I had time to do my weekly shopping before my ride picked me up Saturday morning.
As I was out and about, I saw two deer in town. This is actually fairly common, a few years ago, I saw a buck bedded down in my yard.
At the stop light, I spotted a tiny car that looked more like a child’s toy than a functional vehicle. I don’t think it even had a back seat and aren’t sure if it even had a passenger seat.
The ride to Redmond was nice. There was just enough overcast that it was on the cool side.
I spotted my hotel from a distance. It has a tower with the name of the hotel blazoned on it. Check in was quick and painless. My room was the second on the right just down the hallway.
I started my clear liquids diet Saturday. I’d had my home care worker prepare some lemon Jell-O for me and packed them in an insulated lunch cooler with four frozen gel packs. The gel packs were still frozen when I stored the containers of Jell-O in my room’s mini-fridge. I’d split the Jell-O into four containers that fit into the cooler perfectly.
I wake up several times during the night and Saturday night was no exception. During the night, I heard a rhythmic rumbling from the next room. Someone next door must have been snoring. They must have checked out the following day, because there wasn’t any snoring Sunday night.
Monday morning, my ride was waiting for me when I left my room.
I’m pretty fuzzy about the rest of Monday and most of Tuesday, but Wednesday morning, I was visited by a therapy dog. The dog’s muzzle was very gray, but her handler told me that she was only nine years old.
Wednesday night, they took me off oxygen, but when they checked my vitals on Thursday morning; my blood oxygen had dropped to 80%, so they put me back on it and ordered a CAT scan. The CAT scan found small blood clots in my lungs. Note: Since they were remodeling that part of the hospital, they had the CAT scan machine parked outside in a semi.
I was on a clear liquids diet until Wednesday, when they switched me to full liquids.
They had planned to release me on Friday, but after they found the blood clots, they changed that to the following Monday.
They took the heart monitor off Thursday afternoon. They’re going to mail me one of those test monitors like the one I got when I went to the ER.
Sometime Thursday night, I called for the nurse to help with something (I was so sleepy that I don’t remember what). When I made the call though, I mentioned something about how sleepy I was. I think I made a new word: “Drozing” (a cross between drowsing and dozing).
On Friday, they changed my diet to surgical soft. Later that day, they took the wound vac off my surgical site. It had been irritating me.
Meals in the hospital were bland and (once they took me off liquids) often cold and dry. The hospital in Redmond shared a room service arrangement with the one in Bend. On one or two occasions, they sent the meal I ordered to the Bend hospital by mistake. I hope the person in Bend who had the same room number as I did enjoyed their extra meals.
They tried to get a ride for me Monday morning between 10:00 and 11:00 am, but could only get one at 2:00 pm. When he arrived, it was the same driver that brought me from the hotel to the hospital. He had a second passenger and we stopped by McDonalds, where he bought each of us a treat (I chose a small vanilla milkshake).
Edit: Stuff I Forgot the First Time Around
When the nurse put in my IV line on Monday, he had difficulty. First, he tried to put it in my right forearm, but hit what the nurses called a ‘valve’ and blew it. I now have a lovely bruise on that arm. Then, he tried my left hand, but ran into the same problem (this time, I didn’t develop a bruise). Finally, he put it in my right wrist.
A nurse later told me that tall people such as myself tend to have a lot of valves because the veins need to work harder against gravity than the veins of shorter people.
A day or two after they stopped giving me IV fluids, they had to take it out because it failed when they tested it. The nurse had to try twice to get this one in (leaving a smaller bruise on my left arm). This time, they put it in my left forearm. They didn’t use it once before I was released from the hospital.
A woman came by to show me a whole bunch of tools (including a grabber of a style I’ve been eying at the local drugstore) that I can use to help myself with various chores. She then left and took the tools with her.
While taking my blood pressure, one nurse told me that my arms are very skinny.
While I was in the hospital, they gave me a plastic device to use to exercise my lungs. I’m supposed to empty my lungs and breath in through a tube. This causes a button to go up and a pump to measure how much air I breath in. Most of the time, I could only get the pump to the 500 mark, but a few times I got it to the 1,000 mark, and very rarely, I was able to get it to the line between 1,000 and 1,500 marks. Once, I even got it to the 1,500 itself. I’m supposed to keep using that device at home.
Beginning Wednesday, the nurses took me for walks in the hall. That first day, they drew three boxes on the white board at the foot of my bed. They took me for two walks. The second day, they decided to reuse the boxes. That day, they took me for one walk. It wasn’t until the third day that I finally got three walks.
On Saturday, the nurse who took me for my third walk drew a fourth box on the white board. None of the nurses took me for another walk.
On Sunday, they let me go for walks by myself. I took seven walks, and before I left on Monday, I got another five walks in.
Maizing Stories 