but none moved to do anything. This was ticking Lois off and she was none to quiet about it. I went on in and she left to park the car.

I went to the check in window, but the lady there told me to go over to a window to my right. A guy came over and took my info. he told me to go through a gate into the back just as Lois arrived.  We did as he said and I was ushered into a little exam room where further questions were asked and then we were sent into the main waiting room.

There we sat doing what the room was for -- waiting. Lois has no

patience for waiting. She was complaining, in no uncertain terms, and finally got up and went to inquire. Of course, this did little good, but finally my name was called and I was once again in a little curtained exam room, where it was decided to admit me. They wheeled me off in a wheelchair and Lois took some of my things and left for home.

Different hospital, I was now entrapped in Christiana Hospital instead of Wilmington Hospital, but other than the location everything else was familiar. The bed was the same padded prison with the same alarms and the same discomforts. Like before the phone was out of my reach and the window was too distant to look out at the grounds. The TV was the same with its difficult to use control screen. There was a different set of nurses and aids and technicians, but they did the same procedures. One of them put an IV in my left arm, but they did not put a second one in my other arm this time. I guess we can count that as different. Each morning the vampire came by to draw vials of blood, although this one did have a sense of humor. I was injected in the stomach twice a day as before and fed that evil Vancomycin four times a day.


And the raging diarrhea was back, I was having my second bout with Clostridium difficile, or C. Diff as they called it for convenience sake. So I was wearing only the very exposing thin gown with the open back and riding the bedpan once more.

By the third day, once again, the diarrhea had lessened and they were allowing me to walk over to a commode chair when my bowels moved. It was all routine to me now. 

One thing was definitely different and welcome. This nurse asked if I would like to bathe. Oh, yes, indeed I would. I had spent 5 days in Wilmington Hospital without any such thing as a bath or shower. Now I pictured a scene from Seinfeld (the whole world can be defined by Seinfeld scenes). George was visiting his mother in the hospital and behind him was a curtain hiding the other occupant of the room. Suddenly a beautiful nurse appeared saying she had come to give the patient a spong bath. You saw just the dark silhouettes behind the curtain.

This is what I pictured in my mind: A beautiful nurse comes in with a washpan and strips off my gown to wash me with a sponge. Ah, the kind of fantasy I had when a teenager. Of course, the reality was not quite living up to the imagination. A nurse, who was perfectly fine looking, did come in with a washpan, but she continued into the bathroom. She then pushed a chair into there and came and got me out of bed. 

I waddled into the bathroom and the washpan of hot water and a washcloth were in the sink before the chair. I was left alone then to wash myself. There was the hot water and soft washcloth and body wash and lotion on the counter. I stripped and did that warm wash ever feel good. There was even a glass holding a fresh toothbrush, toothpaste and mouth wash for me, which I made use of and then I dried off and slipped on a clean, fresh gown that was hung on the back of the door.

I called out I was finished, but got no answer, so I walked out to the bed myself. My room was empty of anyone else, but as soon as I sat on the bed alarms rang out and the nurse quickly appeared.

Each shift change the nurse that had been in charge would come in to introduce the next head nurse. On the fourth morning, at 7:00 AM when this occurred I was introduced to a male nurse, the only male nurse I had that week. I took this as a good omen. I had one male nurse during my imprisonment at Wilmington Hospital and he was the one on duty with I was released.  Could it happen again?


To Be Continued...

Home is Where You Are Safe and Secure, Isn't it?

There I sit waiting on the wheelchair to ride me out of that room and out of that hospital. And eventually one came and soon I was back in my castle, a bit weak, but thrilled to be home away from jabbing needles.  I felt not too bad.

All I had to do was rest and take that wonderful Vancomycin four times daily. You took it by filling a syringe with 2.5 mm and then squirting it into your mouth and down the throat. It had an awful taste.

Of course, before I could delight in that taste, I had to figure out how to get it from the bottle to the syringe. It came to me in three pieces: the bottle of stuff itself, the syringe and some funny looking little plastic round doodad. I tried sticking the tip of the syringe in the top of the bottle and pulling back the plunger to suck in some elixir, but that didn't work.

Fortunately, my Daughter Laurel is a VetTech and she knew how it worked. Isn't that nice, I had to go to an animal nurse to learn how to take my human medicine. You see that funny looking round thing had to be pushed down into the mouth of the bottle, where it fit quite snuggly. There was a hole in the center of the now snuggly-fitted plastic round thing.

You shook the bottle well, then you inserted the syringe tip into the hole, turned it all upside down and then drew back on the plunger until you sucked in 2.5 mm. After that you pulled the syringe from the bottle and shot it into your mouth, put the cap back on the bottle and placed it in the refrigerator until the next use.

I was instructed to do this for 14 days.

I certainly didn't expect what came next.

I had been told I could eat certain foods, sauerkraut and fermented vegetables, and a lot of yogurt. One of the ladies, Pat Himmelstein, from Iron Faith Fellowship brought us a meal of hot dogs, sauerkraut and mashed potatoes, always one of my favorites. My daughter got about three meals out of this, I think. I enjoyed it thoroughly, but I did notice a pain in my stomach and some upset that evening.

This pain was right at where the stomach meets the diaphragm continued and to some degree so did the stomach upset. Every time I ate anything both pain and upset got worse. In fact, the upset was like an angry sea tearing down a shore town. It was intense as was the pain and it went on for long hours. It was there every day and getting worse. I couldn't sleep because of it. I moved from the bedroom to the living room sofa, displacing some disgruntled cats, just so I didn't disturb my wife's sleep.

This upset and pain was so bad I stopped eating, because it intensified whenever I ate anything. I barely ate or drank anything over the next two weeks. I was getting weaker and losing weight.  Yes, it had lessened some after I was through taking the Vancomycin, but not enough that I was willing to endure food. After another week, I was so bad I told Lois I was going to put myself back in the hospital.

It was on that day that Leo, the home health nurse, came to visit. He saw I was in distress, that I was badly dehydrated. He was the first person who actually took the time to listen to my tale of woe. He made a lot of notes, then called the doctor. I was told to go see my family physician at 11:30 the next morning.

This is the doctor who gave me the antibiotic that gave me the C. Diff so I was feeling a bit of animosity toward him, but I went. After his exam, which showed I weighed 165 pounds, down from 180+ when I had first went into the hospital, he issued an order for blood work -stat, a prescription for Prilosec and set up an Endoscopy. We immediately went for the blood work, and what happened there was a story in itself and sometime I will tell it, then we picked up the prescription and I waited to hear from the Gastroenterologist on my appointment. (This appointment making is another tale for later.)

The Prilosec actually ended my pain and stomach upset, allowing me to eat again. I had been on Prilosec ever since I had a colonoscopy in 2012, but the hospital had removed it from my medications. The pain and upset were side effects of Vancomycin and the Prilosec would have saved me from that suffering.

My endoscopy was on Tuesday the 20th at 9:00, but they wanted me there at 7:00 AM. Knowing my wife was not a early riser and considering she might be erratic driving from lack of sleep,  I arranged for another church lady, Jean Harris, to drive me. (I would be doped up for the procedure and not able to drive after I had it, so I needed a driver.)

They found two ulcers in my stomach, which they sealed up. I was brought home and dropped off. That same afternoon, Leo the nurse, again stopped by. He took my vitals and I had a temperature of 101 degrees. He immediately called my doctor and guess where I was headed off to next?

Hospital stay number two!

Up from the Valley of C. Diff and Death

You see that window behind me? That might as well have been another world during my first three days. I could see little outside and I had no idea what it looked out over. I was growing curious about it, but it might as well been on Mars. I couldn't get to it even though it couldn't have been more than 25 feet away.

But on my fourth day of imprisonment a new face appeared by my side. She introduced herself as a Physical Theropist and she asked if I would like to take a walk.

You bet your bippy, whatever a bippy may be. It is certainly a word the spell check doesn't like. It changed my first bippy to tippy and my second to hippy.

She disconnected my IV from the pole and I slid off the side of the bed to my feet. She turned off the alarm. She asked if I wanted the walker, but I told her I could manage on my own two feet. She did put a strap about my chest so she could grip me in the back if needed to keep me upright. I asked if we could walk by the window.

I was a little wobbly, but I really didn't need her to hold me as we walked a few circles about the room and past the window. Ah, how nice to see outside. My room was facing the West. I could see the WTC Plaza, the last building I worked in at Wilmington Trust. (I guess it is called M&T Plaza, now.) Over on the left was the Washington Street Ale House and straight ahead was the parking garage.
Directly below the window was the pickup and drop-off circle before the main entrance.

Off to the right was the cemetery, something I always joked was not what you want to see from your hospital room, a too near reminder of where you might end up. I had never dreamed I would be the patient gazing out at it.

It had felt good to walk about again, but it didn't rescue me from the commode chair. I though I could use the bathroom like a big boy now, but every thing that emptied out of my body had to be eyeballed and examined by the nurse before being flushed away.

They were checking the content of the potty for consistency and color and somewhat the same with the bottles of urine. I believe they marked down the amount of urine and one time the nurse mentioned it was too light, it needed to be darker, like I controlled the hue.

My Pastor and his wife, Karen, showed up for a visit, so someone got the word to them of what had

happened to me, probably my daughter had posted something online. They said they knew something was wrong when I didn't come to the church picnic on Sunday. I always go to most church events if only to take some photographs. I had just not felt up to it the past Sunday. Pastor Randy Scott brought me a balloon of a silly looking monkey with a "Hang in There" banner on it. That thing floated around the room the rest of my stay like a stray Angel watching over me.

On the fifth day, when the shift changed at 7:00 AM, the night Nurse brought the new day Nurse in to be introduced. This was the ritual at every shift change. This time was a bit different for the Day Nurse was male, the first and only male nurse I had the entire time. Keep this in mind. The doctor came in and announced they were discharging me later in the day. Yay, I was going home. I called my wife and told her to come and get me around midday and bring me some clothes. All I had was the open back gown and I didn't see myself exiting back into the world just wearing that, even though I was certain half of Wilmington had seen my nether regions by then.

The nurse came in and ripped off my tapes and took out the IVs.  My wife came in, looking very bleary eyed. The Nurse gave me the discharge papers for signing and a copy for myself along with a prescription for Vancomycin. He told me a wheelchair would be there soon to roll me out. They never let you walk out of a hospital, they have to ride you to the front door. Heaven forbid you should fall and sue.

My wife left to get the car and bring it to the pickup circle. I waited for my escort. I could see out the window my wife going up the elevator in the parking garage and then after a few minutes our Red Honda Fit winding its way down the levels to the street.

I still waited for my wheelchair lift.

Meanwhile, another lady approached me and set up my home health care.      

And I returned to waiting and waiting for the wheelchair. The nurse told me it would come soon, there had been a little problem getting one.

Time ticked away. I began to feel nervous because I knew Lois would be getting upset at this delay. I had no idea how upset.

The chair finally appeared and whisked me down and out to the front and up to the door of our car. I could see my wife was fuming. I got in and she began ranting about the situation. It was a hot day and she was sweltering. The Valet had harassed her, telling her she couldn't park there. She told him she was picking up her husband, but he kept eyeing her there after. She took off in her fury. She was going out the exit a bit too fast, stopping a little too short behind other traffic, and when we turned down the street to the ramp onto I-95, she missed the ramp somehow and was headed down a street into what is called Happy Valley. Right then there was not a lot of happiness. I told her to pull over and let me drive. I thought in her state she would get us killed or back in the hospital.

Part of the problem was the heat and the fact she hadn't been able to sleep the night before, an ongoing problem she has. She was too tired and upset to be driving. She calmed down after I took the wheel and we headed home thinking I was safe and secure from this blasted C. Diff. How little I knew about the disease.