School has gotten in the way of updating this blog, along with what feels like a gazillion different hospital appointments.
On March 21 I went for the CT scan. The hospital staff were super friendly for all of the 10 minutes the scan took.The staff are always so kind... it definitely pays to drive the hour to get to the hospital!
The day after, Thursday, I saw my infectious disease specialist. She explained the PICC line to me.She would like to have me on one IV antibiotics and one oral antibiotic, but what I will be on really depends on what the samples taken in surgery grow. If I am lucky I won't need an IV pump thing; the home nurse I am getting, or I myself, will inject a syringe of antibiotics into the line at a specific time every day. She joked with my mom and I about how one of her younger patients lost his PICC line one. A little boy as climbing a tree and the PICC line got caught on a branch. When the little boy fell out of the tree, the line was left hanging from the branch! Moral of the story... stay away from trees until the line comes out.
And last week Friday -March 23- I met with my orthopedic surgeon and (insert drum roll here) was told that my surgery is on April 10 at 8am! Hurray! The day I have spent the last 8 1/2 months waiting for is almost here! The surgeon was really helpful explaining the CT results, but all in all the three minute appointment was not worth the 100 minute wait. My appointment was at 12:45pm, but I was not seen until almost 2:30pm. the doctor was so overworked... but atleast I got the surgery date and some basic information!
Last Thursday -March 29- I had my pre-op appointment. The form I got when I saw the ortho the week before said that I should be prepared to be at the hospital for up to three hours. I thought that was a joke but brought a book (The Hobbit) just in case. At the hospital in the city I live in, pre-op was done in the office of the surgeon, by the surgeon, 3 days before surgery. But in the city I now got to all of the hospitals are working together. They are also all teaching hospital, which is why they are so great! N matter which hospital you will have surgery at, all the pre-op is done at one site in an area specially designed for pre-op. When you get to the pre-op area you check in with a nurse who then send you down a hallway to a large station were the nurses get all there information from. This is an area in the middle of a giant room with smaller rooms all around it, and with different area partly walled off to create different areas. when you arrive there, the nurses give you a "passport" for the day. It is a red card with 9 columns and two rows. Each box on the right has a different set of procedures on it, and the nurses check the bow to the left of each procedure which you need. You cannot leave until all the x's have check mark beside them. So I wait in the waiting area for a while, having a blast people watching, until I am called back. The first two things on my list are done quickly -height, weight, blood work, and EKG. Then I am sent to a second waiting area withing the big room with little rooms around it. This is really smartly done. It makes people feel that they have gotten something done, and breaks up the waiting so that people do not get to antsy. Great psychological trick! While there, I overheard a man speak to his wife about the Dulcolax (like a laxative). That conversation probably made the whole appointment worth it. He also kept losing his "passport".After waiting for what seemed like forever but was really only just over an hour, it was my time to see the RN. I feel that I was really lucky. out of the nine possible (groups of) procedure, I only needed three, the three that every body needs to have done 1)height and weight, 2)blood work and EKG, 3) and see the RN. I finished my appointment (scheduled for 2:00pm) at 4:20pm. Yay! for only 2 1/2 hours. When your name is finally called you feel like you win the lottery! The lottery of doom. Haha. Nobody really wants to be at pre-op because it means that they are having surgery... they NEED surgery, but at least the nurses are 100% nice. At 4:00 I heard one tell her colleague that they still have 30 more patients to get through. Bless them, they work so hard.
And there you go. Updates on all of my previous appointments. People my complain about the health care service provided in Canada, but depending on which hospital you go to you get treated really well. Even in my home city the nurses are amazing... it is just that the many of the doctors have god-complexes, the the budget seems to cut out things like even basic cleaning. I am on my fourth orthopedic surgeon, and I am very pleased with him. The way he addresses me, as if I can understand what he says, makes me confident in his surgical abilities and the outcome of the surgery. Now I just have to wait until surgery, April 10. Only ten more days!
No comments:
Post a Comment