There’s something about public hospitals and I have
unfortunately over the last eight years come to know one in particular all too
well.
Having fractured my 5th Metatarsal a bit over a week ago I was enormously grateful for the speedy and caring attention I received in the Emergency department. It really only took an hour to be assessed and a diagnosis delivered. Then I was provided with crutches and a moonboot to support me through my six week recovery period. All very satisfactory.
One of the first things you give up in an emergency area is
your privacy. This also means of course you become privy to other ‘patients’
stories and what caused them to present at emergency also. People come and go,
staff pass you by, you are introduced to a number of people (and promptly
forget their names) and you start to notice the signs of previous itinerants who
were momentary occupants of the same bay as you, in my case I became fixated
with a tiny, tiny red blot on the lino – a droplet of blood maybe?
I’d arrived at emergency via the handy bus service from the
end of my street to right out the front of the hospital. I was in a fair degree
of pain which was exacerbated by the climb up the incline to the entrance to Emergency.
I left that little while later on crutches (short lesson on the operation
thereof) and with fitted moonboot in a taxi with a very helpful driver. I was
told I’d be contacted by the orthopaedic clinic to return in a week for a
review and a schedule of treatment.
The last time I was in this hospital it was not unusual to
have my records ‘disappear’ or at least not found in initial searches. I
checked my letter box regularly to see if there was a letter to say when my
appointment with the ortho was to be. And each day nothing was there. I decided
I’d have to end up calling them to find out. No sooner had I thought about that
than I received a call from the physio who had attended to me advising she had
found that my appointment had been cancelled and she wanted to check why. There
had been a little communication mix up about my overseas trip that had led them
to assuming I had jetted off. Oh what a trip that would have been – 22 hours in
economy with crutches and over sized footwear, up and down stairs at airports,
walking the streets of London, manoeuvring the London Underground stairs and
long passageways…what an adventure!
Fast forward to Thursday then and a cab ride into the
clinic. Not such a helpful driver this time, the most help he offered was to
slide the crutches across to me after I alighted. No sweat sunshine, don’t get
up.
It was an incredible effort to get up to the clinic, it’s
actually surprising how much effort it can be on crutches, getting into a lift
and then out again and then to the reception desk. Because the instructions weren’t all that
clear (to/for me)I had to then go right to the other end of the building for an
X-Ray before my appointment. The woman doing my X-ray was the same one I’d seen
the week before and she remarked on remembering the swelling…funny who they
remember and why when they must see many, many people in a week.
I was quite a sweat ball when I got back to the reception
desk to check back in. I was then directed to the ‘green’ seating area to wait
for 45 minutes.
I’m not sure who designs these waiting areas or who works
out the most efficient processes but this is how it was. People without any ‘support
equipment’ seemed to fill the front rows. Lovely. This meant that those of us
on crutches, with moonboots, walkers, canes or plaster casts had to clamber
through rows of seats, legs, packages and people to find a spot in the back. If
people are too dumb or inconsiderate to sit where it would be more sensible,
dare I say compassionate, couldn’t the staff say ‘could you sit in one of the
back three rows please and leave the front three for those with crutches?’
The waiting and reception area was really the festival of
cripples and a fine showroom for the myriad equipment one could avail oneself
of should one be in need of same. At times it was more chaotic and busy than
peak hour at Tullamarine security check. Here someone on crutches, there a
walker about to be passed by a walking cane narrowly avoids a plaster cast.
Trying to get through there might be a dad with a crook kid in a pusher as a
wheelchair passes on the inside lane. Not to mention, being part of a hospital,
someone brought down from a ward atop a stretcher. While all this activity was
going on around one you still need to listen out for your name to be called…which
almost always was called from some distance away and rarely in front of the aforementioned
‘green seating area’. Many muscles were then clenched hoping you wouldn’t
launch yourself on crutches out into the ‘danger zone’ and be wiped out by a
rampant Zimmer frame rider.
My happy news was I only have to use crutches ‘as needed’
and my fracture should heal over 6 – 8 weeks. About 1% of these fractures
(apparently frighteningly common) never heal BUT do not lead to permanent
disability, so I’m happy with those odds (Tom Waterhouse might not be).
I caught the bus home!
I’ve read heaps, caught up on some DVD series and thank ‘Ellen’
for a daily laugh. I think I had an unlucky moment leading to the break but
reflecting on what might have been the outcome (a table just a few centimetres
away on which I could have bumped my head, the heater I fell on not being
turned on not to mention the chance of multiple fractures), I do think
overall I had a ‘lucky break’
