Friday, May 8, 2009

Hospital


Photo from Flickr

Apparently this is a hospital! Looks fun, doesnt it?

Unfortuantly my hospital  looks nothing like this. Instead it looks like an early 90's building with salmon coloured walls, with mustard yellow doors. With pale grey ceilings, and non-commital lino on the floor. 

I know alot about my hospital don't I? 

Thats because I spent 2 hours staring at these walls/floors/doors/ceilings yesterday when I went in for emergancy surgery (I use the term loosely, as I had 24 hours notice that I was going into hospital, followed by a 2 hour wait prepped for surgery).

But I learnt some things during my wait. Things that one should probably never need to know, but I will impart my wisdom on you, making you feel my pain.

When you go under General Anesthetic you have a tube shoved down your throat. OK, I know it seems obvious, but in all of the GA's I have had (and I have had a few) I never knew that. No idea how I thought I breathed, who knows how my mind works! But the hot anesthetist mentioned it yesterday, and I had to spend 20 minutes pondering it!

Fasting during the middle of the day is harder than you think. My surgery was booked for 3.30pm yesterday, which meant I had to fast from 9.30am. At work. Near the tea station. When there was cake and pizza. And where people make their lunch. I have never chewed a bit of chewie so hard in my life. But it got me through those 5 hours at work (yes it was the one bit too).

Surgeries have longer waits than doctors. I always seem to get the doctors that make you wait an hour for your appointment. And normally I am pretty good about it. Except for that one time where I had to miss my hair colour appointment, and therfore couldnt get my hair looking pretty for my friend Kerry's 30th. The worst offender is my gynocologist. I have no idea why I show up on time, but I always manage to wait an hour. It has got to the stage where I have read all of the magazines in his waiting rooms, and now bring my own in. Surgeons have even longer waits I discovered. Which i understand, as you never know what you will find until you open someone up, but surely they could have tv's in their waiting bays, Dr Phil could have kept me entertained!

I know I don't mention it much on here, but I do whinge about my fertility issues a lot. Yesterday, whilst waiting, I learnt that there are people in worse conditions to me. A lot worse. I always knew that in the grand scheme of things, my inability to fall pregnant (and sustain a pregnancy) wasnt the worst thing in the world, and I try not to make it seem like that, but i took a good look at myself yesterday after listening to a conversation the woman in the bed next to me had with the doctor. She was going in for gyno surgery. She had polups, leisons, thickening of the endometrial lining. She was also undergoing chemo for breast AND bowel cancer. And to make that even worse, she is allergic to morphine and codine! I felt for her, i really did. And she was a lovely woman, she wished me luck in the recovery room as she was leaving.

Men are stupid. Despite being there when my surgeon explained the procedure to us, Brian expected me to be able to drive home after surgery. He was most put out that he had to hang around for 4 hours to drive me home (my hospital is an hour from our house). How rude!

Medibank (our health insurer) really do suck some days. We are still in our waiting period of our new cover (we upped it last year from a basic cover) and do you think you can get a straight answer out of them when asking about if a procedure is covered? Nope! They tell me I have to get my surgeon to fill out a form stating whether my surgery was pre-existing when I took out my cover or not, thats fine, my doctor did that for me yesterday.  So today when I ring to find out the fax number, they tell me I need to get my GP to fill out the same form. Dammit, could you have not told me that before now? Now I have to go see my GP as well!!!

Centrelink are really stupid. We are elligible for some grant or something due to the bushfires, so we both submitted a claim. Depsite taking 100 points of ID, they still managed to spell our surname wrong. Its 3 letters for pete's sake! It's not that hard to spell. And, then they send us a letter saying we have to submit ID...ummm, we did that on the day we did the claim! Apparently they send it to every claimee, irregardless of the fact they did the ID when submitting the form. Twits!!!

So there you go, the things you learn.
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2 comments:

  1. They're not gentle when they stick that tube down your throat, either. I had a sore throat for a week because of that.
    I thought only my man was that rude, but now I see it's all men. lol

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  2. lol, yup Mejus, it's not just you.

    In Bri's defence, he thought it was just like a scan where I am fully conscious, and I suppose I never really explained it to him, I just assumed the doctor explained it to him when he asked. Least he had the decency to feel bad when I explained it to him. But i will continue to taunt him about it :P

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