Hospitals--Not for the Faint Hearted

So, I just returned home last evening from spending three days in the hospital.  Never fear, it was an entirely planned hospital stay--in fact, wedged in between a trip to San Diego to visit our son and daughter-in-law and another upcoming trip to see our daughter and son-in-law.

I am a Type A personality (if such labels still exist).  Patience is NOT one of my virtues, and anything annoying....well, it annoys me.  So, when the doctor announced that my recalcitrant blood pressure, that just would not come down, despite adding new medicines, needed yet another new medicine, he also announced--and you're not going to like this.  What? I asked innocently.  Well, you need to have it administered in the hospital.  All for to monitor my heart rate.  I mentioned a while back that I was rebooted and regained my sinus rhythm.  Premature announcement, as it turned out--even though it was true at the time.  Because, dear readers, I lost my rhythm.  Humph.

New med is designed to bring down BP and to help a heartbeat stay regular.  But, every now and then, it actually causes the heartbeat to go all wonky.  Hence, the need to wear a 24 hour monitor for several days. 

Hang in there with me: I am just getting to the good part.

Hospitals, I have decided, are not places for the faint hearted, especially not if one is NOT really sick.  For three days, I felt a bit as if I had wandered into the set of making of the movie "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest."

Herewith some random observations.

• Check your modesty and need for privacy at the registration desk.  You will not need it.  You get poked, prodded, pummeled...well, maybe pummeled is a bit of exaggeration.  You have your "vitals" checked endlessly.  Even all through the night.  I would be in a sound sleep, only to hear a chirpy voice saying "Just checking your vitals" as I felt an ear probe measure temp, blood pressure, pulse.  Thank goodness that's where the vitals check stopped.  And privacy?  Nope--with a roommate (which I had) there were family visitors coming in at all times, along with a seemingly endless parade of hospital staff: RNs, nurses' aids, housekeeping, food services, social workers, the occasional chaplain, and -- is it?  It just might be a DOCTOR!  Woo hoo. 
• Forget efficiency and speed.  Things move at a glacial pace (pre-global warming) in the hospital.  I arrived, as ordered, late morning on Monday.  Not until three, almost four hours later was my medication regimen begun.  And, since it necessitated 48 plus hours of continuous cardiac monitoring, that time made a difference.  It was not until the second day of being in the hospital that someone from the cardiac practice came to see me, and then only because my husband called a number the practice had given us.  When the doctor did arrive, he pointed out to me that "this is a hospital and there are emergencies that we have to deal with; people arriving in the emergency department, with heart attacks, etc."  I meekly accepted it, thinking all the while--that my husband's call was the proverbial squeak that garnered the dollop of grease the doctor's visit represented.
• If you are interested in a retreat-like pace, slow deliberative moving toward an unknown goal, then the hospital is the place for you...except it's not a silent retreat.  More on that in the next post. 

Annus Horribilis

No, the year is not yet over, and in no way do I intend this post to be a reflection on the year as a whole. I am enough of an optimist to continue to view each year as good. However, here in this humble household, we are having a run of ill health.

Perhaps it is the rapidity of repetition of ill health that has me reeling, just a bit. Back in June, we very suddenly lost our sweet dog Tipper. I am one of those folks who reckon that the animals in our lives are part of what connects us to that great mystery of life. Tipper's sudden decline into deteriorating health came almost without warning. True, she was an older dog, but I thought she might be with us longer.

We are currently experiencing a similar surprise of declining health with our one dear cat, Cassidy. He was one of a pair of kittens my daughter and I picked out fifteen years ago. When we first saw him, Cassidy and his brother Sundance were playing animatedly in a small cage at the local humane society. My daughter and I were walking around in the "cat room" looking at kittens. Some looked positively ill, others were so inanimate that, save for the rise and fall of their tiny sides evidencing breathing, it wasn't certain they were in fact alive.

And then there were these two oblivious kittens. They tumbled, and played, stopping only briefly to come to the front of the cage, paw at us, then resume playing. We picked them out right away. There was a bit of a disagreement between my daughter and me as to what to name them, but suddenly Cassidy and Sundance seemed like the RIGHT names.

Sundance was a gorgeous cat, but he succumbed at age three to renal failure. And now Cassidy is showing signs of kidney failure. He has almost stopped eating, is losing weight, and generally declining including sudden blindness from retinal detachment. I am savoring each day with him, knowing the days are coming to an end.

(Kitten Sundance at left)

So, back to this ANNUS MIRABILIS. The phrase has been variously used, but really came to public prominence when Queen Elizabeth II used it in her annual address to her nation in 1992. Herewith her opening sentence:

1992 is not a year on which I shall look back with undiluted pleasure. In the words of one of my more sympathetic correspondents, it has turned out to be an Annus Horribilis.

True, the queen's troubles far exceeded mine. She had experienced the break-up and divorce of her second son's marriage; her first son and his wife (Diana) had separated and their sordid conversations were being aired in the British press, and her daughter Anne divorced her husband. Then, one of the queen's favorite residences, Windsor Castle, caught fire. No wonder, it was an annus horribilis for her.

For me, it has been a run of family ills. My father fell, developed a hematoma and was hospitalized. My aunt fell, broke her hip, and is slowly on the way to recovery. Then my sister's daughter required near-emergency surgery, and just last week, our daughter-in-law had a health emergency that required her to have surgery, followed by several weeks of recovey.

I almost hesitate to turn the calendar over to the next month in a couple of days. I will strive to adopt the attitude of the poet John Dryden who wrote the poem Annus Mirabilis from which the term Annus Horribilis was derived. Dryden's year of wonders was 1665-1666, which ended with the great fire of London. Dryden was comforted by the fact that the fire eventually stopped and London was rebuilt.

Ah--time to resurrect a favorite expression that I have been known to use: this, too, shall pass.

A View from the Window

Dr. Virginia Kauffman died today.

Now, that may be a strange way to start a blog, but she was a remarkable woman and certainly merits the attention of one of my blogs. I knew her when she was a missionary doctor in then Northern and Southern Rhodesia (the countries are now called Zambia and Zimbabwe, respectively).

While there were other mission doctors from time to time, she was the one I remember the most because she cared for me through a childhood illness. When I was 12 years old, home from school on holidays, I complained to my parents that my arm felt funny, that I couldn't always control it. At first, since this was the mid-1950s, my parents were very concerned that I might have contracted polio.

So, Dr. Kauffman was contacted, and she came, did a thorough physical exam and took a blood sample. The diagnosis--rheumatic fever. Of course, I couldn't have the usual symptoms--I had to develop St. Vitus' Dance, a spastic condition that renders a limb or limbs uncontrollable. That explained my quirky gait and the fact that my left arm would suddenly fly out to the side.

I have written before, in My Sibling Stories entry, about some of the things I did during that illness. I was confined to bed with complete restriction on any movement, excepting to get out of bed to use the toilet. What I did during that time I remember somewhat. Since my mother was pregnant with my sister, I was cared for by one of the missionary women who was a nurse. And weekly, Dr. Kauffman would come to see me, and draw blood. What she was doing with the blood was allowing the blood to settle to see how quickly it would separate into liquid and sediment. Frankly, I don't know why. Caused by A Streptococcus bacteria, rheumatic fever is nothing to be messed with, as it can leave residual heart valve damage.

Photo from http://www.anbg.gov.au/gnp/gnp7/eucalyptus-mannifera.html

One of the things I did during that time was look out the window. From my bed, I could see a stand of tall eucalyptus trees that was on the mission station. When the wind caught the leaves, they moved gracefully dancing and flashing. I stared out the window alot. So, when I heard that Dr. Kauffman had died, I looked out my study window. Not quite the same view, but evocative nevertheless.

Obviously, I was very grateful to Dr. Kauffman for the care she gave me. In addition to the weekly visits, she started me on penicillin and instructed me to continue it until past my teen years. I did, and whether from that, or good fortune, or her care, I rebounded with no residual cardiac damage at all.

For a while, during high school and my first year in college, I thought I wanted to be a doctor. No doubt I was influenced by the fine example of Dr. Kauffman. But, then in my freshmen year, I ran head long into chemistry--two semesters of it. And once I got a C the first semester, and a D the second, I determined that maybe I wasn't meant to be a doctor after all.