This past Sunday Roast at the Boyne Arms was a celebratory affair. It marks one month since my little mishap in the Boyne Arms Ladies Loo. The friends around the table are a celebratory bunch after all.
It all began on a lovely Saturday afternoon in the country, at the Boyne Arms with my friend Lucretia and her whippet Rosie for a pleasant lunch in the bar.
At the end of our meal I left to go to the loo. Pushing the door open I strode into … air. What I didn’t see as I pushed through the door is an elegant but small sign that says ‘Watch Your Step.’ There is indeed, immediately inside the door, a proper step down. So, I stepped into air, and crashed right down onto my right hip.
That hurt.
Boy that hurt.
I still needed to pee so I managed to get onto the toilet, then managed somehow to get back out and into the car, hobble home from the car, get a glass of wine and sit on the couch, where I sat through a couple of episodes of NCIS.
When I realised I was going to have to get up to pee again, I couldn’t.
I just couldn’t get up.
I couldn’t get up to open the door to let anyone in. Thank goodness our next door neighbours have a key. They were at their local but returned immediately to let Lucretia in.
She called another wonderful neighbour, Chris, a retired foot surgeon, who came and had a look while Lucretia called the ambulance. Chris announced it was probably a fracture in my hip.
He was right.
I was advised that I really had to let Scott know even though it meant he had to leave the UK Open, the biggest backgammon tournament in the country, down in Leamington Spa. Lucretia immediately volunteered to fetch him and meet us at the hospital.
When given the choice between Hereford and Shrewsbury hospitals, Chris, our surgeon neighbour, said ‘definitely Hereford.’ (he practised there).
Another neighbour and good friend, Carmel, came along with me in the ambulance and kept spirits up for both me and the EMTs along the way.
We arrived at the hospital and had a relatively short wait before being admitted into A&E (ER in the U.S.).
There were characters in the PitStop (as the staff called their A&E) all being triaged before sending us on. One, a bleached blonde wearing off-the-shoulder black top and sunglasses with some sort of painful rash on her legs. I’d call her a floozy except I don’t know her well enough. She was rolled out before the rest of my posse arrived (Scott & Lucretia).
In her place came a raving man on another gurney - old, not ancient - but raving. Talking to himself, constantly repeating the same thing over and over again.
I navigated the bedpan for the first time in a very long time (1965).
It was just before midnight when I said goodbye to Carmel, Scott and Lucretia; as they rolled me into the hallway to wait for a free bed. I was among at least a dozen others on gurneys parked head to toe, waiting for a free bed.
Prone on my back, I found my pink Viennese handkerchief and used it as a makeshift mask to block the bright overhead lights. I actually fell asleep.
Until the raving man was rolled into his parking place at my feet. His raving hadn’t stopped, nor did it for the rest of the seven hours I spent next to him in the hallway. His wife and daughter would stand by him on occasion and quietly talk him down from his ravings. But as soon as they went for a break, he began again. ‘Help! Help! Won’t somebody help me. Won’t somebody help me why won’t somebody help me please oh god please won’t somebody help me.’ And on and on and on. No more sleep for me. (Or anyone else in the corridor)
‘Round about late morning, I was rolled into a quieter place - a side ward with six cubicles around the corner from where I spent the night with the raver. I could still hear him, though it was much fainter.
Until they rolled him into the same ward two cubicles away. The chant became “Jesus wept Jesus wept Jesus wept Jesus wept,” between cries of pain.
It’s all a bit of a blur, those first 18 hours, but I found myself in a bed in a ward called Dinmore up on the second floor of this vast NHS county hospital, along with four other elderly women, all who were in some stage of recovering from hip surgery. I think I was the youngest.
I was the fifth wheel in this ward designed for four people. Not too bad though. Two loos (one with shower) for the five of us.
X-ray and C Scan later, it was confirmed that there was a hairline fracture at the top of the femur. Chris called it.
So surgery it would be.
During that first afternoon in the Dinmore Ward Number One, one of the patients was rolled out and another took her place.
Guess what? Another raver! This time an 80-year-old Alzheimer’s patient who didn’t so much rave as scream. Any time a staff member tried to touch her, she would scream.
This was especially annoying at 5:30 when morning rounds began.
Other than the screaming, all but one of the other patients were quiet and calm.
And the staff were good at keeping me informed. The consultant on my case came to visit, thereafter referring to me as the Oyster Lady (when asked if I had any allergies - and I was asked often and by many - I said ‘oysters’. It stayed with him.)
Off to surgery I went, met the nice too young anaesthetist who put a mask on me - breathing in pure oxygen. When he said, ‘here it comes’ (or something like it) I said goodnight and that is the last I remembered until I was being wheeled back to my corner place in Dinmore Ward One.
I was out before being rolled into the theatre so I never saw the team working on the hip. I was told to stay in bed the rest of the day.
But boy was I rarin’ to go the next day, with the walker. Day Four graduation to the crutches and taking to the stairs.
Unlike the old (95) woman who has been here for two weeks, she still won’t even try to get out of bed. Even though she was on a catheter, she started to need to have a bowel movement but wouldn’t get out of bed even for that. She was carried into the loo but that didn’t go much good.
Again in the middle of the night (3 a.m.) the place really seemed deserted. The absence of staff was deafening. The old bat started calling out ‘help help I have to use the loo. Help help won’t somebody help me.’ When no one came she started pounding on her table. (She’s also deaf) and she’d lost her call button down the floor. I hobbled over to the doorway and shouted down the corridor for someone to come.
As for the day shift, the staff were efficient and friendly, all but one: Angie. Yes, I’m calling her out. She is a nurse’s assistant but from what I witnessed very light on the assisting bit. Whenever someone was looking for her, she couldn’t be found. ‘I was fetching coffee for a patient.’ 'I was helping someone else down the hall.' She is one of those blustery creatures who thinks everyone is so glad to see her.
Not.
The night staff stripped my bed just before the day staff came on. I was glad to sit in my special chair - better than hanging out in bed all day. But when I asked the (real) nurse to get Angie to make up my bed, Angie was put out. The pillow case was put on and the bottom sheet was put on but, ‘we’ll finish your bed when you’re in it.’
I wasn’t about to ‘be tucked in’ by this manipulator, so I ended up making up my own bed, Angie having left without doing it.
She’s one of those people who insert themselves into the conversation between patients and their visitors. Even sitting down with them as if she’s part of the party. Doing little of her real work in the meantime.
When I said I want to take a shower she said, ‘we’ll have to go with you.’ She didn’t and I was quite fine all by myself.
After another night in the fourth circle of hell, Day Five arrived and I was moved into a private room. YAY. I have a window that looks out onto a nice corner of Hereford.
I could still hear the screamer, but she was down the hall far enough that it didn’t bother me.
Coming home on Friday was a relief.
On Monday, hobbling over to the local GP for a B12 jab and a change of bandage was tiring.
The following Monday (two weeks after surgery) the staples came off.
Mine is a real girly scar - barely two inches long. Compared to Scott’s which is almost a foot long. Okay, I only had a couple of screws inserted - what they called a ‘cannulated screw fixation.’
‘Toe-step only for the next six weeks, Ms. Oyster Lady,’ said my consultant.
I’m one and one-half weeks away from the six weeks, on one crutch, and still wearing the damn compression socks. I did acquire a half dozen colourful pairs so I look a little less like a patient.
Scott has learned how to do my shit here at home and I’m grateful.
At the Sunday Roast, I snapped a photo of the offending step:
Gonna get a cane when we’re down in London next week. I want a statement cane.
