NO CHOOKS IN THE HOSPITAL

Post number 6 - January 28th 2023

Flinders surgery day and my girls

Yesterday was awkward in a number of ways with my cognitive health issue. I had surgery at Flinders Medical Centre for an unrelated health problem that needed attention.

No big deal, every day people have surgery for a multitude of health reasons.

It was a 7am book in at Flinders and on this day alone the clinical staff indicated that 30 surgeries were scheduled across the 11 theatres in this part of the hospital. And yep, my surgery was just one of them.

The downside for me, it was spelled out by the medical team that requiring a general anesthetic for my surgery meant I was at a greater risk for this to impact my cognitive problems.

In fact, I was told that while it is common for the anesthetic to impact this area it would for the most part be temporary. In some cases, it might hurry ongoing decline, but generally this was not so. It was further explained by the anesthetist that the rule of thumb used to determine an instant impact on cognitive decline is they add one day of increased confusion for each decade of life.

Not sure who came up with that formula but hey, it sort of helped ease my mind. If I was battling with confusion after the surgery, then at 68 I could expect around 7 days of added problems in my cognitive thinking.

Looking back over this past week, once I knew the surgery was scheduled for Friday and the pre-op checks were all complete, I will admit to being scared of what might happen in my mind. With any post-surgery comes pain and discomfort and that was generally easy to handle.

But if my mind went further haywire that scared the absolute crap out me.

Losing control of what happens in your mind is not something I am able to easily cope with. Knowing where this journey will eventually take me is hard to grasp. I accept what will happen but that does not mean I am comfortable when trying to look ahead. I am not comfortable.

So with all the talk around how my mind would be once in recovery yesterday, then I was rather rattled. I can always deal with a situation but that does not take away the fear factor.

But, here we are the day after so now I tell the funny side of how yesterday played out.

The staff at Flinders were for the most part excellent. They were attentive, professional and thankfully very understanding of who I was, how I felt and they tolerated my anxiety and fear.

The nursing staff did indicate though that I would require a RAT test before surgery but hey, that was not in my plan, so I resisted.

Look, I felt for the poor nurse but this was silly and unnecessary from my view. Thankfully the nurse accepted my anxiety around this BS test, and guess what, she relented and let me do my own RAT test. For me, that was the only way this could have played out. I was not about to have some random stick one of those very invasive swabs up my honker.

Sanity prevailed.

But really, I have to give a very big thank-you to all the Flinders staff from yesterday. I so appreciate their help and understanding. They were all really great and I came away with an understanding of the work they do and how they all do it so well.

Now, for me, it was also important on the surgery day to have Ruth involved.

She is very important in the whole procedure but especially in the holding bay prior to theatre and then in post-op recovery. Again the staff were so supportive and really kind in hearing how having Ruth as my 'go to' in sticky situations was so important to minimising the impact on my cognitive impacted mind.

So Ruth became an integral part of how yesterday went. And no, that's not the funny part.

The pre-surgery pecking order played out ok, after all the nursing checks and balances I was then taken off to theatre and 'walla' the next thing I remember is being on the recovery ward. My nurse was close at hand as I drifted back into consciousness, and she did all the right things in helping me understand what was happening.

But, once I asked for my girls, my chooks, to be allowed on the ward the poor nurse had a change of tone. She was clearly not expecting that from me. Apparently, I was trying to get up from my bed to find my chooks and have them on the bed with me.

Ruth and I are house sitting for 5-weeks and the family have all these chooks, most days 20 and oh, 2 ducks. Somehow, I have bonded with these darn girls. I think, rightly or wrongly, that they count on me for their very daily existence, I am their lifeline it seems.

So, waking up from the anesthetic in the recovery ward here I was confusing this nurse who had no idea why I was insisting on having the chooks with me. Now she was rattled and kept trying to change the subject, but my chooks were my focus. I was relentless, apparently.

Now I told the nurse if she asked Ruth then she could vouch for me that the chooks needed to be there. This poor nurse now not only had to deal with my chook obsession, she was also confused as to who this Ruth person was and how she fitted into this whole chook mess.

But, through divine intervention or just the fact that things moved on, once I came around enough then I was taken to the second recovery ward, Ruth was now allowed back in.

But even she did not bring the chooks. Bummer.

Anyhow, now that I was at least mostly coherent we had a good laugh about how I had tormented the poor nursing staff over the chooks.

But despite seeing the funny side to it, I had to then imagine the poor recovery ward nurse going home last night after her shift, shaking her head and thinking, “What the dickens happened there, what was that bloke on about with the girls and the chooks?” She would have been traumatised, poor girl. Wonder if she chucked a sickie today?

So, at this minute I sit here back at home, very sore and uncomfortable I must admit, my wound and stitches hurting like mad. But I can still laugh about my chook dilemma from yesterday and see how that sort of didn't really play out well at Flinders with the nursing staff.

But on a plus side I did get to go see my girls just now at the chook yard area down the back and I will admit it did cheer me no end. Yeah, I have this chook bonding and I did miss the girls.

On the cognitive side, I am really really happy that I have mostly dodged a curve ball and while not totally on top of my game I don't feel any further decline. That is such a massive relief and for me, an answer to prayer.

This mental recovery from the anesthetic and surgery has played out far better that I had hoped for. The shakes on my right side persist and the involuntary hand gestures that I am developing are annoying but that was happening before the anesthetic of yesterday.

Writing this post has been fun, rather funny in fact.

Now as I keep reading back over my lines and correcting my mistooks I can have a laugh. Maybe I will have to admit to being a touch erratic in thought today and some words and lines in my post have been so jumbled that even the spellchecker has given up on me. Think it must be related to Umpire Vernon.

But, got there. Post now written, had coffee, seen the girls, 48 days to footy season, Go Cats. Yeah all good,

Except for the awkward pain in my tummy. Ruth, where is the pain relief? Ruth, you only have one job today.

Anyhow, I will be 'orf' now, but I leave with the obligatory JonnyG quote. Some will understand this, some not.

I've learned more from this surgery pain than I could've ever learned from Sister Leonie

(now this is funny, but true story, you couldn't make this up … the spellchecker has returned and it wants to change Sister Leonie to Sister Loonie)