I’m still woozy on Saturday so I’m not able to get up and walk around like I’m supposed to. All I can do is lie in bed and practice breathing into my toy designed to prevent bedridden patients from getting pneumonia. Unfortunately, I don’t do so well with that thing so I end up laying around obsessing instead. I’m never going to get over being woozy. I won’t be able to get out of bed and walk around. I’ll get a blood clot in my leg that will dislodge and travel to my heart and kill me, or I’ll develop pneumonia and die here all alone. I used to be such a happy person.
The nurse finally decides the Morphine must be making me woozy so she turns it off but keeps the nutrients pumping through the I.V. For pain, she gives me Vicoden every four hours and tries to get me to eat. Blech. My doctor was right. The food is awful. Besides, who wants to eat when you feel all dizzy and think you’re just going to die anyway? Next, you barf up a couple of intact Vicoden pills and think, hey, I could just reach in there, rinse them off, and swallow them again. Then you barf some more when you realize what a disgusting thought that is.
As a nurse changes my bedding, she tells me I look pale. I’ve had about enough of that so, since I’m too weak to get up to look in the mirror, I make her track down a hand mirror. The best she can come up with is one of those lipstick cases with a tiny mirror barely large enough to show your lips. As I focus on a sliver of cheek, nose and eyeball, I discover my familiar, everyday pale is now a pasty, walking-dead pale. The head nurse tells me my blood level is down to 18 (normal is 38) and, since taking away the Morphine isn’t making me feel better, I should think about having a blood transfusion.
As I read the transfusion informational pamphlet, I come to the part about estimated risk of transmission of diseases like AIDS and Hepatitis and I start to get a little nervous. AIDS and Hepatitis C don’t seem too bad at 1 in 1,000,000, but Hepatitis B is only 1 in 63,000. Maybe I should wait for my body to recover naturally and just learn to deal with feeling weak and barfy for a while. Then I read the current risks for other unlikely events: fatal motor vehicle accidents-1 in 5,000; struck by lightning-1 in 9,100. Garçon. Two units of A-negative please.
I think I’ll feel immediately better after the transfusion, but no such luck. Sunday dawns woozy so this time the nurse decides the problem must be the potassium and turns off my I.V. completely. A few hours later, I get out of bed, pick up the bag that holds my pee, and walk out into the hallway to announce I am feeling much better. It occurs to me later it isn’t exactly normal to carry your pee around with you, but nobody seemed to mind at the time. Or maybe I just didn’t notice. It is certain I didn’t care. The nurse removes my catheter (surprisingly NOT painful) and then casually asks if I want to go home today. What? A few hours ago I thought I was going to die here and now I can go home? Just like that? Hell yes I want to go home!
Continued at Part 5
