Hospital visit
Sep. 16th, 2002 02:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cdybedahlThe worst bit is the waiting.
We get here on time, and I help do the check-in thing and I fill in my bit of the papers, feeling a little anxious when the nurse asks if I'm the next of kin and where I'll be during the operation. Where I'll be? Right here, waiting. And it's just a simple cystoscopy, there shouldn't be anything that can go so wrong that I'll be needed urgently, should it? But they want to know, just in case, I suppose. I don't argue, I just answer. And we go to a smaller waiting room further inside the huge hospital, and we wait. A nurse calls for my wife, and we go yet further inside. Not a waiting room this time, but a four-bed hospital room. Two of the other beds are occupied. My wife gets the third one, and a nurse gives my wife an ugly short white hospital gown with STOCKHOLMS LÄNS LANDSTING written on it and some information on what will happen know. The wife knows most of it already, in a Been There Done That kind of way, so it's just the day's specials that are new. Today's special is "One doctor sick, so we're running about an hour and a half late".
Swell.
So we wait. One of the other women is hardly noticeable at all, she just lies in her bed reading. The other one seems to be in a pretty bad state. She throws up a lot into an actually rather cleverly designed disposable plastic thingy that a nurse holds up for her. When she's not throwing up she's panting and moaning from pain. Apparently she'd been given something for it just before we arrived, because the nurse keeps asking her if she feels better yet. After half an hour things aren't better, they're worse, so they give her something stronger and she falls asleep. We both feel relieved for her. While my wife is the one who's got the Been There Done That Got The Medicine Cabinet That Looks Like A Drug Dealer's Wet Dream with the severe pain, I've been on the sidelines enough to get a fair second-hand idea of what it's like. Which boils down to major-league Not Fun.
Eventually the girl's mother shows up and sits by her bed reading. And right now she woke up, and says she's feeling much better. Well, yay! to that. The nurse looks pretty relieved as well, she says she was getting worried. So, good.
The staff here are very nice, by the way. For a hospital, this place (being the gynecological clinic at Huddinge Sjukhus) is very nice. Understaffed, of course, but they really do get a lot out of what they have. Delays are the usual case, but with no margins whatsoever every little thing that doesn't go according to plan whacks the schedule right out. And, well, hospital. Sick people. Usually not a planned sort of thing.
So, again with the waiting. Current estimate is that they should get around to us in forty minutes or so. We'll see. The wife's got her book (but just one, so if this drags on I'll probably have to go buy her another one) and I just got told that it's all right to plug the laptop into the wall socket marked "IMPORTANT EQUIPMENT" above the bed, so I'm all set.
And now they came and got her for the op. Half an hour early. Bit of a surprise, that. So now I don't just get to wait, I get to wait and worry. Big improvement. Not.
Waitwaitwaitwaitwait...
She's back now, about half an hour later, looking quite tired and worn. No conclusive result yet, except that it's not as bad is might have been. Which is something, I guess. She's resting now, while we wait for the nurse to come take out the intravenous drip needle and tell us that we can go home. And they didn't need that next of kin information, which is good. Very good. The less they need that, the better.
We get here on time, and I help do the check-in thing and I fill in my bit of the papers, feeling a little anxious when the nurse asks if I'm the next of kin and where I'll be during the operation. Where I'll be? Right here, waiting. And it's just a simple cystoscopy, there shouldn't be anything that can go so wrong that I'll be needed urgently, should it? But they want to know, just in case, I suppose. I don't argue, I just answer. And we go to a smaller waiting room further inside the huge hospital, and we wait. A nurse calls for my wife, and we go yet further inside. Not a waiting room this time, but a four-bed hospital room. Two of the other beds are occupied. My wife gets the third one, and a nurse gives my wife an ugly short white hospital gown with STOCKHOLMS LÄNS LANDSTING written on it and some information on what will happen know. The wife knows most of it already, in a Been There Done That kind of way, so it's just the day's specials that are new. Today's special is "One doctor sick, so we're running about an hour and a half late".
Swell.
So we wait. One of the other women is hardly noticeable at all, she just lies in her bed reading. The other one seems to be in a pretty bad state. She throws up a lot into an actually rather cleverly designed disposable plastic thingy that a nurse holds up for her. When she's not throwing up she's panting and moaning from pain. Apparently she'd been given something for it just before we arrived, because the nurse keeps asking her if she feels better yet. After half an hour things aren't better, they're worse, so they give her something stronger and she falls asleep. We both feel relieved for her. While my wife is the one who's got the Been There Done That Got The Medicine Cabinet That Looks Like A Drug Dealer's Wet Dream with the severe pain, I've been on the sidelines enough to get a fair second-hand idea of what it's like. Which boils down to major-league Not Fun.
Eventually the girl's mother shows up and sits by her bed reading. And right now she woke up, and says she's feeling much better. Well, yay! to that. The nurse looks pretty relieved as well, she says she was getting worried. So, good.
The staff here are very nice, by the way. For a hospital, this place (being the gynecological clinic at Huddinge Sjukhus) is very nice. Understaffed, of course, but they really do get a lot out of what they have. Delays are the usual case, but with no margins whatsoever every little thing that doesn't go according to plan whacks the schedule right out. And, well, hospital. Sick people. Usually not a planned sort of thing.
So, again with the waiting. Current estimate is that they should get around to us in forty minutes or so. We'll see. The wife's got her book (but just one, so if this drags on I'll probably have to go buy her another one) and I just got told that it's all right to plug the laptop into the wall socket marked "IMPORTANT EQUIPMENT" above the bed, so I'm all set.
And now they came and got her for the op. Half an hour early. Bit of a surprise, that. So now I don't just get to wait, I get to wait and worry. Big improvement. Not.
Waitwaitwaitwaitwait...
She's back now, about half an hour later, looking quite tired and worn. No conclusive result yet, except that it's not as bad is might have been. Which is something, I guess. She's resting now, while we wait for the nurse to come take out the intravenous drip needle and tell us that we can go home. And they didn't need that next of kin information, which is good. Very good. The less they need that, the better.
