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I don’t remember much about the procedure because by 1am I was well passed my bedtime and pretty much slept through the entire thing. After that I was admitted to ICU because apparently I was in pretty poor health. Looking back, my stay in the ICU was quite adventurous…and humourous for that matter. Anyone that has ever been in the ICU and was conscious will surely appreciate this part of the story…I think! I remember being hooked up to a bunch of wires and monitors which made sleeping very difficult. Little did I know that they were the least of my worries while trying to get some sleep! I kid you not, every 15 – 30 minutes the nurse would come to see how I was doing and how things were. She also had the nerve to ask if I had gotten any sleep every time she came in. At one point I made a comment about how was I supposed to be able to get any sleep when she kept coming in and asking me if I had gotten any sleep. She mentioned it was her job to come in regularly to check on me and said that they rarely have someone in ICU that was actually conscious.
Then there’s the whole washroom thing. While in ICU I remembered a story that a friend I worked with had told me about when he was in the hospital and they kept asking him if he had urinated. Eventually they threatened him with a catheter and apparently he had no problems after that. I wanted to test this theory…yes, I have a warped sense of humour! So the nurse asked me a number of times if I had gone to the washroom and each time I said no, even though I really had to go! She hung one of those pee cup thingies on the side of my bed, remember…hung, not placed on a table because there wasn’t one. Sure enough after a number of times asking me if I had gone, she told me that if I didn’t go they would need to use a catheter. I told her not to worry and that I would take care of it. Well here is where the problem began; it was easy to get the pee cup thingy off the bed rail when empty however putting it back once it was full turned out to be no small feat. I couldn’t get out of bed and could barely move with all of the wires plugged in and unfortunately while trying to place the pee cup thingy back on the railing guess what happened? Yep, you guessed it, I dropped it. Plunk, splash…”DOH”, that’s definitely bad. Well the nurse heard it hit the ground and she was in there in no time cleaning it up and not complaining. Actually she seemed more than happy to be cleaning up the mess. Weird!
Anyway, by Monday I was kicked out of ICU…I wonder why, and was moved to a general ward where I shared the bed with another fellow inmate, uh…patient. Actually I didn’t share the bed…I shared the room, thankfully! You know the health care system is in trouble if and when that starts happening. I was able to get the window seat which was always my favorite. By Monday afternoon, 3 days after I had ended up in ICU, I had received 9 blood transfusions, which by the way if you have never had a transfusion, turns you into the Stay Puffed Marshmallow Man! Because of the procedure that I had, I was only allowed to have liquids for the first couple of days and after that I graduated to soft foods. Remember this is a hospital so soft food does not include peanut butter, twinkies or anything like that. What it does include is things like milk in jello form…I am dead serious, and some other stuff in jello form. Needless to say I decided to go hungry and didn’t even touch it! I did have a major craving for pizza which was satisfied later in the week although my doctor was not aware of it. If you don’t say anything, I won’t! I also had some other friends that brought East Side Mario’s one night.
I ended up staying in the hospital for 11 days and was off work for 2 weeks. At the time I had no vacation or sick time left over for work, but they paid me anyway. Yet another blessing from God…and that would happen many times afterwards with my employer at the time. While in the hospital I came to another realization and that was that I no longer could work flip flop shift work for sure but I also wondered if working the straight night shift may have actually caused more problems than solutions. Well, it was quite amazing, while I was in the hospital the worker that had worked straight days opposite to me since the spring had left the company which ultimately left a straight day shift open until they found a replacement. Another God moment…
Once I returned to work I was able to stay on a straight day shift until they filled the position, which wasn’t until November 2004. During that time I realized that it was extremely important to my health to stay on straight days somehow. I was actually prepared step down from my position at the time and leave the department in order to get straight days. This also would have meant a huge pay cut, but to me, my health was more important than a big paycheque. Alas, God was still looking out for me. Once they filled the day position I had been doing since September, another position opened up within the same department that was straight days, Monday – Friday. It still meant a significant cut in pay, but they kept me at a higher wage than what the position normally would pay. This also meant that I did not have to leave the department. As the Fall went on I knew that working days was helping to keep me as healthy as possible, however as December approached I had a deep sense that it was only a matter of maybe 6 months before I would be unable to work full time hours at the rate my health was deteriorating.