If you’re reading this, that means I’ve survived the very first surgery and hospital stay in my life (apart from maybe my birth, but I didn’t really memorize that one).
So what happened? (Be warned, what follows is very very long and actually quite boring and I’m way to lazy to edit and cut it down, so it’s bound to stay that way.) Went to work on Friday and everything looked like a normal working day, until around 10 o’ clock where I started to get an unstoppable urge to visit the bathroom. This then continued to aggravate with rising pain in my left flank which got bad enough to make me take the rest of the day off. Unfortunately, during my trip home it all kept getting worse and even my attempt to calm everything down with a bath went in vain. Quickly running out of options and now writhing in pain, I stumbled to my phone in the living room dialled the emergency number (112, and on a sidenote, special thanks to Grandstream for their HT-488 which behaved exactly like I had configured it to and routed that number straight through my normal POTS phone line) on my way back to the bathroom. After a very brief conversation where I requested an ambulance, explained my situation and gave out my address, I hung up and laid down on the floor while worrying about how the medics would get in (somebody else in the house could probably hit the buzzer on the front door but I’d have to open my appartment door for them at least). Luckily I don’t live very far from the next hospital (about 800m airline, 3km having to travel the main road through Ettelbruck) so it didn’t take long until I heard the ambulance siren and eventually a ring at my doorbell. I got up, keyed the buzzer, opened my appartment door and hung on to the door frame while waiting for the medics to arrive. Must’ve been quite a sight having me stark naked, dripping wet (keep in mind that I had just gotten out of the bathtub) and panting for air while holding my “T60 fire-retardant” (read heavy as hell) appartment door open.
Anyway, two nice ladies came up the stairs and started asking me questions about my symptoms and basically told me that I was probably suffering from a renal crisis and that they’d take me to the hospital, followed by an exchange that went a bit like this: – Where’s your social security card? – I had some trouble locating my wallet which in my panic I hadn’t put where I usually do. – Do you have anything to wear? – I opted for my bathrobe which would at the same time dry me off a little. – Should we take your cell phone? – I didn’t even know which one they were talking about (I have one from work and one for my private calls), and didn’t really care either so I just said yes. – Anything else? – At this point I shambled back to my bedroom to grab my appartment keys from the nightstand and then we left. I laid down in the back of the ambulance (yes, I managed to get down the stairs on my own feet), and waited while the medics measured my blood pressure and pulse. Once that was done, the engine was started, the doors closed and we were off on the way to the hospital.
I don’t recall much of the drive, only that they said they’d be taking my social security and medical insurance cards out of my wallet to register me with the hospital and eventually we pulled into a garage with an automatic door closing behind us while I was rolled out of the ambulance through some corridors into a room where several people were already waiting. There, I was asked move onto an examination table and to restate what happened and what I felt while they took a blood sample and prepped me with an IV. Everybody seemed to agree that I was in fact suffering from a renal crisis and should be treated by the respective doctor (whose name I’ll withhold here). I overheard being assigned a room number and saw a long line of stickers being printed out with my information on them. A hospital bed was rolled in and I moved over into that one to be rolled through several corridors and automatically opening doors into the next room where the doctor and a nurse were waiting for me. While the doctor did an ultrasonic scan of my stomach, the nurse asked me whether somebody should be contacted (so I coughed up the respective information and phone numbers as best as I could remember). The doctor again confirmed the kidney stone theory and informed me that I’d have to get a cat scan and some X-rays taken, another first for me, and then the nurse took me to the scanner room. There, I moved from the bed onto the platform that goes through the scanner and had about five scans taken (3 normal and for the other two they injected me with an iodine based contrast solution). Then it was back to my bed and off to the radiology room, back onto a different machine to have the X-rays taken. 3 pics where snapped right away, a fourth was taken 10 minutes later. Back to my bed and after a short waiting period in the entrance area of the radiology section, I was fetched by another nurse and hauled into the elevator and up to what would be my room for the next few days.
At 15:00 another nurse came in with a wheelchair to take me down to radiology for another X-ray and returned me afterwards. While down there, I met my doctor who informed me that I’d been scheduled for surgery the next morning, unless my kidney stone would somehow find its way out by itself. At 18:00 I went down to radiology again (yet another X-ray shot) but this time, the nurse hauled me there with my entire bed. After that, I was back to my room where I was brought something to eat and constantly got attached new IVs against the pain. (At one point both of the attached IVs ran out and my blood started pushing into the tubing, resulting in a major clog up of the whole rig. The nurse had to try several things to get that unblocked again, but fortunately managed to eventually get everything running again.) Later I got a visit from the anaesthesiologist in charge who wanted a few answers (the usual stuff: known allergies to medicine, do I have false teeth, …) and informed me that I’d have to stop all eating and drinking by 02:00.
I spent quite an uneasy night, especially as several times somebody came in to change my IV, and of course when I got up again, I didn’t get any breakfast because I had to be sober for the operation. Somewhere in the morning, a nurse came in with some special soap, with which I was supposed to shower, and some stockings designed to prevent thrombosis. I was freed from my IV and went to shower. As I was drying myself off, the nurse came rushing in, thinking something happened to me because the guy with whom I shared the room had rung her. Anyway, after the shower it was off to bed, waiting for my operation. At around 10:45 another nurse came in with another IV (antibiotics apparently) and 2 pills that I was supposed to take at 11:00 and at around 11:10 I was rolled down to the 1st floor with my bed again for my surgery. Down there, I was asked to lay down on the op table and hooked up to heartrate monitor and other stuff, I didn’t really want to watch all that and just lay there staring at the ceiling. My anaesthesiologist gave me an oxygen mask and asked me to breathe deeply. I can only recall taking 3 deep breaths and the next thing I know is that I woke up in my bed, being rolled through the hospital towards my room and having a bad urge to visit the bathroom. I think I even asked if I could when I noticed that I’d just gotten rolled back into my room, but one look down pretty much answered my own question as I saw that I was hooked up to a catheter down there. I lay there for a few more minutes and then drifted off to sleep. When I woke up again, I was brought something to eat for the evening and spent the rest of the day lying there, trying not to move too much with that tube attached to me. I did turn around very slowly a few times during the night and I actually slept quite well.
In the morning, one of the nurses came in to get me ready to shower, removing both the IV and, after asking me to take a deep breath, the catheter. I went to the bathroom (ouch, that really burnt like hell) and showered, and then got my breakfast which I gladly ate at the table against the wall, and not in my bed, thanks to my newly gained mobility (no more IV, no catheter). I kept seated at the table for a while, until somebody called me to go down to the doctor. “Can you walk there?” – “Yes, no problem”, and I did… I waited a little in front of the doctor’s room until he arrived, then went in for the final check up. I got put through another ultrasonic scan of my left abdomen, and got the summary of my surgery (small stone, was removed quite easily, …). I also received some prescriptions and instructions for the next few days and eventually was told that I could leave, so I went back up to my room (with my papers) and called my mother so that she could fetch me. She was quite surprised as the general expectation had been that I’d have to stay for the whole week, but here I was, ready to go. Once she arrived (about 30 minutes later at about 11:50, ’cause she lives a little further away), we packed my stuff and checked out. She went to fetch my prescriptions, then we returned home where I got changed to eat something (I was still in my pyjamas).
So there you have it, the more or less detailed, and probably utterly boring recital of my very first ride in an ambulance, surgery and hospital stay. I’m scheduled for a check up in a few weeks and hopefully won’t have to repeat the above again anytime too soon.