I'm beginning to hate the hospital

Just when you think it's supposed to get better it gets worse. Last week I suffered for about 7 days with a fever, chills, night sweats, headache and lower back pain, all the signs of an infection. I was self medicating with Tylenol, ibuprofen and an antibiotic called Ciprofloxacin. We were hoping that the antibiotic would kill the infection and life would go back to 'normal'. But with a beaten down immune system and no energy left after 7 days of hoping things would turn around, we decided to get some professional help. So on Sunday afternoon we headed to the Foothills ER. With chemo, cancer and an infection you don't have to wait long to get a bed. I think we waited about half an hour. Once I got in I got worked up by the ER staff and the general surgery folks.

The funny part was they put me in the psych room. They called it a multi-purpose room and said they put me in there because it's isolated from the other patients (low immune system). It was a depressing place to be. There was no furniture other than the bed. The guards in the adjacent room had to come in when I first got there to disengage the electronic lock on the bathroom door. They also had to unlock a panel behind the bed that houses all the suction, oxygen and other medical supplies. There was no art on the pastel walls and all the ceiling fixtures (fire sprinklers, air vents etc.) had a special low profile design, I assume to prevent their use as a gallows. All in all it was a depressing place to spend a couple of hours.

Once I had seen all the doctors and told them my long and colorful medical history, I got a bed on Unit 72 upstairs. I got a semi-private room (score!) with a quiet, polite and quite interesting guy (score ,score score!). It turns out that unit 72 is the orthopaedic unit. That means it was mostly filled with oldies that had hip replacements or others that had been in car crashes or had suffered other significant bone trauma. My roommate broke his knee kite boarding in Mexico. He must be a hard man because he refused to be treated in Mexico. He got them to provide some powerful pain killers and he got on a plane and came back to Calgary to be treated. That must have been the worst plane ride in his life.

So there were some interesting things about being a surgical oncology patient on an orthopaedic unit. Firstly, since everyone there had broken legs, I was the only patient on the whole unit who could walk. So, I had the run of the place. The kitchen was well stocked, the courtesy phone was never busy and there were no IV pole entanglements with other pedestrian patients. It was kind of nice. Every time I walked by the nurses station they all did a double take. What's that guy doing up and about? Another interesting thing about being on unit 72 is that they had no idea how to take care of me. Actually that might be exaggerating a bit. I think the truth was they were so used dealing with broken legs, they had to really think hard about what to do with me when they came in the room. They kept asking me if I had numbness or tingling in my toes, a typical question for someone with a broken leg but not so critical for someone with a broken arse. So imagine their surprise when I told them that yes, I do have numbness and tingling in my toes. I let them get really confused for a second as they realized a) the stupidity of the question for someone with my issues and b) why the hell are his toes numb if he just had a drain put back in his butt. Then I would step in with the crucial information that actually, the numbness is in my hands too and it's caused by the 6 months of chemo I just finished last week. Don't get me wrong, the nurses were great, it was just an eye opening experience for me into the world of Canadian health care.

So, by the time I got up to Unit 72 it was Sunday night. I spent most of the night hooked up to an IV getting some antibiotics. The plan was that in the morning I would see Dr McLean (he's a colorectal specialist and a partner in Dr Buie's practice) and we would discuss what to do. By this time I had had a CT scan which showed slight growth in the size of my abscess, indicating that it was the likely source of infection. The decision that had to be reached with Dr. McLean in the morning was do we a) put in another drain, b) try to open up the abscess surgically to the rectum so it drains into there, or c) do nothing and wait until Buie gets back from Hawaii in a week. So with all this on my mind I tried to get some sleep.

Unfortunately sleep did not come easily. In unit 72 they have these new beds that are pneumatic. These particular beds are designed to cut down on bedsores by providing perfectly even support for a person in the bed. It accomplishes this by adjusting air pressure in a number of different chambers in the mattress. This air pressure change happens by way of a small, supposedly quiet air compressor built into the bed. This all sounds good in theory but the truth is, for any normal person trying to get a good nights sleep these beds suck. I think they limit bedsores not by their pneumatic balancing act, but by the fact that they are so uncomfortable to lie in, no one lies in one position for too long. After all, if you're tossing and turning and not sleeping, how could you possibly get a bedsore? I ended up unplugging my bed from the wall after a few hours on the first night. I couldn't deal with the fact that this bed thought it knew better than me what 'comfortable' was.

One of the other 'benefits' of these beds is that they have adjustable pressure. The thought there is that if you like a hard bed you can have it hard and if you like a soft bed you can have it soft. In reality there is no sliding scale on the bed, you have to chose between 'soft' or 'hard'. The first night I used the soft setting. It was like sleeping in a pot of oatmeal. My butt sank right through the mattress and came to rest on the metal frame beneath causing my back to flex in a decidedly unnatural manner. The heels of my feet sank in too and the bed had a cocoon-like grasp on my legs and torso. Not only was it uncomfortable, it was hard to escape. It grabbed you and wouldn't let go. Luckily it was unplugged so couldn't eat me for good. The 'hard' setting was equally as uncomfortable. I tried it out on my third day there. Turning the bed to the 'hard' setting, it turns out, was a signal for the bed to self inflate to near bursting. It was like lying on a sausage. If you got too close to the edge the angle of the bed was such that you would role right out. There was no softness at all to the mattress, only a hard-as-rock feel that was not in any way conducive to providing a comfortable sleeping surface. Needless to say, despite the quietude on the unit, I didn't get much sleep. I could have slept better on a love seat.

So when I talked to Dr. McLean on Monday morning he was in a foul mood (to be fair he did have a broken ankle and had to make his way around the hospital on crutches). His suggestion was that we put another drain in, get all the nasty stuff out and then start a course of antibiotics to take care of anything that was left. When Penny questioned the need for a drain he barked back "It's your decision, do whatever you want". I know he's a good doctor and he's treated me before but it was hard to see him shut Penny, my personal nurse and savior, down like that. In the end I got the drain put in. It hurt at the time but there is no pain now (read no pain YET). My fever and all the other symptoms are gone except for the lower back pain which may or may not be related. So far I can treat that with ibuprofen so its manageable. I'm glad to be home now, I don't like spending time in the hospital, nobody does, but I seem to be less and less patient with it as time goes by.

When I got discharged yesterday I was waiting outside for Penny to pick me up and I got a tap on the shoulder.

"Are you Dan Tutt?". I turned around and standing there was a lady I had never met before. "Yes" I said cautiously, "I'm Dan Tutt".

"We read your blog all the time, I just knew it was you" she said.

She then introduced herself as Jan the wife of a fellow geologist at Encana. I had heard that her husband Daryl was battling a similar cancer to mine but we had never crossed paths at work and hadn't talked at all since we had been diagnosed. It turns out they were at the hospital for some treatment and she had decided to go for coffee just as I was leaving. It was a fortuitous coincidence and a tremendous relief to meet someone who was going through the same things I am. Penny got to meet Jan too and there was so much relief in their words to each other having each found someone who understood what it was like to be the wife of a colon cancer survivor. I'm glad you took the risk on introducing yourself Jan. You made our day.