Monday, 29 January 2024

On a new roommate

Well, that didn’t last long. 


This morning, some orderlies made the bed in the other part of the room. I took this a sign that a new tenant was coming. 


Later in the morning, my Physio popped her head in my room as I was doing some exercises (which made me look good) to say that I might come early to my session to get some extra time in. When I came back a little before lunch, the new patient had arrived. Her name is Caroline. She had lost her left foot in a car accident. She had had a prosthesis and had gone back home. However, she acquired a new and improved prosthesis which requires learning and training that couldn’t be provided at her home in Les Hautes Laurentides. In theory, she will only be here for a few weeks. She is much more talkative than M. Normand [X], as we have chatted much more in the few hours since she arrived than the weeks Normand was here.


Interestingly, she had suffered an injury and treatment not unlike the ones I received in New Brunswick. Her lower left leg was smashed and the doctors used a vein from her right leg to try to save her left. Unfortunately, there had been a greater delay between accident and hospital (as well as probably greater damage) than I had so that too much tissue had died and leg had to be amputated. She embarrassed me be knowing exactly which vein had been damaged in her case. 


From the way she talks to the staff, I get the impression she really knows exactly what is what, as well as exactly how to talk to them. Now that I think about it, I wonder if she is otherwise involved in medicine. Definitely not in orthopaedics as she talks too much.

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