Pros, Cons, and Outrageous Moments at UCSF

I have been chomping at the bit to write a blog post these past 11 days since my surgery. There’s nothing like a hospital stay to provide me with plenty of new material, since the truth is, I lack both the time and energy to explain to my friends and even family all that goes on in just one day at the hospital. To help me keep track of the most important, appalling, or comedic events, I wrote notes in a journal kept beside my bed. Many of these notes were written during the middle of the night under heavy sedation, so more than once I flipped through my notebook in the morning with no idea what the symbols scribbled on the page were supposed to mean. Despite that setback, I was able to gather enough anecdotes to form several cohesive blogs, so here is #1: Pros, Cons, and Outrageous Moments at UCSF.

As a result of being on oral Dilaudid and Oxycodone every 2 hours in addition to intravenous Dilaudid every 10 minutes, my memory of UCSF, which includes the first 4.5 days of my hospital experience, is quite hazy. Good thing I have my notes!

Pros:
1) Towels: rather than use these to sand down a refinished table, as I would with other hospital towels, I would use these in my bathroom at home!
2) Food: though I barely ate it, Zack preferred the content of my food trays over the food others offered to bring him from local restaurants! When I mentioned that I didn’t have much of an appetite, one of my nurses offered to make me a milkshake!
3) Dry shampoo: I don’t understand how it doesn’t weigh your hair down since you don’t wash it out, but it doesn’t! I kind of want to use it after recovery...

Cons:
1) HUGE wait-time after pushing the call button: by the time a nurse answered my call, I frequently forgot why I called, especially when I was taking Valium.
2) As a secondary downside to this wait-time, I couldn’t go to the bathroom until they came to the room. They would give me 2 Liters of fluid and then expect me to hold it for 10 minutes! Not possible.
3) Lack of communication among staff: the first thing I was told by my doctors and nurses after surgery was that I have 3 hip precautions for the next 3 months: 1) Don’t cross your legs, 2) Don’t turn your feet inward, and 3) Don’t bend your hip beyond a 90 degree angle. Three days after my hip surgery, as the X-ray tech was arranging my legs, she told me to cross my right leg over my left while sliding in my left knee and bending up to reach it at a 45 degree angle. What?!?

Outrageous (and/or funny):
1) The first night, I asked for my scheduled dose of Actigall, a medicine necessary to help my hurting liver. My nurse informed me that I was not ordered for Actigall, and when I questioned this, believing it to be a mistake since I talked to the doctor about it earlier, the nurse said, “Well if the doctor didn’t order it, you must not need it.” Right, because doctors never make mistakes.
2) After I got back from the horrible X-ray, I needed pain medicine but wasn’t due for it yet. Since they offered me no options, I inquired about a massage therapy department. The nurse looked at me inquisitively and repeated, “Massage therapy? What’s that?” Hiding my disbelief and desire to demand if I was really at UCSF, I explained that massage therapy is a department of massage therapists who can provide massage to relieve pain. She responded, “Oh, that would be in the volunteer department.” Really?? Do you want a volunteer rubbing their hands all over you?
3) The day of my surgery, after we got back to my room, I asked Zack to bend down as I held up my finger. Hesitantly, he agreed and lowered down. I held up my finger, wrapped in the oxygen saturation monitor and giving off a red glow, to his nose and announced, “You’re Rudolph.” I have no memory of this incident.