In Intensive Care the nurses answered their pages promptly, there was always a glass of ice water within reach, the ward was bright, clean, well staffed, and well organized. Late Wednesday afternoon I moved down the hall, around the corner, into a regular ward, and it was as if I had moved to a different hospital. In one way I was lucky, although I couldn't move into it yet I had been given a bed in a room. There were several other people that weren't so lucky. One girl was in the corridor just outside my room and she had been there for 2 days. When my mother saw all the beds, wheelchairs, gurneys, laundry racks, and equipment carts that were parked willy nilly all over the hallway she was horrified. She wondered aloud about the fire department and blocked emergency exits among other things. The whole wing looked old and worn, was in desperate need of a coat of paint, fresh ceiling tiles, and the bathroom in my room had it's door taped shut with a sign on the door. I couldn't do an exact translation of the sign but it was clear that the bathroom was contaminated and could not be used. I asked my nurse about it and he was surprised to see the sign, even though it had obviously been there for some time. He said he was pretty sure the room had been cleaned and the sign no longer applied. I never would have thought I would prefer to be in intensive care rather than a regular ward.
I was given dinner in the hall, and it was another meal I couldn't swallow. My sister took the dried up wizened slice of turkey, sliced and tore it to shreds, mixed it with some gravy she fetched from the cafeteria, and I could still barely choke any of it down.
There was one bright spot. The only time I'd been out of a bed for the last 3 days was when they moved me into the lazyboy in intensive care. I moved from the bed, to the chair beside it, and back, twice. That was the only time I had been on my feet since the accident. On the ward the nurse told me of course I could get up and walk around. Suddenly my world had expanded. I was allowed to get around under my own power and I took full advantage of it. As soon as my mother and sister left I was up and motoring down the hall at a slow shuffle. I spent the next couple of hours going from my room at one end of the hospital, down to the maternity ward at the other end.
I finally went to bed, they dosed me with some morphine, put up the side rail on the bed locking me into my cage, and I was out like a light. Until the morphine wore off. Which is when I woke up with my throat parched and dying of thirst. When the side rail of the bed had been put up the nurse moved the bed table with my water on it out of reach. I had no choice but to ring for a nurse. When she hustled in about 10 minutes later and I told her I needed water, she pointed to the inaccessible glass, turned on her heel, and left. I rang again, eventually she returned, and I told her I couldn't reach the glass. She rolled the table closer, not close enough for me to reach but closer, and was gone. I rang a third time. By now she was getting a little impatient. When I told her I still couldn't reach it, she picked it up, held the straw to my mouth, let me take a sip, and when I paused to take a breath, she returned it to the table out of reach, and left. Deciding I hadn't survived a god damned plane crash to die of dehydration in hospital, I started to climb over the rail. This probably wouldn't have been easy for a healthy person but in my state it was damn near impossible. I must have made quite a racket because the nurse and her supervisor showed up on the run. As they began to wrestle me off my precarious position on top of the rail I told them that I needed to go to the bathroom. When one of them reach for a pee jug I shook my head and pointed at the bathroom door with the contaminated sign on it. They went along with that, and lowered the rail to allow me out of the bed. As soon as their backs were turned I mad a beeline for my water glass. When I got back into bed I left my legs dangling off the side so they couldn't sneak back in and put the railing back up without waking me, and was able to prevent them from locking me back in the bed.
But even with my thirst satisfied, and pumped full of morphine, it was difficult to sleep. Between the whiplash and the neck brace, there simply was no comfortable position to be in. And my roommate, an old Italian gentleman who had fallen off a ladder several stories up, talked loudly in his sleep all night. When I arrived in the room his wife said he spoke no English, only Italian, but he must have been holding out on her as all night long he babbled away in perfect English. None of it made any sense, but the grammar and sentence structure were actually quite good. I still don't know if his sudden command of English was a side effect of his morphine on him, or my morphine on me. I spent the rest of the night dozing and roaming the halls.
Thursday morning the parade of interns, residents, neurologists, medical students, dietitians, nutritionists, physiotherapists, psychologists, and more specialists than I can even begin to remember began in earnest. They would march in one at a time, introduce themselves, and rattle off a barrage of questions as they ticked off boxes on their questionnaires. Not a single one of them imparted a shred of useful information to me, they were all merely interested in completing their paperwork as quickly as possible and getting on to the next guy.
I had finally gotten hold of my cell phone so I spent the afternoon shuffling around exploring the hospital, using one hand to hold the gown closed and the other to hold my phone to my ear. Aside from the pain in my shoulders that was worsened by holding the phone to my head, the damn cervical collar kept getting in the way. So I wedged the phone inside the collar, turning it into my own version of a hands free device. I got lots of smiles from staff and patients alike as I wandered around. I had a chance encounter with one of my doctors and he was surprised to learn that I hadn't been able to eat any of the hospital food. That conversation returned to haunt me the next day.
Thursday night Kim came to visit bearing gifts of protein drinks and chocolate bars, and while she was there Michel Lemay also dropped in to visit. Matt had finally been returned to Ottawa, and Kim had come to check on me before she went home. We had a much needed laugh as she told me how Matt had down played the seriousness of the accident so much during his initial phone call to her that she thought she was just driving down to pick us up and return us home while the plane had some dents hammered out. Imagine her shock when she found Matt in a hallway with a broken back and me gone to another hospital for major surgery. Sorry Kim, Matt and I discussed it before I was taken away and we decided it wouldn't be a good idea to have you all stressed out driving down to Montreal. It may have been a better idea to give you a little more info.
Thursday night I spent alternately napping when I was dosed with morphine, and wandering the halls when I awoke in pain. A couple of times the nurses sent the security guards to track me down and tell me to return to the ward and check in with them. Finally one of them told me to carry my cell phone and he simply called if he felt I'd been gone too long. My roommate's English seemed to be deteriorating, I don't know if that's because his morphine dose was being lowered or if it's because mine was. After I had returned home John told me stories of watching talking cows passing through his hospital room in Kingston after his accident while he was taking morphine, so anything is possible.
Despite my lack of sleep I arose early Friday morning energized and ready to tackle the day. I found towels, washcloths, a washbasin, and armed with a bar of soap I headed into the toxic bathroom to clean myself up. I scrubbed down one side of the bathtub with my good arm to have a place to sit, and very slowly and carefully, washed as much of myself as I could. It wasn't much, you try washing yourself with a collar on, and one arm barely working, all the while terrified you might slip and fall in the tub, thereby finishing the job the crash had begun. You will be surprised at all the places you can't reach.
As soon as I was done, I dressed myself in real clothes, not the hospital gown I had been using my bad arm to hold closed in my travels, and headed off to the cafeteria. In my head I was singing
"Food, glorious food!" from the movie Oliver as I went down the hall. When I entered the cafeteria and smelled the bacon and eggs, fresh coffee, french toast, pastries, and soup bar, I almost choked on the wave of saliva that suddenly washed into my mouth.
This is where they'd been hiding all the
real food! They'd kept it for the paying customers and staff, and away from all the sick people. The difference between what I had been given for the last 4 days and what I found before me in that cafeteria were as different as pig swill and food fit for the Queen. I loaded up a tray with more nourishment that I had gotten all week and carefully made my way to the outdoor deck. It took me almost an hour to consume it all. There was a large mound of scrambled eggs, bacon that I chewed tiny pieces of for several minutes before washing them down with spoonfuls of soup, and toast! Real Toast!!!! Not those dried out carbonized chunks of wood that had been arriving every morning on my tray, but real toast made from real bread, in different flavors!!!! WITH BUTTER!! Each morsel was a struggle to swallow with my still badly swollen throat, but I felt better and better with each tiny mouthful. And the coffee!!! I had gotten myself a huge cup of French Vanilla Cappuccino. I was positively giddy as I sipped the first coffee I'd had since Sunday morning.
"If you don't think the dead can come back to life, you should be here at quitting time."
When I returned to the room I discovered that my absence had caused the whole daily parade to become backed up. People were literally lined up to see me, and it was then I was informed that as long as all the various experts signed off on me I would be released that day. Out came the clipboards and all the questionnaires as everybody hustled to get their paperwork done so I could leave, but more importantly, so
they could leave - after all, it was Friday.
The only person who actually seemed to listen to my answers was the young resident who had been assigned to me. He was mainly concerned with whether or not my digestive tract was functioning properly. The nurses had noted down that I was able to pee on my own, but he still had to confirm one more thing. "Have you had a bowel movement?"
"Yes" I replied.
"Who saw it?" he asked.
"Uhhhh, are you asking if somebody
watched me taking a dump?"
"Yes, that would be ideal!" he said, way too interested in the possibility that someone may have been fortunate enough to witness something that I consider to be a very private act. I don't even talk about things like that with Stewie, as much as he'd like to know. "Well then, did you show anybody the result before you flushed the toilet?"
"Nnnoooo.... it didn't seem anything to be particularly proud of."
"Did you take a picture?"
Now, I know that it's often been said that skydivers take pictures of
everything, but there is a line somewhere, and that was beyond it. The young man was simply being diligent about doing his job and ensuring that all my systems were functioning before he signed off on my release. He proceeded to question me thoroughly for several minutes on volume, color, shape, consistency, and time required before he finally ticked off the box on his form that said "Can wipe his own ass." Might not mean much to most people, but no doubt Diane was greatly relieved at the news as she figured that was one of the things she was going to have to take care of for me when she got to town.
The only hoop left to jump through was getting signed off by the physiotherapist. For that I had to go see her. I was given a wheelchair and told to use it to get there, along with a little sketch of how to find the place. I knew exactly where it was, one floor up, around the corner, and down the hall, I had wandered past it several times in the last couple of days. "It's really not necessary to waste somebody's time pushing me there, I'll just walk." I told the nurse.
"Oh no, you can't do that." she said. "You're not supposed to be walking until she says you can. Just wheel yourself there." I briefly considered pointing out that I'd been strolling all over the hospital for the last day and a half, and that if I tried to wheel the thing myself with just one good arm I'd spend the rest of the afternoon going around in circles in the hall. Instead I did what I did anytime I was dealing with a particularly dense customer. I nodded, smiled, and agreed. "Besides, the wheelchair belongs to the physio department, and they'll want it back." More nodding and smiling.
As soon as she was out of sight I grabbed the thing and started pushing it down the hall. Because I had it to help balance me I threw caution to the wind and was able to get up to a pretty good clip. Arriving at the physio department a couple of minutes later, I left it with the rest of the chairs lined up in the hall.
When I found my physiotherapist I stood talking to her in front of her desk for a couple of minutes before she suddenly straightened up, looked around, and demanded "Where's your wheelchair?"
"I left it in the hall."
"You mean you walked in here?"
"In here? Actually I walked all the way here, pushing the thing."
She was horrified that I had begun to walk without her having checked off the appropriate boxes on her forms, and when she questioned me and realized that I'd been roaming the entire hospital, she proceeded to chastise me, listing all the things that could have gone wrong. As she talked I noticed the rest of the therapists whispering and giggling as they listened to our conversation. "Fine. I'll sign you off as being able to walk, but you'll still have to show me you can climb stairs." she said, pointing to a contraption in the corner consisting of a step up, a platform, and a step down, with handrails on either side.
"Those aren't stairs. The stairs outside that door going up to the nephrology lab,
that's a set of stairs.
"How do
you know where that staircase goes?"
"Because I went up and down them a few times last night when I got lost."
That's when her co-workers burst into laughter and explained to her that I was "That Guy, the one security was looking for all night." It doesn't seem to matter where I am, I'm always "That Guy". Nonetheless, she proceeded to make me go up and down the silly little steps a few times to demonstrate my ability before she ticked off the last box, and suddenly I was free man.
The plan was for me to be taken back to Ottawa in an ambulance, but the doctor who had done my surgery had left for the weekend and without his signature the ambulance service wouldn't take me. So I called Mark Hugget. He'd had no warning to expect a call, but he immediately agreed to drop what he was doing, leave work, and come from Ottawa to fetch me back home. Hours later, as we approached Ottawa on highway 417, we decided that rather than take me straight home, we'd go visit Mathieu at the Civic Hospital. We arrived just as he was being released, and so it was that I got to push his wheelchair out to the parking lot.
We'd started this trip together, we finished it together.
The next night Diane arrived to spend a week and a half helping me do everything from dressing and bathing to doing my laundry, and serving as my own personal chauffeur.
Before she left Diane found a picture on the internet of a giraffe with a broken neck. He has two, ninety degree bends below his head. And he's still smiling. She printed off numerous copies with various different captions, and taped them up all about the house for me to find after she left. The one on the vacuum cleaner said "No chores for six weeks!". The one on the bucket of Miracle Gro rose food was "Sit down, and relax!". There were more, and I probably still haven't found them all.
I've been receiving regular phone calls and emails expressing sympathy, support, and advice from people scattered all over North America. One phone call stands out from all the rest. A week after I returned home from the hospital I got a call from the guy in California named Dan I mentioned earlier. We spent a lot of time comparing injuries, and it was wonderful to hear words of encouragement and advice from someone who knew exactly what I was going through. "
Never take the advice of someone who has not had your kind of trouble ." Sidney L Harris
It's now been six weeks and three days since we hobbled away from the wreck. While my left arm and shoulder are still weak, I continue to slowly improve, and can handle day to day tasks without assistance. A few days ago Matt and I both saw our Orthopedic surgeon. Matt has been sentenced to another six weeks in his brace, is still restricted in what physical activities he is allowed to do, and won't be returning to work flying helicopters for at least 3 months. His wrist had also been bothering him since the crash, and it was finally discovered that the reason it's sore is because it's broken. I have been liberated from my neck brace, told to refrain from contact sports, swimming, and skydiving. I have been given permission to drive, to use my bicycle, and, after many questions about exactly what my body position is while I'm using it, I was given the OK to ride that shiny red and black bullet in the garage that has been calling my name for the last six weeks. I spent several hours yesterday tearing all over town, and I'm heading out tonight with the fast crowd to find the twistiest, hopefully cop-free road we can. When I checked to make sure that I could wear my helmet I found a picture of a smiling giraffe inside, the caption read " Have a great ride! Be careful in the corners!"
This story isn't over yet, Matt and I both have months left before everything returns to what passes for normal in our lives. I often think about all those doctors that paraded through my room telling me how lucky I was, and how close things came to turning out very differently. Every time I look back on it I think of how close we came to being killed or permanently disabled. I've always been lucky, I've always come out of that manure pile smelling like a rose. I'm turning 53 this year, I'm not sure how much longer my luck will continue to hold. Perhaps it would be best for my future if I made a serious effort to stop falling into manure piles.
