so it's been a Time
Oct. 1st, 2021 02:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
missroseroseI always figured if I was going to end up in the hospital, I'd at least want a good story to go with it. And I at least achieved that goal; the nurses all agreed that "I was pole dancing in 7" heels, which I've done before, but I had a new pair with no ankle straps, and when I went to do a one-legged pirouette, my heel moved but the shoe didn't" was one of the better ones they'd heard recently.
Unfortunately it also came at the cost of a thoroughly broken ankle. Both bones, unstable fracture, bad times all around.
As it happens, I'm very good in a crisis. When it happened, there was some pain, but it honestly wasn't that terrible—thanks to adrenaline, the actual pain itself was maybe a 3. Initially I thought it was just dislocated, and having some familiarity with bodywork and first aid, my first instinct was to immediately grab my heel and pull. (This thoroughly freaked out the other girls in the class, but as I explained later, it was better to do it then than later, when the swelling would have set in and the adrenaline wore off.) As that only got my ankle partly back in place, though, I figured a doctor would be necessary, so one of my classmates was kind enough to drive me to the urgent care, where they took x-rays and informed me that no, my ankle was broken, it was time to head to the ER. Brian having fetched the car and caught up with me at that point, we drove to the Rush ER—the doctor at the urgent care said she'd usually recommend a smaller hospital with shorter wait times but the orthopedics team at Rush is legendary. (Rumor has it most of the professional athletes in Chicago go there when they have injuries; from what I saw of it, they certainly have state-of-the-art facilities. But I'm getting ahead of myself.)
The ER was a seven-hour wait. On the one hand, I was grateful that my situation wasn't more urgent; on the other, by the time I got in the adrenaline was definitely wearing off and my pain levels were climbing. They gave me a local anaesthetic and set the bone into something resembling its usual shape (a painful process even with the lidocaine); the actual repair would require surgery. We thought I'd be waiting until at least Monday, but they had a doctor who was able to do it on Sunday, so back I went the next day.
To be honest, I was completely terrified. I'm used to being the caretaker in these situations, and "no significant medical history" also means "no idea how I might react to anesthesia or drugs". It was a very different experience from being nine years old and going in to have my arm set after I broke it—then, it was just Another Thing People Did, whereas as a 38-year-old woman I had a much better idea of the stakes and the possibilities for complications. That said, the team was lovely; the anesthesia team in particular consisted of several Korean (I would guess? my East-Asian ethnic identification skills are not great) girls who were super friendly and chatted with me beforehand. There was one person in particular, though, I remember—I have no idea who she was, honestly couldn't even see much of her beneath the cap and gown and mask, but she had the biggest and most sincere blue eyes, and she clearly picked up on how scared I was—she held my arm as they were administering the anesthesia, assuring me that I was going to be all right, that they'd take good care of me. (I wish I knew who she was so I could send her a card and tell her how much that meant.)
As it happened, my skin was so badly compromised from the swelling that they weren't able to do the internal fixation (where they put your bones back together with plates and screws), so I woke up with my leg in an external fixator, also known as the Hellraiser frame—it had pins that literally screwed into my tibia and calcaneus and metatarsal, holding my ankle in place while my skin healed. (The sensation of not being able to move my ankle despite there being nothing visibly restraining it was weird as heck, and is definitely going into a horror story someday.) The idea was to give things a week or so and then come back for the final surgery, so they gave me half a pharmacy's worth of prescriptions and sent me home.
Unfortunately, two days before the follow-up, I noticed a red rash on the skin of my foot. The next day I went to the urgent care, assuming it was just cellulitis (a common complication, especially with external fixator surgeries) and they'd give me antibiotics for it...but their take was that they couldn't rule out a blood clot and I had to go to the ER again. So back to Rush we went.
Luckily, this time it wasn't quite such a long wait (both because it wasn't as busy and because potential blood clots are more time-sensitive, I suspect). I got to have an ultrasound on my leg, and luckily there was no sign of a clot, so then I got to have a CT scan to check the progression of the infection, and they told me they wanted to keep me overnight to give me IV antibiotics and run my situation past the doctors. They put me up in one of the nicest hospital rooms I've ever seen, spacious and uncluttered and new, with an amazing view. (I guess there's a lot of money in orthopedics.) And after taking approximately fifteen liters worth of blood samples, they let me sleep.
(Well, I tried to sleep. About the time the urgent care doctor said "blood clot", my anxiety spiked, and it basically didn't calm down for a good five days—I don't think I got more than three or four hours of sleep a night that whole time. But that's not their fault.)
In the morning, the doctor came by and told me the good news was that the cellulitis infection hadn't progressed past the skin, although ironically, that made it harder to treat (since there weren't any abcesses or discharge they could sample and hit with targeted antibiotics). If I hadn't had the fixator as a complicating factor, he'd've just sent me home with pills, but with the fixator and especially with the upcoming surgery, it was his opinion I should spend the week in the hospital, both so they could hit me with the big guns via IV and also keep an eye on any further complications that might crop up and catch them early. Much as I hated to admit it, his logic made sense to me...so that's how I ended up in a hospital room with a million-dollar view for a week and a half.
In the way of hospital life, it was both very dull and very stressful, and also an abject lesson in how even the most proactive and driven of us sometimes have to learn to let other people help. I was surrounded by people whose literal job it was to take care of me, who were actively working to help me get better, and yet...well, like I said, five-day anxiety spiral. It was hard to trust, if that makes sense. It had honestly never occurred to me how much of the active go-out-and-make-friends part of my personality was a defense mechanism, but here I was making friends with all the nurses/assistants/doctors as if my life depended on it, because in a real way, it did. (One of the night nurses in particular was a fairly closed-up dude—not cold, exactly, but not really one for small talk. It took me three nights to get him to open up a bit, but when he did, my anxiety levels went down significantly. Which probably says a lot more about me and my trust issues than about him. Still, it was gratifying when he said to Brian and me on the third night, "I'm so impressed with y'all, you haven't messed up my name once." High praise!)
Anyway, the infection was a tough one, but by five days in they'd seen enough improvement to tentatively schedule the second surgery, which helped immensely with the anxiety. I slept much better during the latter half of my stay, and while the second surgery wasn't easy, it helped a lot that I had a better idea of what to expect. (Never going to quite get used to the sensation of someone holding an oxygen mask over my nose and mouth, though...I could breathe fine, obviously, but the THIS IS NOT OKAY signals were all going off in my brain, heh.) The surgery itself went smoothly, though pain control turned out to be trickier the second time around; they gave me a nerve block (cool thing I learned: even when drugged out and in a lot of pain, I really like listening to people teach other people things about bodies—Rush is a teaching hospital and the anesthesiologist was teaching a second person how to use the ultrasound to guide the needle to the exact nerve cluster), and after that wore off it took a few tries to find a medication dose where I was functional. (Being stoned out on pain meds is not my favorite feeling, but I'll take it over being in constant debilitating pain; knowing that the worst is over and all this is temporary helps a lot.)
So now I'm back home. Brian bought new pillows and a new mattress for the second bedroom, much nicer than the futon-with-memory-foam-topper we had in here before; we also invested in a new duvet cover and sheets from my favorite company. My ankle now has two plates and a dozen screws in it. The doctor says he sees no reason why I won't make a full recovery; depending on how well he's done his job, I may be more prone to developing arthritis in the joint, but that's a problem for Future Me. I now have a whole-ass pharmacy's worth of prescriptions to take, what with antibiotics as well as pain meds and blood thinners and I'm not even sure what all else. I'm getting around okay on crutches; for the first week I'm supposed to be pretty constantly in bed with my leg elevated, so I'm very grateful for my nest of new linens and pillows. So at this point it's just a waiting game to see if there are any more complications.
On the emotional front, I've definitely had a bit of a time adjusting my identity mentally from the "athlete" population to the "patient" population. (The nurses would profess amazement at how mobile I was, being possessed of three functioning limbs and no small amount of core strength, and it seemed almost condescending until I remembered that their pool of comparison was the rest of the patients in the orthopedics ward, most of whom were probably not athletes before their hospitalization.) It's helped a lot, though, in being less frustrated with all the things I can't currently do.
I also need to give a huge shout-out to the friends and family Brian and I have formed here in Chicago. KC (his girlfriend) has been an absolute rock; doing housework and helping Brian set up the new bed and regularly inquiring after how I'm doing/listening to me rant about feeling helpless, as well as loaning me the crutches and shower stool she used after her recent hip surgery. Evan (her husband) drove my to my first surgery when Brian (who'd been up with me in the ER the entire previous night) didn't feel safe to do so. Taylor (my boyfriend) came to visit me in the hospital a couple of times so Brian could have a day off, despite a full plate of grad school work and a difficult transit schedule; plus he's studying to become a nurse so he was able to demystify some of the odder aspects of hospital work culture.
--
So I wrote all that a couple of days ago, and meant to read it over and post it, but (in the way of things when you're recovering) I didn't get back around to it. And today Adora Belle, our eldest cat, was wandering around perfectly normally, went to sleep...and woke up in severe distress and unable to walk. Brian rushed her to the emergency vet, who diagnosed her with a large blood clot cutting off circulation to her hind legs, likely caused by a silent heart condition. There's not really any meaningful treatment, so...at least he was able to be there for her when they did the euthanasia. Even more, KC was able to be there for him, since I'm not going anywhere right now.
Feelings are strange when you're on opioids. To be honest, my strongest reaction has been "are you kidding me right now?" Not that it's that strange for an 18 year old cat to have a sudden health emergency, but it just seems like life's been one string of emergencies lately. I'm sure the grief will come later, and I'll do my best to sit with it when it does.
Maybe I'll lie back and listen to "Comfortably Numb" for a while...
Unfortunately it also came at the cost of a thoroughly broken ankle. Both bones, unstable fracture, bad times all around.
As it happens, I'm very good in a crisis. When it happened, there was some pain, but it honestly wasn't that terrible—thanks to adrenaline, the actual pain itself was maybe a 3. Initially I thought it was just dislocated, and having some familiarity with bodywork and first aid, my first instinct was to immediately grab my heel and pull. (This thoroughly freaked out the other girls in the class, but as I explained later, it was better to do it then than later, when the swelling would have set in and the adrenaline wore off.) As that only got my ankle partly back in place, though, I figured a doctor would be necessary, so one of my classmates was kind enough to drive me to the urgent care, where they took x-rays and informed me that no, my ankle was broken, it was time to head to the ER. Brian having fetched the car and caught up with me at that point, we drove to the Rush ER—the doctor at the urgent care said she'd usually recommend a smaller hospital with shorter wait times but the orthopedics team at Rush is legendary. (Rumor has it most of the professional athletes in Chicago go there when they have injuries; from what I saw of it, they certainly have state-of-the-art facilities. But I'm getting ahead of myself.)
The ER was a seven-hour wait. On the one hand, I was grateful that my situation wasn't more urgent; on the other, by the time I got in the adrenaline was definitely wearing off and my pain levels were climbing. They gave me a local anaesthetic and set the bone into something resembling its usual shape (a painful process even with the lidocaine); the actual repair would require surgery. We thought I'd be waiting until at least Monday, but they had a doctor who was able to do it on Sunday, so back I went the next day.
To be honest, I was completely terrified. I'm used to being the caretaker in these situations, and "no significant medical history" also means "no idea how I might react to anesthesia or drugs". It was a very different experience from being nine years old and going in to have my arm set after I broke it—then, it was just Another Thing People Did, whereas as a 38-year-old woman I had a much better idea of the stakes and the possibilities for complications. That said, the team was lovely; the anesthesia team in particular consisted of several Korean (I would guess? my East-Asian ethnic identification skills are not great) girls who were super friendly and chatted with me beforehand. There was one person in particular, though, I remember—I have no idea who she was, honestly couldn't even see much of her beneath the cap and gown and mask, but she had the biggest and most sincere blue eyes, and she clearly picked up on how scared I was—she held my arm as they were administering the anesthesia, assuring me that I was going to be all right, that they'd take good care of me. (I wish I knew who she was so I could send her a card and tell her how much that meant.)
As it happened, my skin was so badly compromised from the swelling that they weren't able to do the internal fixation (where they put your bones back together with plates and screws), so I woke up with my leg in an external fixator, also known as the Hellraiser frame—it had pins that literally screwed into my tibia and calcaneus and metatarsal, holding my ankle in place while my skin healed. (The sensation of not being able to move my ankle despite there being nothing visibly restraining it was weird as heck, and is definitely going into a horror story someday.) The idea was to give things a week or so and then come back for the final surgery, so they gave me half a pharmacy's worth of prescriptions and sent me home.
Unfortunately, two days before the follow-up, I noticed a red rash on the skin of my foot. The next day I went to the urgent care, assuming it was just cellulitis (a common complication, especially with external fixator surgeries) and they'd give me antibiotics for it...but their take was that they couldn't rule out a blood clot and I had to go to the ER again. So back to Rush we went.
Luckily, this time it wasn't quite such a long wait (both because it wasn't as busy and because potential blood clots are more time-sensitive, I suspect). I got to have an ultrasound on my leg, and luckily there was no sign of a clot, so then I got to have a CT scan to check the progression of the infection, and they told me they wanted to keep me overnight to give me IV antibiotics and run my situation past the doctors. They put me up in one of the nicest hospital rooms I've ever seen, spacious and uncluttered and new, with an amazing view. (I guess there's a lot of money in orthopedics.) And after taking approximately fifteen liters worth of blood samples, they let me sleep.
(Well, I tried to sleep. About the time the urgent care doctor said "blood clot", my anxiety spiked, and it basically didn't calm down for a good five days—I don't think I got more than three or four hours of sleep a night that whole time. But that's not their fault.)
In the morning, the doctor came by and told me the good news was that the cellulitis infection hadn't progressed past the skin, although ironically, that made it harder to treat (since there weren't any abcesses or discharge they could sample and hit with targeted antibiotics). If I hadn't had the fixator as a complicating factor, he'd've just sent me home with pills, but with the fixator and especially with the upcoming surgery, it was his opinion I should spend the week in the hospital, both so they could hit me with the big guns via IV and also keep an eye on any further complications that might crop up and catch them early. Much as I hated to admit it, his logic made sense to me...so that's how I ended up in a hospital room with a million-dollar view for a week and a half.
In the way of hospital life, it was both very dull and very stressful, and also an abject lesson in how even the most proactive and driven of us sometimes have to learn to let other people help. I was surrounded by people whose literal job it was to take care of me, who were actively working to help me get better, and yet...well, like I said, five-day anxiety spiral. It was hard to trust, if that makes sense. It had honestly never occurred to me how much of the active go-out-and-make-friends part of my personality was a defense mechanism, but here I was making friends with all the nurses/assistants/doctors as if my life depended on it, because in a real way, it did. (One of the night nurses in particular was a fairly closed-up dude—not cold, exactly, but not really one for small talk. It took me three nights to get him to open up a bit, but when he did, my anxiety levels went down significantly. Which probably says a lot more about me and my trust issues than about him. Still, it was gratifying when he said to Brian and me on the third night, "I'm so impressed with y'all, you haven't messed up my name once." High praise!)
Anyway, the infection was a tough one, but by five days in they'd seen enough improvement to tentatively schedule the second surgery, which helped immensely with the anxiety. I slept much better during the latter half of my stay, and while the second surgery wasn't easy, it helped a lot that I had a better idea of what to expect. (Never going to quite get used to the sensation of someone holding an oxygen mask over my nose and mouth, though...I could breathe fine, obviously, but the THIS IS NOT OKAY signals were all going off in my brain, heh.) The surgery itself went smoothly, though pain control turned out to be trickier the second time around; they gave me a nerve block (cool thing I learned: even when drugged out and in a lot of pain, I really like listening to people teach other people things about bodies—Rush is a teaching hospital and the anesthesiologist was teaching a second person how to use the ultrasound to guide the needle to the exact nerve cluster), and after that wore off it took a few tries to find a medication dose where I was functional. (Being stoned out on pain meds is not my favorite feeling, but I'll take it over being in constant debilitating pain; knowing that the worst is over and all this is temporary helps a lot.)
So now I'm back home. Brian bought new pillows and a new mattress for the second bedroom, much nicer than the futon-with-memory-foam-topper we had in here before; we also invested in a new duvet cover and sheets from my favorite company. My ankle now has two plates and a dozen screws in it. The doctor says he sees no reason why I won't make a full recovery; depending on how well he's done his job, I may be more prone to developing arthritis in the joint, but that's a problem for Future Me. I now have a whole-ass pharmacy's worth of prescriptions to take, what with antibiotics as well as pain meds and blood thinners and I'm not even sure what all else. I'm getting around okay on crutches; for the first week I'm supposed to be pretty constantly in bed with my leg elevated, so I'm very grateful for my nest of new linens and pillows. So at this point it's just a waiting game to see if there are any more complications.
On the emotional front, I've definitely had a bit of a time adjusting my identity mentally from the "athlete" population to the "patient" population. (The nurses would profess amazement at how mobile I was, being possessed of three functioning limbs and no small amount of core strength, and it seemed almost condescending until I remembered that their pool of comparison was the rest of the patients in the orthopedics ward, most of whom were probably not athletes before their hospitalization.) It's helped a lot, though, in being less frustrated with all the things I can't currently do.
I also need to give a huge shout-out to the friends and family Brian and I have formed here in Chicago. KC (his girlfriend) has been an absolute rock; doing housework and helping Brian set up the new bed and regularly inquiring after how I'm doing/listening to me rant about feeling helpless, as well as loaning me the crutches and shower stool she used after her recent hip surgery. Evan (her husband) drove my to my first surgery when Brian (who'd been up with me in the ER the entire previous night) didn't feel safe to do so. Taylor (my boyfriend) came to visit me in the hospital a couple of times so Brian could have a day off, despite a full plate of grad school work and a difficult transit schedule; plus he's studying to become a nurse so he was able to demystify some of the odder aspects of hospital work culture.
--
So I wrote all that a couple of days ago, and meant to read it over and post it, but (in the way of things when you're recovering) I didn't get back around to it. And today Adora Belle, our eldest cat, was wandering around perfectly normally, went to sleep...and woke up in severe distress and unable to walk. Brian rushed her to the emergency vet, who diagnosed her with a large blood clot cutting off circulation to her hind legs, likely caused by a silent heart condition. There's not really any meaningful treatment, so...at least he was able to be there for her when they did the euthanasia. Even more, KC was able to be there for him, since I'm not going anywhere right now.
Feelings are strange when you're on opioids. To be honest, my strongest reaction has been "are you kidding me right now?" Not that it's that strange for an 18 year old cat to have a sudden health emergency, but it just seems like life's been one string of emergencies lately. I'm sure the grief will come later, and I'll do my best to sit with it when it does.
Maybe I'll lie back and listen to "Comfortably Numb" for a while...
