So……today and ‘right now’ we should be down in Plymouth sound doing sea trials in the Pathfinder : in real time however I am an inpatient in the local hospital having just spent a sleepless 26 hours in (A&E) ..accident and emergencies…although the consultant tells me off for calling it that – even though that’s what it says ‘on the tin.
I’ll jump straight to the car chase and sex scene so….it seems that I have had a stroke, although luckily quite a small one in terms of what was seen on the MRI scan – there has been a difference of opinion though and the one most favoured – by my GP and the A&E consultant is that it quacks like a duck and shits like a duck….so lets call it a duck kind of attitude prevails. The difference of opinion is that nothing showed up on the CT** scan and the presentation was a little bit unusual according to the medical registrar. Iv.e just this moment been seen by the Neurology team and the outcome is of the ‘ quacks like a duck variety’….so now i’m treating it like a duck : right now, for instance I am ‘wired for sound’ to take a long term ‘tape’ recoding to see if my primary pump is acting up.
As you can probably imagine it’s been an extremely strange 36 hours thus far ; even more so in that the admissions ward that I woke up on this morning used to be the place we created the cardiac intensive care unit out of and that’s the reason I came to the city more than 45 years ago – my story is that having landed at the main bus terminus I almost turned tail and left straight away.
Different strokes.
I spent the whole of the first day and most of the second in the emergency department mostly waiting for something or someone and it was a bit like a zoo when one of the angrier animals kicked off while actually being seen by a doctor. Most of the wait was taken up by waiting to be triaged, then when that’s happened, waiting for bloods to be taken and scans to be done, after that it’s a very long wait to meet a clinician and once a decision has been made it can be most of a day waiting for an admission slot – by the time that happened I was thoroughly exhausted which is why waking up in the half dark of a busy admissions unit was extremely disorientating. I had never actually worked in the ED apart from arriving at a run occasionally to deal with something very major so seeing it in a more normal and everyday kind of way was an interesting experience – just crazy busy, i fact it only quietened off for about an hour at around 7am (the morning after the night before) but then in another hour there wasn’t even a space to sit.
Attitudes and observations.
For an ex nurse it was fascinating just wandering around watching people – for instance I noticed the large amount of patients experiencing pain – that’s even outside of the experience of asking people but just watching people ; as an ex pain CNS I would have expressed that as a ‘ FLACC’ score and interestingly it was one thing I got to talk about with the nurse who transferred me. Another observation, just from having to sit surrounded by patients and visitors was the sheer number who commented or complained about patients not using their common sense – there are, for example, posters everywhere about not attending A&E for basic problems but instead seeing a GP or using a non emergency call. The problem though, as I found out, is that you do go and see your GP and the GP automatically sends you to A&E or the 111 call says to attend because, mostly, that’s the place that has kit like CT scanners (2 of) and MRI scanners….also if you need a genuine specialist, like a surgeon a tertiary hospital is the place to be. Right now I don’t feel the need to be here – the only thing that I am benefitting from is that I am wearing a kind of tape recorder listening for arrythmias that could be the cause of the tiny clots that might have caused the stroke. I could be at home with the tape, that would free up a bed and the only thing I would need to come in for is to have a cardiac echo – that could be done in half an hour as an outpatient. See,or be seen by a doctor ? , well, the way I have dealt with that for the last few years is with a telephone call and nowadays via the internet but then i’m trained in quick , detailed and structured handovers.
Tonight it is highly likely that the A&E will be full again, highly likely also that they won’t have cleared their decks from the day’s work and will be just the same tomorrow and tomorrow …….and tomorrow again. The helicopter has already gone ot 3 times, I can hear the whine of the gas turbine again so any moment now one of the consultants will be loading up again. Right now I also happen to know that there is a veritable car crash of ambulances stacked up at the main entrance waiting for a chance to offload their patients – one patient I spoke to this morning on the admissions unit claimed to have been sat in the back of an ambulance for more than 12 hours – what that means is something like 12 ambulances out of action for 12 hours a pop.
Tonight I am sitting on a specialist ward (Its not very good) that is full of people that have had serious ‘real’ strokes so it’s pretty grim and a bit depressing – the greater problem being that it is the future for a lot of people……both of my late parents had strokes at some time as their health deteriorated – is this just a foretaste of the future ?. Today I had the day pencilled in as sea trials but instead am sitting in an acute stroke ward in an almost industrial healthcare setting and wondering if it’s time to give up the kind of sailing that my expedition style boat calls out for – after all iv’e done the kind of things in sailing that most sailors only fantasise about but will never do ……three times around the Horn is enough I feel. I used to own a competent little cruising boat that I needed mainly because of working in the kind of place that I am sat tonight. Tonight I would rather be at home as I won’t get much sleep here.
**But did when I had all of my electrons spun up by a gert big magnet (MRI scan)
Postscript…..it’s Saturday morning and I am both home and awake after being discharged from the hospital – the last few hours being a bit like an outtake from the Muppet show….and then the longest night’s sleep I have ever had. As you would expect we never did get to do sea trials with the Pathfinder – which kind of slides down my priority list right now.
As an ex nurse and following a long career at the hospital I have just been discharged from it was an utterly bizarre experience seeing it from the other side….some of it was good, some unexpectedly so and some of it comically bad…..
Anyone looking for a Welsford Pathfinder…..one careful owner/builder ?
Post-postscript, post edit and note to readers. It should be obvious that I originally wrote the post in hospital and during an acute event and not. for example, at home. I didn’t even give it a proof read for spelling and basic factual errors, and certainly not for a check of sentence structure and literary cohesion…..it might not always seem the case but I generally try to do those things for posts.
Today…..both of us read the post and I could immediately see that it was a bit random and reading behind the lines a bit I could tell that my mental state was slightly ‘lacking’ which was something I tried to describe, at the time, to several professionals who came to see me and carry out some form of assessment. A good example was that I had to meet the OT (occupational therapist) and luckily another patient and I had been talking about the difference between just carrying out a routine task and say, writing out a description of how to do it – one thing that happened was that he failed a simple safety assessment (making a cup of tea) when he simply forgot to plug the kettle in and switch it on. I passed it myself although the OT frowned a bit when I started my test by washing my hands using the fairy liquid…..until I explained that I was a sailor and that’s what we do because it’s the only detergent that works in salt water.
I was surprised by just how tired I was even at that stage and had to work hard in the cognition test and mini-mental score such that, if I was asked about my mental state today, I would say ‘tired and emotional’ or even dazed and confused……that’s today’s Led zeppelin reference BTW.
Dirty Wet Dog, the great adventure. 