Today began far too early considering that I had hard time getting to sleep at around 6 AM, when someone came in to take a blood sample. I was too bleary to ask if it was for medical or legal purposes. I went back to sleep.
I was next awoken by the arrival of breakfast. This I delayed eating until I had roused myself. Shortly thereafter, I called for a patient attendant to deal with a bodily function. Before I could tell her, she said that I was to be transferred to a new room in short order. I said very well, but first things first. What with one thing and another, there was a general cleansing of my person which included my first real hair wash since the 1st of September. Huzzah! They used a slightly comical looking, but effective inflatable basin to do it in. Among other things, it had a drainage tube. This made funny noises while in use which caused me to giggle. One of the PA’s misinterpreted my expression as one of pain.
I was then transferred across the hall and down to a room with a view worthy of the name. It looks out across a wooded suburban street which currently features a lot of bright yellow leaves. One of the PA said that it snowed overnight and sure enough there was snow on a rooftop.
I had scarcely begun to settle in, when a nurse came in to inspect my leg wounds and change my bandages. This ended up as something of an epic of medical second guessing. Last week, or the week before, the nurses at the General had removed the stitches from my left leg. However, there had been four on the back of my leg that had been apparently overlooked. So this morning, the nurse set about removing them. She was also horrified that someone had applied a large, sticky bandage on a donation graft sight on my upper left leg. She spent some time carefully removing it, before placing an appropriate bandage on it. Except she then changed her mind about what type of bandage and redid it. During this time, there were several interruptions from a PA who was relaying various messages about assorted issues. One of these was from the General saying she shouldn’t remove the four stitches on the back of my leg as they wanted to do it. That was a bit of a problem as the stitches had already been removed.
The processes involved a certain amount of mild discomfort, nothing really significant. However, my face must have revealed my discomfort as around midway, Alberto, a PA, handed me my Winnie-the-Pooh to hold!
By the time they were finished, it was lunchtime.
After lunch, I settled down for a snooze. Unfortunately, Victoria the Physio came in before I could relax. During her ministrations, she confirmed a theory I’d had about why I was moved to my current room. In the old room, they’d had to turn my bed 90 degrees in order to use the crane get me into my wheelchair. In the current room, they don’t have to do that.
Afterwards, there was a session in the chair, a doze and a visit from the Mole. A busy day.
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