Opinionated Bean

While my nurse was doing my daily dressing this past Saturday she mentioned my hole may not be completely closed before I scamper off to thesunny climes of England in September. This means, according to her, that I may have to get my friends to help me with the silver nitrate gauze (to stuff into my hole). I promptly emailed Geeklawyer, Ruthie and Cantrell. Ruthie is willing to help out, haven’t heard from Cantrell and Geeklaywer - I swear he screamed like a little girl, wagging her pigtails saying “no no no no”.

I have found, and yes I am making a generalisation, that it is men who are the weaker sex. Since my surgery it has been women who have said “okay, let’s take a look” –other than Ms Butternuts who gets quite squeamish. The men, on the other hand, hide like little pansies. My father doesn’t even want to discuss my stoma or the hole. My brother turns green at the mention of my stoma. Diresquirrel wimpers and asks for a bunny to cuddle. Mr Brian is fine, but he works in a hospital setting as a chaplain and is generally quite strong with regards to surgical scars.

It has been my experience that it is the men who breakdown and wimper more readily than women when it comes to healthcare issues. My mother, sweetest dumpling in the world, with an extremely soft voice, can turn into a valykerie when one of us is sick. My father, who tends to take on the typical eastern european macho role, breaks down and cries.

I’m fine, by the way. The hole is down to 1.8cm deep with a diameter of 3mm. If the hole gets to under 1cm before I leave for England than Geeklawyer need not worry, I won’t need to stuff the hole. I can do the topical dressing myself.

wimp

I had my wee little visit at the hospital this week. To make sure I’m not dying or any other such nonsense.

Doctor seemed pleased except for one niggling bit — I have a fungal infection of the incision. Joy!

I suspect I got the infection while visiting Dale and others in Ottawa a few weeks ago. I went to a clinic, The  Appletree Clinic to be precise. I had to bark instructions to the doctor on how to change a dressing — seems the twit wanted to send me to an ER to get the dressing done there. Idiot never thought that this isn’t an emergency and the ER would have sent me back to the clinic. Anywho, the twit didn’t know how to do a dressing and I had to depend on a “medical professional” to do the dressing as the hole along my incision line is very low and I can’t see it properly to pack it.

My incision was infection free before this visit to this clinic. And about 2-3 days later I have a smelly and wet infection on my skin. I suspect the pseudo-professional didn’t clean himself properly before coming into work (and he was 15 minutes late coming in).

My advice to anyone contemplating going to Appletree - don’t.

So my doctor at Sunnybrook gave me a script for some antibiotic cream and my nurse is now quite pleased as it seems to be working.

Kim told me last night that CCAC (Community Care Access Centre) - which is responsible for assigning a nurse to do my dressing - had cut me off as of June 1st. Thankfully Kim fought for me and service is continuing - until July 1st.

Great, just great. If my wound doesn’t close by then what do I do?

Because Kim fought so hard for me they will be sending me a Wound Specialist to assess the hole.

It’s 2cm now, btw.

Kim, my nurse, knows I hate the tape. Yesterday, when her back was turned, I scratched. It felt so good. She did smack my hands though, and had to re-apply some benedine (sp?) because of my scratching.

We had scheduled some shower time for me today, but she just rang and said that she needs to come in at 5:30 to do the dressing change — guess no shower today 

She’s using this wacky tape called “hypafix” which is thin and transparent.

I am sick and tired of this  open wound of mine. I want it closed, now. I am all itchy right now & uncomfortable. There is a huge swath of surgical tape which is just driving me nuts - I want to rip it off and just scratch & scratch.

Did I mention I am tired of this daily taping?

Yipeee, it has gone down from 3.1cm deep to 2.5cm deep. I’m getting closer and closer to that ever elusive shower.

I took a shower today. I know, not the greatest news in the world, but it’s an accomplishment for me. See, since my surgery of November 20, 2007 I haven’t had a shower or bath. I’ve had sponge baths - so not to worry, I’m not some stinky vile mess. I haven’t showered because of my dressing with the open wound.

My nurse Kim and I discussed yesterday how to go about achieving this long desired goal - taking a shower. I am allowed to shower 30 minutes before the nurse comes in for the dressing change. The dressing will be wet, but there will be sufficient time to change the dressing.

Those of you who shower on a regular basis and do not appreciate the delights of water droplets pelting your moist flesh - I am disappointed that you don’t revel in the delights of the water cascade. Sure you enjoy the invigorating feel of the showerhead pelting you with great force, so you get some sort of pseudo-massage. But there is nothing like feeling clean. Appreciate your showerheads.

I had a lovely day today just going from patio to patio, with tarotcub and diresquirrel. By mid-afternoon I had to call my nurse as my dressing was getting itchy and a little uncomfortable. She came over to my apartment at 5pm to do my dressing. She took some strip gauze and packed my abdominal wound (it hasn’t completely healed, btw) and realised she didn’t pack enough in, so she added more. But, she didn’t leave any dangling out so that it could be easily removed.

She tried to remove the gauze with foreceps, two types of tweezers and a pair of surgical scissors. The gauze is embedded in me, and won’t come out.

I called the Urology Resident on Call at Sunnybrook and they recommended that I get to the Urology Clinic as soon as possible tomorrow after work (my first day of work…yipeee). A Resident will be waiting for me to deal with the gauze.

Now, my nurse in a way is happy that this has happened. My previous nurse, Rhonda, had asked me to speak to my urologist about opening up the hole so that instead of packing the wound horizontally it can be packed vertically. This would require cutting into the top layers of the abdomen. Theoretically by packing the wound horizontally the healing process would speed up and the hole would actually close more quickly.

I am not really relishing the idea of enlarging the wound.

As is standard across the judeo-christian world I had Easter Lunch with the parental units yesterday. My mother, thankfully, did not cook too much food. There was actually a reasonable amount of food on the table. At first I thought this was because she’s finally taken note of all of our complaints that she cooks too much and tries to over-stuff us… and trust me when I say I do not require more stuffing, I am well padded already.

The reason for the reasonable amount of food is my father. He had one of his testes taken out in October’07 and the doctors ran tests on the removed teste and put him through a bunch of CT Scans and MRIs and found nothing. The fear was that he may have testicular cancer. They couldn’t find anything, not even lymphoma, but to be safe they decided to put him through chemo.

Once every two weeks he goes in for a chemo session. At home he has to self-inject another type of med for 7 days, then rest for 7 days, and then repeat the process. Usually, according to my brother, by the 5th day of injections he is is barely moving as he feels sick and weak. The paternal unit has lost lots of weight and is shuffling about and even falling a few times a day.

My brother asked me quietly if I thought our father is close to meeting his maker. I tried to reassure him that a positive attitude goes a long way towards improvement in health. But I’m not so sure. He’s 76 and feeling his mortality. His brother, my uncle, died at age 76 (but he did have a few strokes, a heart attack or two and diabetes) and my paternal grandfather at age 70. With the death of my uncle my father started to question his own mortality - his contemporaries are dying off and he feels quite lonely. Coupled with a wife who is driving him nuts (and who he has said in the past few years he would have divorced years ago if there hadn’t been any kids), he’s not doing well mentally.

I went in to St. Joseph’s Health Centre here in Toronto to have some staples removed. Early last week I went in for a very minor procedure - to remove a rather large cyst on my head (near the hairline). I had an appointment today to have the staples removed.

I went in to the registration office of the “Ambulatory Care Centre” - a fancy way of saying out-patient clinic - to register and let them know that I had shown up for my appointment. I dutifully gave them my hospital card and my  health card, so that they could then in turn update my patient file and charge OHIP for the visit.

During the registration I got the strangest question which just shocked me… “what is the name of your church?”. I was flabbergasted, to say the least. What does my religious affiliation have to do with my requiring a medical professional to pull some staples from me? It’s a publicly funded hospital, therefore it doesn’t matter what the patient’s religion is, the hospital still has to treat them. My answer was “I prefer not to say”. The response I got was a long stare, as if she was daring me to give in and tell her.

For me this goes to the heart of the separation of Church & State. It’s a Catholic hospital which got grandfathered into the public health system. As a Catholic hospital it does not recognise same-sex relationships (so if your partner is in the ER or ICU you are not considered a family member) nor does it perform abortions; though, as per a Supreme Court ruling abortions are no longer illegal, but a doctor cannot be forced to perform one. I personally do not like the idea that an institution that receives public funding can inflict, yes inflict, it’s religious mores on the general public.  I had no say in the matter as to which hospital was the site of my minor surgical procedure - that’s where the plastic surgeon has surgical priviledges. So if  I have no say in where my treatment will occur, therefore being forced to go to a catholic hospital, I am in a sense being forced to abide by religious tenents which do not fit in with my outlook on life and spirituality.

I personally hold to the idea that institutions with religious affiliations should not received public funding unless they are prepared to abide by the general rules - i.e., don’t ask me my religion when I go in for an outpatient appointment, don’t ask me who my spiritual advisor is, and don’t assume that I will want to be receiving the eucharist while recovering from surgery.