I’ve been in an ambulance three
times.
The first time, was a few years
ago when the doctor in Heathcote (I call him Dr Quack), thought I was having a
heart attack. I mean, I’d driven myself
to Heathcote hospital (15 minutes from home, but another 45 from Bendigo), and
they tested me, and then when they couldn’t find anything wrong, called Dr
Quack. He told me to drive to his clinic
so he could have a look at me, made me wait an hour, then panicked and called
the ambulance.
I shall point out that the
ambulance took an hour to get to me, even though I was ‘having a heart
attack’. I rang Charlie at the same time
I rang the ambulance, and he drove from Campbellfield to Bendigo (2 ½ hours),
and got to the hospital ½ an hour before the ambulance.
AND it cost me $2,500.00
because I didn’t have ambulance cover.
AND I only agreed to go in the ambulance because Dr Quack has said it
will only cost me $400.
It turned out I had pulled a
muscle in my chest.
Lesson here: Dr Quack knows
about as much about chest pains and ambulances as I do.
The second time, was earlier
this year when I when again, I had chest pains, and I drove myself to my
doctors in Seymour, because I thought my cold had gone to my chest. After checking me out and determining that it
was not a cold, she put me on a cardiograph, only to find out that I had indeed
had a heart turn, and piled me in an ambulance to take me all of 2 km’s to the
hospital.
That trip cost $1900.00, but I
had private health cover by this stage.
I’d learnt from my previous experience.
The third time was on the 9th
of November; two days after my kidney stone had been lazered (yay Dr Evil) and
the stent inserted.
The morning has started out
like any other day, and I was still tired and feeling like shit post-surgery. I’d come home the previous afternoon and felt
all right that morning, but the pain was returning to my side and back, and was
accelerating quite rapidly. None of the
pain killers I had were doing anything to help.
So, I rang Nurses On Call, who
simply said ‘get an ambulance to the hospital.’
I rang the hospital and told them what was happening, and they too said
‘come back into us.’ So it was on for
young and old.
Now, personally, I would have
preferred to drive in, but as I was in no condition to drive, and as Mum was
terrified of city traffic (unless its’ at 2am), it left me with no other
option. I called 000. I thought this would be an interesting test,
because I’ve never had an ambulance come to the house before, and I wondered
not only if they could find it, but how long they would take.
So, I gave them directions and
went to wait up at the front gate for them in Mum’s still smashed up new car
(the panel beaters hadn’t come for it at this stage). Fifteen minutes later; no ambulance. So, I called 000 again (feeling like a time
waster) and was told that they were on their way.
45 minutes later, they arrived,
and I was thanking God I wasn’t having a heart attack. You’ve seen the ‘if I could have my heart
attack again…’ ads on telly? I would have been dead by now. Jebus. I could have nearly made it to
Bendigo, and would have been half way to John Fawkner if I’d bloody driven…
So anyway, they load me into
the back of the ambulance, and we headed off to John Fawkner.
Now I will tell you this about
an ambulance; it is not a smooth ride.
The stretcher is really narrow
(particularly if you’re a big chick like me), so I spent some of my time
clinging to that for dear life, and the rest trying to breathe through every single bump in the road that I felt along the way.
It was the longest 1 ½ of my life.
Thank God for morphine.
So when we roll into John
Fawkner, the triage nurses and doctors all remembered me from a couple of days
ago (sad really) and were happy to see me.
I’m glad they were happy, because I certainly wasn’t happy to be back.
So they take me straight
through, pop me in a cubicle, and check me out.
This is where the fun begins.
I ring Charlie through the
afternoon, I think it was about 4pm, and tell him that ‘I haven’t any
information as yet. Wait for me at home,
and I’ll call you when it’s time to come and get me. I don’t want you travelling down in this bad
weather (we were due for horrendous storms) if I’m staying in overnight.’
So the lovely doctor comes in
to see me, and she’s determined that my urinary tract is not happy about having
a stent in it. In fact, it’s so unhappy,
that it was trying pass the stent, which of course, is wired in.
Yay for me.
So I have my urinary tract
spasming to get rid of this ‘foreign body’, and it is causing me as much pain
as the original kidney stone was.
So, the lovely doctor
prescribes me some voltarin (to stop the inflammation), some buscopan (to stop
the spasming) and some panadol for the pain.
She hooks me up to a drip loaded with buscopan, gives me another shot of
morphine, and tells me to chill. When
the drip is through, I can go home.
‘How long will it take to run
through?’ I ask. ‘About an hour and a
half,’ she smiles, and off she goes.
It’s 4.30pm. I call Charlie. ‘Come and get me. They’ve hooked me up to a drip, and by the
time that’s run through, I’ll be ready to go, and you’ll be here. Come and get me.’
No problems. I say this to Charlie whilst the nurse is
taking my blood pressure, so I have a friggin’ witness.
Anyway, I’m half snoozing and
half watching some crap on telly, when my revere is shattered by someone in the
next cubicle being violently ill.
WTF? This went on for about an hour. Lovely.
My peace has been shattered. It’s
all about me, after all…
Good thing about the hospital
when you’re on the mend, is that no one demands anything from you, other than
your blood pressure and your blood sugars.
No one hassles you, they leave you alone, and you can watch whatever
crap there is on telly without any interruptions, or anyone chucking any
teenage drama queen episodes around you, or people saying ‘I can’t get my
printer to work’, or ‘I can’t find my wallet’, or ‘can I go to my friend’s
house…’ blaa blaa blaaa. It’s like a
holiday, but not quite as free.
Anyway, six o’clock rolls
around, and my drip as finished.
However, my big drip has not arrived yet. I grab my phone (amazing you can use your
mobile in a hospital now), and call him.
‘Where are you?’
‘I’m at home.’
‘What the fuck are you doing at
home? You’re supposed to be here!’
‘You didn’t call me…’
‘WTF? Yes I did!
I rang you to tell me to come and get me!’
‘You said you were on a drip..’
‘And by the time you got here,
it would be finished and I could go! For
fucks sake man! It’s six o’clock! You
won’t be here until eight! Get your arse moving, they’ll need the bed!’
Jebus.
The nurse overheard this, and
came in to see me. ‘Did he forget?’
‘I have no fucking idea what he
did… I think he just got completely confused… he’s been doing that a lot
lately… I can’t believe he misunderstood me…’
‘I was there when you made the
call. You told him to come and get you…’
‘You tell him that when he gets
here. I can’t believe it! I was hoping he would be here and I could
grab something to eat on the way home…. I’m starving…’
‘How long will he be?’
‘He should be here by eight.’
‘No worries. Stay here until he comes.’ And she was
off. Ten minutes later, she came back
with a tray of food. ‘Here you go love. It’s a diabetic dinner. It will ward off the hunger.’
If it was appropriate, I would
have leapt out of bed and grabbed her in a bear hug, I was so friggin’ hungry!
Awesome! Chicken schnitzel with mashed
sweet potato and gravy. Pea and ham
soup. Diabetic jelly and ice cream. Yeah.
I wonder what the poor people were having for dinner…
So, whilst I’m devouring my
dinner, and ignoring the drama queen hurling ridiculously loud in the bed next
to me, another nurse comes in again and sits on the chair next to me.
‘What’s up love?’ I ask her,
because she looked a little exasperated.
‘I must apologise for the noise
coming from the next cubicle. We have a
young male in there trying to make himself sick, and being a really
marshmallow. He’s buzzing us in there
every 2 minutes and really monopolising our time.’
‘What’s wrong with him?’
‘Nothing. He’s hung over and feels sick. He’s being ridiculous.’ She sighed. ‘You’re in pain; he is not, and he’s carrying
on like a fool.’
‘Tell him to have a mug of
concrete, and shut the fuck up.’
She laughed. ‘If we listen, I think the doctor’s about to
do that.
Almost on cue, I hear the
doctor quietly talking to him, telling him that he is just sick from being hung
over, and his behaviour is totally inappropriate. He was forcing himself to be sick, and
possibly doing more harm than good to himself.
Not to mention that he was being so loud and demanding, that it was
upsetting the patients around him, some of which were in a more fragile
condition than he was. She was going to give him an injection of something for
nausea, and then she was discharging him to go home and sleep it off.
I laughed out loud. You go doc! You go!
An hour and a half later, my
very sheepish husband rolled up to take me home, much to the amusement of the
nurses.
So, as we’re driving home
through a ridiculous storm (which we would have missed if Charlie’d been there
two hours earlier when he was supposed to be), I kept thanking God that was
over, and that the pain had ended.
Hopefully, I would be on the mend now, and could get back to work.
I didn’t realise then, just how
wrong I would be…
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