This
is the long and unpleasant story of Stephanie's amputation, and the
complications that came afterwards. Today's entry is part 5, and I've listed
the earlier installments below.
A disclaimer: I believe everything
I'm saying is true, but I'm old, it all happened years ago, and the medical
details were complicated. We barely knew what was going on even as it was going
on, so I won't be surprised if I've gotten a few details wrong. I'm hoping that
saying so prevents any of the medical facilities involved from suing me.
After all, we
were kind enough not to sue any of them, and god knows we could have.
An
ambulance brought Steph from UW Hospital to the American Center facility, and
after Steph had been checked in, someone from the front desk gave us a tour of
the place. Everything seemed to be dedicated to physical therapy, which Steph
would need plenty of. She'd need to learn how to get around with only one leg,
for at least a few months until her prosthetic leg could be fitted.
Stephanie,
of course, very much wanted to see the American Center's in-house restaurant,
hoping she'd be able to eat at this new hospital — she'd barely been eating at
her previous hospital. An employee showed us the way to the cafeteria, and Steph
thought the chicken Parmesan looked good so I bought it. We said thanks to the
staff person who'd brought us, and I wheeled Stephanie to a table. She took a
whiff of the food and said "Maybe," and then she took a bite and
said, "No."
It
was obvious to both of us that Stephanie's distaste for hospital food was going
to be a problem, and yes it was, and soon, but we wouldn't have been able to
guess how soon — and how terrifyingly — that problem would come to a crux.
The
staff settled Steph into a room, and she asked nicely whether I could stay the
night with her, as I always did when she was hospitalized — Steph in the bed,
and me in a reclining chair. As usual, they said that wouldn't be a problem. Someone
came by and explained what Stephanie's daily routine would look like at this
facility — breakfast, then physical therapy, then a break, then lunch, followed
by more physical therapy. Then it was dinner time, and Steph ordered a meal off
their menu. So far, it was a hospitalization like any other hospitalization.
When
dinner arrived, it was inedible, which was routine and expected, but Stephanie
hadn't had a genuine meal's worth of food in days. I volunteered to run out and
bring back something she could eat, but Stephanie thought that wouldn't be
politically wise on her first night at this new hospital.
She
might have been right. Nobody says it out loud, but you do have to play some politics
in a hospital setting, and me running out and bring back a restaurant meal to-go
might have earned her a scolding. But I still wonder what would have happened
if I'd driven to Denny's and came back with a meal Steph could eat.
We
talked and watched TV, but after a while I stopped paying attention to the TV, because
Stephanie was saying strange things. She started by saying that she thought the
hospital was trying to poison her, that there was something intentionally toxic
in the food. I took it as kidding at first; just another joke about horrible
hospital food.
But
she stayed on that subject for far longer than it could be considered funny. It
seemed obvious that the lack of food was making Stephanie delusional, so I broke
out some snacks we had packed. We always had snacks at the ready when Steph was
hospitalized, because the food was always a problem, at every hospital.
Stephanie
tried a few different fruits and candies, but she would only hold them in her
mouth, she wouldn't swallow. Meanwhile, the things she was saying became
weirder and weirder — "I don't think I really have kidney failure, they
just like to torture me with dialysis." "Is it too late to have my
leg reattached?" By this time I had already buzzed for a nurse, but it had
been ten minutes with no response.
I
asked Stephanie to wait, and darted out of the room to the nearby nurse's
station. There was nobody there. I looked down the hallway in both directions,
saw nobody. I can't say what time it was, but it was after dark — maybe 9PM,
maybe 1AM.
OK,
I was trying to stay calm, maybe there was just one nurse on duty and she's in
the ladies' room? I found a piece of paper, scribbled "Emergency in room
105", and walked into the empty nurses' station, and left the note
standing up between keys on the station keyboard.
Then
I went back to the room, checked on Stephanie, and she was talking to herself
before I opened the door — talking about a plot to kill her. She was also trying
to get out of her bed, something you and I wouldn't think twice about, but
remember, Steph was a one-legged woman who hadn't yet been taught how to do
anything at all on just one leg. If she tried to get out of bed, she would
topple to the floor. I buzzed again for a nurse; no response.
Stephanie
was still talking about the doctors who were trying to kill her, and still
trying to get out of bed, and I asked her as nicely as I could, using every
line I could think of. "Please, Stephanie, trust me, I won't let anyone
hurt you." "Steph, please please please stay in bed until I can get a
nurse in here." When she promised that she'd stay in bed for five more
minutes, I ran out of that room and down to the nurses' station, but it was
still empty. My note was still on the keyboard. It had been ten minutes since I
left that note, and at least twenty minutes since I'd first buzzed for a nurse.
Hell
with it, I said to myself, and started exploring the hospital, knocking on any
patients' door if there was light coming from inside. "I need a nurse!"
I shouted. "I need a doctor!" This seemed to be a hospital with only
patients in it — no staff. And I couldn't
continue looking for hidden employees; I had to get back to Stephanie.
True
to her word, she was still in bed, but as soon as I entered the room she said,
"Oh good, it's Doug, so now we can escape this place, right?"
"I'd
sure appreciate it if you'd stay in bed a little longer, love." I offered
her some more snacks, and noticed that she'd spit out her earlier fruit. I
buzzed again for a nurse, and then I spotted the room's phone. I picked it up,
dialed '9' for an outside line, and called 9-1-1.
Steph,
meanwhile, was still asking me to help get her into the wheelchair "so we
can escape this place." In my other ear, on the phone, I tried to explain
to a 9-1-1 operator that I needed an ambulance sent to a hospital, which as you
might guess, isn't the way such things usually work. When I somehow convinced 9-1-1
that I wasn't a prank call, they said paramedics were on the way.
Then,
of course, a woman knocked on the door, and came in holding my note. I started
telling her what was going on, but she interrupted, correcting me because I'd called
her a nurse, when she was only a nurse's assistant. "Can you please get us
a nurse?" I said, "Or better yet, a doctor?"
"I'll
be right back," she said, and turned and ran down the hall. She returned
in a few minutes, with an older woman I hoped was a doctor or a nurse, and I again
started to explain. "My wife has hardly eaten anything in a week, and she's
saying crazy things, and I think she's delusional, and we need to get some food
into her." The lady said she was a nurse, but she moved slowly, which I guess
is what you'd want — she can't be panicking like I was. She took Stephanie's
pulse and blood pressure, and said that a doctor had been paged.
Then
the ambulance arrived, which wasn't helpful after all, because our nurse seemed
to be the only medically-trained human in the building, but instead of taking
care of Stephanie, now she was answering the paramedics' questions. The nurse
had, I think, decided that she had the situation under control — spoiler: she
did not have the situation under control — so she sent the paramedics away. I
should've argued more, I think now; back then I just wanted someone to do
something.
Stephanie
was mostly reasonable when the nurse was in the room, but every time the nurse
stepped out and it was just me and Steph, she'd be talking again about escaping
the hospital where they were, she said, trying to kill her. I tried to talk to
her with logic, which was always the best way to approach anything with Steph.
"Where
could we go, Stephanie? I don't even know how we could get you into our car,
but if we escaped this hospital where could we go? We can't go home — there are
steps to climb, and you're in a wheelchair. And if we do go home and somehow
get into the apartment, what do we do when you need to go to the bathroom? Can't
you see, babe, you need to be in a hospital, where they can take care of you,
and teach you how to take care of yourself until you get the prosthetic
leg?"
It
was futile, though. She would agree with the logic, but a few minutes later she'd
forget that she'd agreed, forget the logic, and again ask me to help her escape
the hospital. Meanwhile, the nurse came into and out of the room, but near as I
could ascertain she wasn't doing anything to help Stephanie. I'll say now that
she was of course limited by law in what she could do, but at the time I wasn't
so understanding as I am all these years later. I was rude and angry and demanding
and terrified.
I
remember clearly that one of the things I said was, "It's been a fucking
hour and a half since I buzzed for help in what's obviously an emergency, and
still we have only a nurse and a nurse's assistant. Is there a fucking doctor
in the building?"
And
that's when the nurse explained that, no, there wasn't a doctor in the building
overnight or on weekends, but that a doctor had been paged. Maybe that's
something they should've mentioned before Steph checked in? I mean, we're not
(as the cliché goes) in Bumfuck, Iowa. We're in a big city, in a big building
that at least looks like a hospital. Where are the doctors?
The
nurse restrained Stephanie, literally tied her down so that she could no longer
try to get out of bed, which allowed the nurse to occasionally leave the room. It
was necessary for the nurse to leave the room because, I now understood, she
was the building's entire medical staff for the overnight shift, and she needed
to check on other patients. Stephanie, meanwhile, continued begging me to take
her out of this hospital, but she was mistaken; this clearly wasn't a hospital.
The
doctor on-call finally arrived, perhaps an hour after being paged, more than
two hours after the emergency began. I tried to explain what seemed fairly
obvious to me — that Stephanie was delusional due to a combination of
lack-of-food and the enormous stress of having her leg amputated while she was
still a young woman. I never got a sense of whether the doctor at American
Center agreed or disagreed or had any opinion at all on the matter, but she did
call for an ambulance, and Stephanie was transferred back to University Hospital
in the middle of the night. She had stayed at the American Center for only a
few hours, but they were memorable hours.
Luckily,
they were memorable only to me. After a few days back at the real hospital,
Stephanie barely seemed to remember the American Center adventure at all, and several
times she asked me to explain to her what had happened. That was difficult,
too.
In the next installment,
I'll try telling what happened at UW Hospital — which was only the third stop
in Stephanie's tour of six medical facilities in the aftermath of her amputation.
The whole story was wild, and I'd call it unbelievable if I hadn't been there
at her side to see it all.
I had never before seen Stephanie
actually out of her mind, and I never saw it again, and it certainly isn't
pleasant remembering or describing it. But you know what? As bleak as it got,
through Stephanie's 5+ months of confinement at four different medical
facilities, the one and only time when Stephanie wasn't courageous and smart
and absolutely honest with herself about her situation was that single night of
delusion at the hospital-that-wasn't-a-hospital.
And even when she was delirious in the
middle of the night, she was always polite. She never once cussed at anyone,
and she always listened to what I said, and I could reach her by simply talking
to her. Even at her worst, then, Stephanie wasn't capable of being mean or stupid or rude.
Next
up: Back to UW Hospital.
