TheBanyanTree: 8 North - Day 4

[Jim Miller]

Four days down, . . . . ?????????  to go. 

I’ve been thinking about what  happened today. I realize that if I write about all the details, I’ll be  writing all night and you’ll quit reading. Not a good idea. I’ll  start out in more of a journal format. I’ll try to condense the information  and not discuss all the trivia. If I were to catalog the minutia, we probably  wouldn’t be friends any longer. 

Nothing of great importance  has happened to date, so I won’t go back, except for a personal note from  Saturday. I’m half a day into forever and Linda calls. After a power outage,  she can’t get a computer to start. Just a little thing and we work through  it. (Mike, son living here, has now installed UPS  system I bought but never got installed) Saturday night Linda called again.  The dryer doesn’t work. I suggest a few tests, and yup, it’s broke. “Call  Sears service or go buy a new one, your choice dear”. She called Sear today.  It wasn’t clothes . . . . didn’t need replaced. 

Today was routine. I started  out by determining an order for my activities. I feel great, better than  I have for months. I later find out that that is the slight edge dobutamine  can give you. And I thought I was being charmingly social. I can tell that  all the nurses love me. 

Speaking of nurses and aids,  Diane NAC (nurse aid cardiac – I think) walks in Saturday and says, “I know  you. 821 last year”. We’ll take good care of you. Yesterday at 7am I’m driven off for a chest X-ray. I’m  already unplugged from my monitor and ask if I can take a shower. Diane strolls  in and tells me, with a slightly wry glance that I can take of my self. She  doesn’t need to be helping me into the shower every day. She shows me how  to waterproof the IV site and provides directions for applying pads for the  heart monitor leads, then informs me that I’m on my own for the rest of my  stay. (In case you have a wrong picture, the monitor is out at the nurse’s  station and I wear a small 3X4 transmitter. Coverage is good for the entire  floor.) After the transplant doctor visits me, Diane comes into the room  to check the usual vital signs. As she is taking my temperature, she tells  me that the doc left orders to take my temps by three different methods;  oral, under th
 e arm, and I’m sure you’ve guessed the 3rd. She  says she has to rush off, but will get the other two later. I remind her  a couple of times, and she is always too busy. Finally she tells me that  she’ll leave a note for the next shift to catch it if she can’t get back  to me. At the shift change, I ask Goran, the new aid if he got any instructions  from Diane. I’m beginning to suspect that the joke was on me. I see Goran  later and ask again. Nope, no such instructions. This morning I tell Diane  my turn is coming. Now what can I do? 

This hospital has nine floors  above the main entrance and three below. The elevators are located about  midway north/south with out facing patient rooms east and west. My room,  #823, is east facing on floor eight, north end; eight north. The helicopters  approach and land directly above me. Spokane  sits in a valley, carved by glaciers and the great floods after the ice age.  This area has very interesting geology related to that era. Downtown is in  a valley which extends eastward into Idaho.  The ice flowed northward creating smaller valleys and a plateau on the for  north side of the city. South and west of the city is basalt rock and remained  somewhat in tact as everything was being displaced. I provide you with this  information to give you a picture of my view. The hospital is directly south  of downtown a few hundred feet up  from the valley floor on what was  once the river bed. I don’t have a direct city view but more of the  extended valley toward Idaho.  At nigh
 t the lights below shine brightly. During the day, I have an unobstructed  view of Mount Spokane,  an inactive volcano, and local ski resort, 25 miles northeast. North  Idaho provides a hundred miles of majestic peaks extending north  toward Canada.  I don’t get this view at home. 

The storms started Friday  afternoon. The black, water laden clouds, seem to hang just above my window.  Rain, hail, wind; it all came in buckets. If we didn’t make national news,  Spokane at east broke the regional  headlines when a small funnel was observed to touch down on the plain five  miles west of downtown. We don’t get tornados in Spokane,  yet there it was. That was news. My room was lit by lightning for most of  the night. Saturday and Sunday were more of the same. This morning broke  to sunshine and blue skies. I looked out and knew the storms were passed  when I saw two small airplanes in the sky. Later, I heard a helicopter  approach the roof pad, and it occurred to me that I hadn’t heard a chopper  in three days. Quite a storm. I don’t know that it won’t return, but for  now. . . . what a gorgeous day, and I’m right here on top of the view. 

Before dinner, one of my nurses  was carrying a baby. An aid’s husband was visiting and he brought their baby.  I always said that I most enjoyed seeing my sons grow and mature. You could  keep your babies with diapers, phlegm, vomit, colic, all night appetite and  intrusion on my private life. As Julie walked passed me with the baby, I  wanted to reach out and touch her. I wanted smell her and feel my cheek against  her perfect skin. I wanted to look into her curious eyes. I’m pleased  that we have a new baby coming into the family in December. I won’t  miss the chance to love it appropriately. 

I’ve learned from my many  hospital stays that nurses place great importance on regularity. They’ve  been know to introduce some pretty distasteful practices in order to get  their way. Earlier I was contemplating the expanded poetic works of Stuart  K Polzin in the little room as I was struggling to indulge their obsession.  It suddenly occurred to me that I had failed to install the toilet paper  hanger in the just-finished downstairs bath at home. 

Stay tuned for more ramblings  from 8 North. 
 Peace, Jim