My night was fitful at best. I struggled all night with pain, waking to punch my button and chase the pain that raced in front of me as I would lay exhausted, and sleep as best I could. At 0 dark early a young lady came into my room, I was sure she must be a new nurse, thank goodness. But to my surprise, it wasn’t a nurse but the morning floor Doctor. I guess at least I saw her; that is more than I can say for the guy on nights. But we didn’t get off to a good start on this Saturday morning.
She looks at my morphine machine and announces I must not be in much pain. I told her quite the contrary. She says, “Well, it shows right here you were only pushing the button every fifteen minutes, you must not have been in much pain”. Then she tells me that they record how often you push it and that is how they know if you are ‘really’ in pain. Things deteriorated from there, she and I had a few words about the ‘gothcha game’ she was playing. I told her the memo I got last night from my crack team of nurses said I could only have it every fifteen minutes, so why push the damned button more than that. She left without another word, but she’d be back.
Shortly after my encounter with my female Doogie Howser my breakfast came.
Now they knew I was diabetic, they tried to give me insulin and looking at my tray I knew why. The cafeteria apparently hadn’t gotten the memo on what a diabetic meal consisted of. I’d worked very hard in 08’ to eat right and exercise and I wasn’t coming to a hospital to ruin that, I didn’t eat, I’d have my daughter get me something later. We never solved this problem the entire time I was hospitalized in Salt Lake, in spite of meeting with an arguing with a nutritionist.
Shortly after breakfast, business really picked up. Another Doctor had stopped by and allowed me to begin taking Percocet and of course the pain was a thing of the past at this point. My daughter had just arrived when I looked up and thought I was seeing quadruple. Four young, did I say young, Doctors were standing at the end of my bed, all looking, well, very Doogie Howser like. One announced he was a Urologist and became the spokesperson for the crew standing before me.
As God and my daughter as my witness he said, “Mr. Kugler we told Montana VA we didn’t want you here. We don’t have room for you here and you shouldn’t be here”. Now excuse me for this but I used to drive truck and I thought of one of my fellow drivers who used to say, I wouldn’t slam the shithouse door that hard. You can imagine how that made a former Marine sniper, Vietnam vet, two tours actually, who suffers from PTSD, reacts? I told them, “Well fellows, my two old Urologists in Montana said this was an emergency so you’re going to have to deal with me, I’m here”.
We then had a very brief and heated discussion about their need for me to get ‘out’ of the hospital as they couldn’t do the surgery for at least a month.
I asked they guy who would turn out to be my Urologist in Salt Lake if he knew where I lived when he said I should get out. He said, “Well, Montana”. I said, “Yea, its eleven hours from here on a good day. So with a tube sticking out of my back, two piss bags in my hands, you want me to be released and just ride home?” Bottom line was that they didn’t care; they just wanted me out because in their mind, it wasn’t an emergency. We agreed to disagree and they left.
My Saturday was pretty anger filled and mixed with rest now that I had Percocet, as the little lady Doctor returned and took me off the IV drip and put me on continuous release morphine pills. The reason for that turned out to be to insure I was ready for release, although they didn’t tell me that at the time. Late Saturday evening, I guess it was Sunday morning really, just after midnight I was awakened by someone calling my name.
“Mr. Kugler, we’re here for your x-ray”. I think; my x-ray? I was in a deep sleep finally and it felt so good. I could see someone with a wheel chair standing in my doorway. “What the heck time is it?” I ask. He says it is 12:15 in the morning. I tell him that I will not go for any x-ray unless I know what it is for. He returns to tell me it is for my chest. “Chest! I’m in here for kidney stones”. He begs me to not give him a hard time as he is just doing his job.
I grab my urine bags, slide off into the wheel chair and we move down to the elevator, which happens to be opposite of the Nurses Station on our floor. I hadn’t been out of bed since I arrived, felt awful but went along with the charade for the sake of the young man driving the wheelchair. As the bell rings and the elevator arrives my driver starts wheeling me in when a nurse yells from the nearby station, “you are Mr. Bowman aren’t you?’ And I yell, “No, I’m Kugler, put me back in bed!” and that ended my Saturday night.
Sunday was pretty uneventful as everything stops over the weekend at a VA hospital anyway. I found the nurses on days to be excellent and could only think of the proverbial car built on second shift … you didn’t want to be on nights at one of these hospitals either, the care is dramatically different. I was looking forward to Monday morning and getting my issues resolved with when I would be operated on. And Monday did not disappoint.
(Part Four) Tomorrow
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