Colin & Krystal's Magical Medical Adventure
I was going to write this in the style of
elanya's grad school story, but that would have made this unbearably long to write and to read, so here it is:
On Wednesday afternoon the phone rang here. Mad at myself for forgetting to unplug the phones and thus avoiding the string of phone calls this day last week, I slid out of bed and unplugged the phone from the wall. I slipped back in under the duvet and went back to sleep. A short time later I thought I heard the doorbell ring so I went out to the door and was extremely surprised to see Colin's schoolmate, Donnie, at the door. I told him to come in and wait a minute, I needed my glasses. I came back out and sat on the couch and he told me that Colin cut himself at school and that I should go get the car at the school and meet Colin at the hospital. So I got there and found him pacing back and forth in the suture room, still not sewn up. He explained that he was hand cutting the mortise and tenon joints on the bed he's making for his final project at school. The posts are so large and heavy that he felt it was a waste of time to clamp one down every time he went to shave a bit off with the chisel. He also forgot his instructor's rule about having "both hands on the tool you're usiing." Oh, and temporarily forgot his Dad's words of wisdom, "always cut away from yourself." He said his thumb burst open like a blood filled balloon. Donnie helped him to the sink and Andre came with the first aid kit. Donnie drove Colin to the hospital where Nurse Nazi needed 3 different pairs of scissors and finally some magical solution to get Andre's bandages off.
So we waited and saw a very nice doctor who had a great sense of humour and an equally great laugh. She checked out the thumb and left the room. When she came back she had an envelope in her hand. She said, you have an appointment to see a surgeon in Moncton tomorrow morning at 9am. A nicer nurse came in and changed his bandage, gave him a tetanus shot and sent us on our way.
We stopped at the school to pick up Colin's things and lock them in his locker. We went into the shop and saw the splatter of blood on the table, floor, pile of wood, up the wall, on a cabinet and on the ceiling. I took him home, got cleaned up and went to French class for the last hour. Then I skeedattered back home to pick up some food for my lunch break and went to work. I got home at 6am and changed, packed the car and drove like a mad woman to Miramichi. MaryLee met us in Newcastle where she took us the rest of the way in her car.
We arrived at the Georges Dumont at 10am. The lady at the information desk didn't know where "Ambulatory Care" was, so she sent us to Desk 1 to register. When we got there, another lady was asking the desk for the same doctor we were there to see. She was told to go directly to Desk 2, so we followed her. At Desk 2 they asked if she had registered at Desk 1 for her "papers." Back to Desk 1. We only waited about 5 minutes for 10 numbers (those people at that hospital are FAST!) We showed the Desk 1 lady our envelope of papers from Campbellton, she asked us a lot of questions and made new papers for Colin. We took back his medicare card and all of his papers and went back to Desk 2. The lady there asked Colin, "Peux tu parle Francais?" "No." he said. "English, then?" "Oui," he replied. She stopped for a second and laughed and took all of our papers. We sat and waited in the big waiting room. Then when his name was called, we were brought to another little room where we waiting to see the surgeon. We were moved to the office and talked with the kind, patient man who was going to surgically reattach Colin's tendon so that he wouldn't look like a hitchhiker for the rest of his days. He told us he would operate tonight and that we would get a call with the time.
So we went to the mall where MaryLee and I had lunch and Colin bought himself a toy. We went to Ian and Liz's house in Riverview to hang out. We had supper and at 7pm we still hadn't heard from the hospital so I called the number the doctor had given me. The first lady I talked to accidently hung up on me when she tried to transfer the call. The second person, a man, transferred me to Moncton City because that's where our doctor normally performs surgeries. The third person, a lady told me that "They do this all the time over there." She offered to call the George Dumont back for me. When she came back on the line, she said that they definitely have an appointment time over there for him but she'll have to transfer me to the receptionist who'll transfer me to the OR desk and they can tell me the appointment time. Once I talked to all of these people the OR lady said to come right away. So I read a quick story to Kyle and we booted 'er over to town.
At the emergency room they didn't know what we were talking about so Colin was asked questions by a male nurse and papers were filled out. Then Colin had to go see a female nurse in the triage station who asked the same questions, filled out new papers and took our old papers and walked us ten feet over to another lady who had more questions and even more papers. Colin is now on bracelet number 3. We sat down again.
His name was called and a male nurse showed us to a little room where he asked Colin questions and filled out papers. He told Colin that that bracelet will get him onto all of the rides here. He took all of our papers so far and took us to the "Observation Room" where Colin had to get into a johnny shirt and lie on a stretcher. A different male nurse came over asked questions and filled out papers. They took Colin's temperature, blood pressure and hooked him up with an IV. While we waited here, a manic depressive woman was brought in a couple of stretchers over and was having a nice loud chat with the on call pchyologist. That was VERY interesting and EXTREMELY disturbing!
Finally, at 9:30pm a nurse came down and took us to the OR. They put a funny hat on Colin and we waited to see the surgeon again. He smelled like garlic, I was very glad he'd had supper because I can't imagine fishing for tendons could be an easy job on an empty stomach.
After about an hour the doctor met me in the Day Surgery waiting room and gave me the scoop. We weren't able to take Colin out until 12:30am, but everything went well. He has a plaster cast on for 1 week and a fibreglass cast for 6 weeks and physio for 12 weeks.
We stayed at Ian's overnight and got the boys ready for school in the morning. They were upset that we couldn't stay, but the visit was nice anyway. We had a tour of Ian's new building, stopped at Costco and went on to Miramichi. Had lunch at the market, saw Colin's grandmother, stopped at Dad's store, got Colin in for a haircut and got on the road back to Campbellton. Needless to say, I didn't get much sleep from Wednesday afternoon until Friday night, but thankfully my work told me not to worry about coming in until Monday night, that they'd taken care of the arrangements.
And that's why I haven't updated my livejournal this week.