Actually Breaking Up Is NOT Hard to Do

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 5^th 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 following days were ones of amazing swelling, very colourful bruising and sometimes breathtaking pain. Moping over the cancellation of an overseas holiday and confinement to my flat led to the occasional bouts of depression and more of frustration. I wanted to scream sometimes and at others to curl up in a ball and slip into unconsciousness for five weeks, waking up with all well and walk away.

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’