I Thought A Side Room Would Relax Me…

Most of the beds in Southmead are located in individual side rooms. My idea of bliss. I worship my privacy, don’t like being around fellow poorly patients and have hospital hygiene concerns bordering on the obsessive.

Why was it then, that I not settle in that room? I thought a side room would relax me.

Whatever I tried to do to keep myself amused in the day, or tire myself out for the night did not work. Time would just drag on and on. I wasn’t sleeping well either.

Maybe part of the problem was boredom. My two previous stays in hospital allowed me to use my phone to browse the internet, write my blog, as well as listen to audiobooks and music. This time, with two broken arms, using my mobile was impossible. As I am blogging this post now, over a week later, things have clearly improved – I’ll write later how this all came about.

It wasn’t long before the Intensive Care Unit had enough of me. Clearly I had recovered enough from my ordeal to warrant being moved on from the ward reserved for the seriously ill.

Despite getting rid of me, ICU wouldn’t allow me to take their bed and mattress with me. This involved ropes being tied around my shoulders, back and various other areas of my body, before being elevated into the air, like a circus act, using a hoist.

The hoist transfer was a disaster. A pair of physiotherapists thought that it would be wise to lift me from my ICU bed, into a chair, instead of another bed.

Due to my long-term back problems, sitting in a chair, even the infamous “comfy chair” (named by the physios), would either leave me in agony, unable to breathe, or both of these frightening scenarios.

Despite my worries and warnings to the physios about my incompatibility with chairs, I was placed in one anyway. I was asked to sit in the chair for twenty minutes. The stopwatch was yet to reach five of these, before I was screaming to be placed back into bed and for my BiPap breathing aid – primary reserved for sleeping – to be turned on and placed on my face.

This was a low and it was clear that I was a long way from being discharged home.