Counting down the Days

After the to do a few weeks back about missing PT because I couldn't go without my bandage being changed, we made a compromise. I was willing to wait until 1030 and then I was leaving. That worked out well until today when the regular nurse was out. I finally gave up waiting around 11:20. It kills me to sit here, watching my PT time being eaten up because all I need is someone to slap a gauze pad on my butt.

So I finally left -- oh, but not before becoming the right hand gal for the screamer. She broke her phone charger and was on with the phone tree folks trying to get a new one. She can't press the numbers on the phone and so she kept asking me to do it. I finally took her phone and charged it with my charger. I told her that the head of recreation goes shopping on Fridays and she should tell her what to buy and she'll buy it. The phone people were telling her to go to Radio Shack and she said she can't do that; she's in a hospital and so they told her should could go to Wal-Mart.

Finally she lost it and started screaming GO TO HELL GO TO HELL, something I've often wanted to yell at phone tree people.

Anyway so I went to PT, got my real walker to take home, along with proof of ownership that I'm supposed to show the guard so they know I'm not stealing it. The social worker assured me all is set and that on Friday morning, I sit and wait for Nurse Ratchett to explain all my prescriptions to me. I just hope Nurse R doesn't pull one of her power trips. They want me out by 11. I have the ambulette for 12 noon.

The social worker also told me that I'd have a visiting nurse every day for my wound. That is just plain ridiculous. It really is. Today, when I returned from PT, the "new" nurse who had never seen it said, "this is small and dry"

uh, yeah. You would think my intestines were outside my body. I could actually change it myself. I can do it standing or lying down and reaching around, but I haven't said that. Phiil is trained and I get a visiting nurse for a 2 cm scab. Not to be too graphic, but there was not been one molecule of anything on the gauze pad for more than two weeks. I seem obsessed with this sore because they are. If it were totally up to me, I would have stopped the gauze pad about two weeks ago, but certainly now.

When Phil was getting his training, I asked "when will we know that it no longer needs dressing?" and the answer was like "when it's totally gone." really?

Ob, another sad thing about the screamer. She told me she overheard me saying I'm going to leave some clothes as donations. I have a few tops that are past their prime and I noticed that the rough washing here has put some pinholes in them. She asked if she could have them as she has no clothes here. I told her I thought they would be too big for her and she is 4 feet 11 inches. She has it figured out that she could wear it as a dress. Fine with me. I don't really care, but I don't want to see her in them so I will wait until Friday to give them to her.

It reminds me of this story I read years ago about a woman who donated her favorite plaid wool skirt and she imagined how lovely some poor woman would look in it and how maybe she could wear it to a job interview in it. Then she saw some crazy homeless guy in her skirt... and that's sort of how I feel about these tops. I was donating them so I don't really care who gets them, but that doesn't mean I need to see my donation in action.

I also have this Gideon bible that has followed me from Lennox Hill and I asked the recreation person if she wants it and she was all excited. She gets requests for bibles, and doesn't even put them out in the (pathetic) library (aka a bookcase). So that bible will get a good home and comfort someone.

Right now, I am so hungry I could scream and someone is yelling NURSE, NURSE in a bellow. The curtain is pulled between me and the screamer and she's watching TV. Wow, that's a surprise.