Supported By Spirit – Part 2

Continued from Supported By Spirit – Part 1

I had arrived at the hospital on a Friday night. My foot operation was on Saturday afternoon. However, the shoulder surgery was so complicated that it had to wait until the specialist returned from a weekend conference late that Sunday. Luckily, he was able to save two of the four shattered pieces and I was given a metal prosthesis.

I had never been in a hospital before, except to visit family and friends, so I had no idea what to expect. I assumed that my bones would heal quickly and that I would be back to work, travelling coast-to-coast, in eight weeks. Little did I know that I would remain in the first hospital for three weeks and then transfer to a second hospital, halfway across the country, in my own city, for over two weeks. I certainly didn’t expect to live in a nursing home for an additional three months, before being discharged for 46 weeks of grueling physiotherapy.

Sometimes in tragedy we find our life’s purpose — the eye sheds a tear to find its focus ~Robert Brault

The transfer between cities was devastating. Before my discharge was formalized, the hospital transition co-ordinator had left for the long weekend, so no-one was available to arrange all the special medical flight details. A last-minute flight had been booked by my company’s head office, however, they didn’t indicate that it was a medical flight, so I was delayed at check-in while the airline communicated with their doctors to get flight approval.

At this point, I had not been out of bed for three weeks, other than to pivot to a wheelchair, so being transported to the airport by ambulance and loaded onto the plane in a forklift-type vehicle was a painful and frightening experience. Even the vibration as the plane taxied for takeoff was excruciating.

When we landed in my city, there was no ambulance waiting for me, so I was stranded for three hours, trying to find a way to get to a specific hospital. Ambulances called to the airport will transport patients only to the nearest hospital. When I called the hospital’s emergency department and indicated that I had transfer papers for admission, I was told not to come to the hospital, because my surgery had occurred three weeks beforehand, so I was no longer an emergency patient.

At long last, a friend drove me in her little car and I was admitted immediately. As it turned out, the triage nurse explained that I could have come in to emergency as a heart patient, because my blood pressure at that time was 198/92. It should be 120/80!

The hospital was overcrowded, due to the long weekend, so I slept in a hallway the first night and was moved to the kidney ward as a last resort on the following day. In my room were two palliative patients who were on the verge of passing to Spirit.

Adversity is like a strong wind. It tears away from us all but the things that cannot be torn, so that we see ourselves as we really are ~ Arthur Golden

The nurses weren’t used to anyone who could speak or ring a call bell from that room, and I found that they were often too busy to come to my room in a timely manner. I managed to commandeer a wheelchair that was left against the wall near my bed, and I used my previous pivoting expertise to get out of bed and over to the bathroom on my own.

During this most difficult time, I did call the nurses whenever either of my elderly roommates was in great distress. After a week or two, these beautiful women each passed to Spirit. Both families returned to the hospital to thank me for my help. They didn’t realize that I had been able to draw Spirit forward to send love and light to their mothers. They had no idea that I was working with Spirit to ease their mothers’ passing.

Although I was placed in the kidney wing, because there was no room elsewhere in the hospital, it turned out that I was in the right place at the right time in order to help ease two transitions. Upon reflection, I had part of the answer as to why I had experienced such a devastating accident.

The rest of the answer was yet to come!

Continue to Supported By Spirit – Part 3