Authors: Gillian Crook
After that I spoke to the kids, and Mitch was actually on the phone for about twenty mins. We were talking about them coming up at Christmas… he is quite excited. Barry came on the phone and said that they were thinking they would come up and spend Christmas with me and they would be able to stay a bit longer because of the holiday and they would just stay somewhere close to the hospital. I mentioned my mate Caron being in Glasgow, and even though he likes Caron, he felt at xmas it didn’t feel right to ask; I suppose he’s right, anyway, Casey was out and I said bye and night. I love them all so much and the thought of them coming up at xmas just makes me think ‘don’t be a moaney cow, you now have something to look forward to’!! Please please let me be in a wheelchair by then. Oh, talking of which as Christmas is ‘looming’, it’s not going to be that bad for me financially, because I will only have to buy pressies for the kids and Barry and Mum, and send out some cards, And that’s that!! Oh, and a pressie for Karen Mac! Karen will probably get hers in the summer!! Best mate bless er’!
At the moment I’m watching ‘Hollow Man’, and it’s a great film, and I’ve seen it before, but I remember thinking it then and then thinking it now… . WHAT A WASTE… . I love Kevin Bacon (remember footloose and tremors and Flat liners) and he is bloody INVISIBLE throughout most of the film—what a waste!!
I feel like a ‘fat pig’ and I’m in so much pain (goes with the territory these days). One last thing, say a prayer for me… . tomorrow I see Dr Dunne (serious mtng so he gets his real name) and the Consultant!! Oh God, I hope its good news??? I will be keeping everything crossed, even try and keep my legs crossed… I… . wish? . . . .
Oh no, 7.30, lights on—I hate those damn strip lights—and then a voice that would be more suited to a ‘market stall person in Govan’, rather than an auxiliary nurse, in a hospital in Govan; bellows out in the loudest strongest Glasgow accent ‘OI, IT’S THAT TIME AGAIN GUYS AND DOLLS, IF A GOTTA BE OUT AE BED AND UP THEN SAE DAE YAE`!! (the wrong spelling is deliberate).
What a cow, its bad enough being woken up at the best of times, because for me, I normally wake up in so much pain and not always in the best of moods, or if I’ve had a particularly bad night, it’s quite usual for me to just get to sleep as the lights come on, and depending on the nurse, sometimes I’m allowed a ‘reprieve’ and permitted to sleep on, even though this is the spinal rehab unit, and you really are meant to push yourself. In fact, as soon as you are able, (like when I eventually detoxed from the morphine), they start your rehabilitation virtually immediately, and at the moment I HATE IT!! So, LOUD LINDA, that’s the name I’ve given her, but to be honest, she’s not just bold and brash, her actual voice is as loud as a foghorn, and you may recognise her as the nurse that woke up everyone, the day I referred to the ward as STALAG. She conjures up to me an image of just how horrendous it would have been to get woken up in the one of those japaneze prisoner of war camps, like in a programme I watched called ‘Tenco’ . . . definitely a horrible comparison.
Anyway, I was woken up so rudely I wasn’t in the best of moods, when the other staff nurse came on, who is the complete opposite, and funnily enough she is called Linda as well, but the total opposite.
Well, it was a ‘suppository’ day and it’s only the trained nurses that can insert the two tablets into your back passage! Yuk! it makes me cringe. I know I have mentioned this before but I need to detail it again, and I probably will, again and again, and again, but it is just to remind myself of just how awful and undignified I think think it is, and something else in this god-damn rehab unit that I know I will NEVER get used to. You know, you would think the accident would have been the worst and most terrible thing that could happen, and at the time it was, but NOT necessarily any more—now the pain, the unknowing, the defeatest attitude, the stress, the anguish and frustration and the sheer hell of the realisation that this could now be how your whole ‘sorry` existence’ is going to be can be even more scary and ‘suicidally’ depressing. Again, it’s that question of ‘why me’ and that is not self-pity talking, it is just a question I am desperately looking for an answer to, knowing it never WILL be answered?!
Oh well, lovely Linda has had to go off to other backsides, and I said I would see her later. Oh well, it looks like I must have drawn the short straw because loud Linda was the one that had to take me for a shower once I was ‘cleaned up’ from the suppositories after they had completed a successful ‘evacuation’ (just use your imagination). Loud Linda was getting my clothes ready so that there would be no time wasting. She is so fast and manic, to the point of near eccentricity, and she talks like that as well. I can’t help it, but sometimes start to enjoy ‘back-chatting’ to the most extreme measures with her, because that seems to be the only language she understands, ‘crude’ and ‘sarcastic’. To be fair, I suppose she’s a ‘human punchbag’ for me to vent my frustrations, as I know she’s ‘thick skinned’, and sometimes I can insult her in an indirect way, and she will take it as a compliment (nutter), . . . I am not saying she is ‘stupid’, ooh no NO! she is just so wrapped up in talking, shouting; talking, laughing (very loudly as well); talking, eating; I don’t think her brain can keep up with digesting whats going in, before it has a chance of knowing whats gonna ‘come out’! She has almost made shouting, talking fast, loudness, crudeness, and ignorance an art form, by taking it to another level and she has definitely raised the bar to the point where I don’t even know if I can put up with her for too long… . she is hard work. Whilst she was getting me ready I was actually too tired and I couldn’t be bothered with the quick-fired backchat any more and I don’t know where the ‘banter’ that she thought was a joke stopped, and started to get nasty, but I refused to carry on the conversation and explained that maybe it would be better if I had a different nurse, and when she asked me if I meant that I didn’t want her helping me anymore, before I had a chance to answer, she said that she would see if there was another auxiliary that she could be swapped with, but she couldn’t guarantee it. Very quickly, things became more serious and I apologised and said that, that wouldn’t be necessary and the truth is, she may have a gob the size of the Mersey tunnel, but she is efficient and does get the job done. She grunted, and I took that as a positive gesture! So, once cleaned up, she got me on the lilo, and in a way things seemed more relaxed once we had cleared the air, and I do have to admit she had me washed and ready in record time.
Well, maybe it’s got something to do with my ‘abrupt’ waking up, but something has certainly made me bad tempered, and, why does someone that is supposed to be in the ‘caring’ profession, not have any understanding when it comes to the patients? Sorry, back to loud Linda and her rude awakening!
Roddy, the physio, came in and told me I would be getting the prone trolley for an hour before lunch… so, even though it hurts so much on the trolley, I still go on it because it’s good exercise, and I’m actually getting a bit better at steering it, and people know to get out of my way! So, I had talked myself into ‘looking forward’ to it, then, . . . after waiting for an hour, which meant getting ready after my shower, putting on my trainers, which wasn’t easy, and gearing myself up, was only then, to be told by Roddy that someone else called, Hose, was on it and I would have to wait till after lunch! So I’m writing this now, and I feel bad, because I was so pissed off I was shouting at the physio, that, ‘there is only so much I can take before I want to kick and punch someone or something’! Oh, dear, hissy fit!
In my head I’m just wanting to scream out, ‘I HATE THIS FUCKIN PLACE AND WHY ARE THEY WINDING ME UP?’ Whoever is doing this to me, wasn’t the accident punishment enough? I honestly think someone is making me pay the price for all those times when I was a ‘sycophant’, using my womanly charms and flattery with people, strangers, just anyone, who would take the bait in order to help me survive another day!! Oh, yes, it’s shameful, but sometimes I would even use friends just to make sure that I was able to get drinks bought, or that dress, or that one night of survival and the list is endless… . So, I fuckin confess, I’m sorry, ok!! Fine, Fine Fine, now I can’t even work the bloody TELLY; that’s packed in as well now… . AND it’s probably not high up in their lists of priorities to fix—I hate this hospital. I
need
that telly to keep me sane! I’m gonna stop ranting, I’m weak, disillusioned and pissed off.
Oh, well, lunch came… and lunch went, because like everything else today, they couldn’t get that right either—it was lamb casserole, and that wasn’t what I put on my menu, and it looked more like ‘fatty gruel’ anyway, they offered me something else, but I said no, because, one consolation about me being in a bad mood, is that generally, it makes me lose my appetite—maybe I should get angry a lot more? (that won’t be hard in here). So I did settle for a tuna sandwich that they insisted upon and I had a little tub of ice cream. Actually I love the little cartons of ice creams you get in here.
Feeling a bit better actually, and they are now all trying to cheer me up, and it’s quite bad how many people must have heard my outburst, even ‘loud Linda’ has apologised for what happened before, and I didn’t expect that, but I think she knew she had pushed me too far… a bit like that scenario before in the book when I was talking about the kids toy fighting—everything is fine until one gets hurt, then angry, and then they start knocking lumps out of each other. Nice Linda came to see me as well, to see if I was ok and asked if I’d got some lunch, so I said yes thanks. She also told me that she had been on to the maintenance dept and they would be up this afternoon to look at the telly—oh, thank you so much God. Actually, that little ice cream got rid of my sweet tooth—maybe I should ask them to put some in the patient kitchen for me. Apparently there is a kitchen on the ward for relatives, the patients and the staff to use to make teas and coffee and suchlike, but I can’t see me being able to make anything soon, being stuck in bed, on the lilo or on the prone trolley! Isn’t my life a bundle of laughs… you know I DO have a good sense of humour and I’m gonna have to bloody well use it more in here than getting angry, otherwise I am gonna turn into a very bitter, twisted, grumpy, bitch!!
After lunch, Roddy came in with the trolley and I got onto it, knowing it was going to be sore; I don’t really say too much about being sore all the time, do I? oh, yes you DO, I hear you say?? So, it was quite good fun today, I managed to get the trolley going a bit faster and wheeled myself right round to the gym, and made it in record time, and I actually enjoyed the exercise. There are so many younger guys, averaging about 18yrs old, and it’s really sad. There are quite a few women, but it’s mainly guys. It isn’t like an ordinary work out gym; it’s equipped with everything that patients need for their particular injury, like I need to work on my upper body strength, and someone else may have to used the ‘walking frames’, or practice getting in and out of the car (it’s such a cool, wreck of a car), so that’s an example of some of the different apparatus, but there are quite a few other things that I don’t even know what they’re for. The guys seem to work hard, when they’re not chatting away like ‘fish wives’. I even got talking to a couple of the young guys who introduced themselves when they were sitting on one of the long benches where they had been doing stretching exercises, which they tell me will really help the spasms. They were nice, Paul and Chris, and the one called Chris, told me a joke to cheer me up,—I asked the gym instructor, “Can you teach me how to do the splits?”, he said, “how flexible are you?”, I replied “I can make Tuesdays”, boom, bloody, boom!! Actually, it did bring a smile to my face and it was topical. Actually, it was quite nice getting round and about, because it is now giving me the chance to start meeting people and find my bearings and get used to the Unit, and I have even come across Edenhall Ward, which is the ward where all admissions (mainly emergency) stay until they are well enough to progress into the Rehabilitation Ward, which is where I am, the Phillipshill Ward. So, I managed to go through Edenhall, even though, I realised afterwards that you are not supposed to go through there, as it is the spinal units` equivalent of HDU in other wards. I didn’t even recognise it, but that’s where I spent my first 3 days!! The ward did seem a bit gruesome, so I decided to go through into the living room area where they have a largish telly, pool table, and also where you are able to sit with visitors.
Today there was a stall that was run by SIS (Spinal Injuries Support), and the women seemed quite nice, and because I felt all the better for having got out of bed and doing a bit of exercise, I cheered up and even bought some things from their stall—namely, a baseball hat, earrings and truffles (I couldn’t resist), what a waste of all that exercise, when I then go and buy sweets!! I do need to see a ‘shrink’?
When I got back to the ward my bed had been moved from the middle of the room to the corner, yes, oh yes… that definately cheered up, I was so chuffed, I hate being in the middle of the three beds, I always prefer to be by the window or end corner, and I’m the same in restaurants or cafes (which used to drive Barry nuts), AND my bed was dressed up all nicely with my ‘Giorgio’ teddy sitting upright on the bed, and I love that teddy because it was my best mate Karen, that had sent it to me on my arrival at the hospital (I forgot to mention it before and I love her and her family, hubby Donnie, Natalie and Rebecca) with Giorgio Beverley Hills perfume attached to it, and next to it was ‘scruff’, my cute teddy with a tartan bow tie on, that my lovely kiddies had brought to the Derry hospital for me when they first came to see me. I was told that it was Loud Linda who had tidied and pampered up my bedside so nicely. I think it was a kind gesture, so I knew then that there were no hard feelings. Ok, that’s fine with me, I’m glad about that, and I must admit she made it look really cheery; she’s, one of those people who just has a knack of making cleaning look easy. She works ‘off’ her adrenalin, and that’s what makes her manic at times. Also, not only was there a telly at the bed, it was also a different, newer model AND it had a proper zapper! Yeah, I was cheered up, Yippee, I was really pleased but a bit peeved off with myself for getting quite so uptight and angry about such a thing as silly as a telly, but even without the ‘cooped-up’, bed-rest, injury, I would still go mad without my telly!