I sit here, 10th floor just outside the MSICU department with my family... I'll upload a photo later, but basically it's a large waiting room for families who have loved ones in the critical care units. In a lot of ways it reminds me of a jail... You need to phone when you want to enter and they dictate when and how you can visit etc...
My life is changing again... My yesterday was full of tomorrows... What's gonna happen to us? where we gonna be? How we gonna cope with what's going on.... The tears flowed from my eyes as I begged for hugs from my kids and wife. My body quaked.. And my mind spun around at an alarming rate...
No, this wasn't a scene from the latest horror movie the teens all want to see... It was the brutal reality that my mother is very sick, so sick in fact that she is now in ICU and we are not sure what the outcome will be. We are taking it one step at a time... I have not spoken to my mom since Friday night when I said good night to her and asked her to try to get a good sleep so we can decide if we are going to take her back to the doctors or not. I went to bed exhausted from the week and was thinking this weekend we would take the usual step and bring her to Emerg at TGH so that she could be put on IV antibiotics because the oral ones are not doing anything to help her... But as per usual, things didin't go as planned...
I'll explain yesterday in as condensed form as possible...
I woke up at 8:18am realized that my wife was getting ready for work... So as usual I made my way up to my mothers bed room to begin the waking process... The past few days it had been getting difficult to wake her. Extra groggy and generally just not making sense. "Good morning mom, wakey wakey..." No response.... Her hearing has been a bit poor lately so I tried again "Mom, wake up lazy bones..." Grumble grumble was my reply... A nonsense response so I was worried... A few gentle taps on the shoulder and she began to come around she turned and looked at me briefly, as I walked away I said "you rest mamma you had a rough night again." At athat point I went to the timmies to get the women of the house their daily coffee... Extra large double doubles... Also to drive my wife to work... When I returned I once again tried to wake her but she just wouldn't... Just grumbles and moans. I asked her to sit up and she did, but then things started turning sour from there... she was losing consciousness... I could see she was choking on her own sputum and the color of it was horrid... I grabbed a kleenex and asked her to spit into it as I passed the phone to my daughter with 911 already entered but understandably my daughter was too upset to complete the call so with phone in one hand, kleenex in the other and mom slumped over on my arm I spoke in a calm voice to the person on the other end.
"911 - Do you need Police, Fire or Ambulance?" "Ambulance please!", I reply...
I explain that my mom is post transplant by two years and she has been fighting an infection with antibiotics, but that her breating is very shallow and she is slumped over in my arms barely conscious. "She's not answering my questions"
The person on the line is listening to me as I put the dogs in a secure location, she assures me that ambulance is on the way. I ask my mom to make a cough to get the sputum out and a few tries later out comes a blob of bright red goo... I tell the lady on the phone who I can now hear relaying some kind of special code over the radio for "Hurry the HELL UP!" and things get intense, for me... My composure still completly calm in appearance and very put together.... The list goes through my mind... Dogs are away, kids are up.. .Oh wait, my youngest boy is still at his friends from sleepover a few doors down... ok, that's now on my to do list... A few moments later I hear someone open the front door and say hello... "THE DOGS ARE LOCKED UP IT'S SAFE TO COME IN!", I say... "Thanks! Are you in the kitchen?" she says, and I answer promptly "YES!, I am holding my mother. She comes into the bedroom followed by six other people, three fire department members and three other people who I think are paramedics. Things from then on in become a blur to me but I do remember the So2 reading on the meter at 40 and the paramedic saying on her radio "Breathing is shallow, stats critical we are on our way!" Explaining the situation as best as I can to them and trying to remember this and that I am now beginning to fall apart because I realise that my mother is dying at this point... As we are leaving the house with my mom in a restraint she stops me hands on my shoulder and briefly relays the critical nature of this situation, a fact that I already knew. her next question blurs my mind but it is one that I knew the answer too from many conversations with my mother... "Has your mother ever talked to you about her wishes? As far as being recussitated?" (pardon my spelling) I answer confidently, "Yes, she wants full recussitation! She has talked to us many times about this and also about what to do at the appropriate stage in her failures." She repeats to me what I said... "Ok, so your mom wants to be recussitated?" "Yes!" I answer... They rush away but not before she gets one more "I need you to understand that the situation does not look good at this time..."
--------------------------
(I need to return to MSICU right now so I will continue to blog about when we arrived at the hospital later)
___________________
I'm back... had a full day yesterday...
Today, two days later I am sitting in her room... The hospital provides free internet access which is totally amazing for me because I live next to a computer. 24 hours a day 7 days a week I am connected to the internet... It is my security blanket, and the way I communicate with the world...
So to continue with the story... There were no ICU beds available at the Brampton Civic hospital... A situation that I both expect and was happy about... Why happy? Well because, while Brampton civic would try very hard to help my mom.. They in fact saved her life, the nurse who intubated her did a great job at guessing the size of her lungs, and in fact was only out by about 3 percent... AMAZING!, and also life saving because if you guess the size wrong and start inflating too much you can burst the lung... As you can imagine that is a really bad scenario... But it did not happen and I am grateful to them for being right in their educated guess...
So, the Dr explains to me that there are no ICU beds and that they are contacting other hospitals to see which one would be able to take her in... I jump in and tell him that I will call Toronto General where she had the original transplant and make arrangements... So out comes my telephone and I make a call to the switch board since that is the only number I had available...
Well, instantly I am met with resistance when I ask them to have one of the lung transplant team call the Dr at brampton civic... "Sorry sir, but only a doctor can arrange a transfer, I can not help you... Get the doctor to call..." I explain to her that it is the doctor who I talked with and he thought it was a great idea, he even gave me his number and extension and printed his name so that someone could call him back... ER doctors are extremely busy and don't really have time to fuss about with this sort of clerical work... So frustrated, I hang up the phone but not before she lets slip out the name of the on call dr from the transplant team...
FANTASTIC... I get an idea in my head... I make another call.. This time it goes like this...
Switch Board: "Toronto General Hospital, how may I direct your call?"
Me: "Good morning, I am calling from the Brampton Civic Hospital, I need to have Dr _____ paged to the following number my name is Dr ________"
Switch Board: "Would you like to hold while I transfer you or do you still want Dr ______ Paged?"
Me: "Please page them for me thank you."
Switch Board: "OK Dr, I have paged Dr _____ to the number you provided, is there anything else I can help you with?"
Me: "No, thank you that is all..."
And I hang up... WOO HOO within 5 minutes The Brampton Dr got a call from the Toronto Dr and they arrange the transfer to the Toronto General Hospital... This I also consider a move that was critical in her care... After all, everything about my mom and her transplant including the actual size of the lungs in her chest is documented here...
No comments:
Post a Comment