The lack of coordination and planning in the healthcare system is mind boggling. I was getting my antibiotics yesterday morning when a man dressed in outdoors clothes and pushing a wheelchair came into my room. He asked my name. He was a driver come to take me to the Lindsay. There were two significant problems. The first was that he hadn’t been told I had my own wheelchair, so bringing one up from his taxi was a waste of time. The second was that I was still hooked up to the IV antibiotic drip and would be for at least another hour. It would have made sense to coordinate my antibiotic session with transport, but the left hand doesn’t seem to know what the right hand is doing in the medical world. As it turned out, it turned out that the driver for another patient on my floor was unavailable so my driver was reassigned.
About ninety minutes later, another driver with a wheelchair came into my room. At that point, I was ready and waiting. So off to the Lindsay.
Which wasn’t ready and waiting for me. In point of fact, it was essentially closed for lunch. So I waited for the best part of an hour before I could find someone who could find out where I was supposed to be. This proved to be a room on the same floor as before, but the other side of the hall with much less in the way of windows. The later is probably just as well as with the increasing hours of sunlight, it makes it easier to sleep in. The room is a double room but I am currently the only occupant.
I asked an orderly if I might retrieve the belongings I had left here. She came back with my red MEC duffle. I unpacked, noticing that at least a few things were absent. I asked the orderly if she might send some to check if there was another bag, but nothing came of it.
There has been round after round of greeting assorted familiar nurses, orderlies and doctors as well as several debriefings and assessments of my condition that borders on the ridiculous. I was zonked by bedtime yet failed to get to sleep easily, despite a dark and quiet room as well as a sleeping pill.
After this morning’s round of antibiotics, I ask an orderly if I might check in the storage room for my missing items. This proved a ridiculously convoluted affair of asking various people to find the key to the room. Of course once the door to the room had been unlocked, the way proved to be barred to my wheelchair by a parked mobility scooter. I managed to work out a solution namely walking holding onto the scooter and having the orderly woman-handle the wheelchair past it. Once in the room, I found it hard to find a bag with my name on it until I noticed a photocopied label which had an inventory that matched the one attached to my red bag. It did not have my name or any other on it. As a librarian, I found this to be shoddy workmanship. I opened the black garbage bag which proved to have the missing items. One of them was a box Margo had mailed to me. I showed it to the orderly in order to prove that it was indeed my bag. There are times when having a rare last name comes in handy.
After lunch, I put a load of laundry into the washing machine. I then went to a physio session that demonstrated how much ground I had lost at the General from slacking off from exercise. The Physio and I were disappointed.
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