Medical Purgatory

Read Part I here.

I left you last with my having been rushed from my room in the famous and historic orthopedic hospital on the East Side of Manhattan, by a team of men and women in pale blue scrubs, who had been visibly alarmed when I could not identify the word “bird”, or even put together the parts of a coherent sentence.

I was wheeled with startling speed through the hallways, and into an elevator; and from the elevator, in the bowels of the building, through what seemed like back-of-the-house white-painted utilitarian hallways studded with rapidly swinging doors.

These hallways had mysterious dark rooms branching off of them, that seemed to me like the rear hallways and storage areas of hotels or restaurants, where the public does not go.

We turned abruptly into one small, dark room. A new set of people in scrubs asked me what day it was, what year, and where we were. Vaccines: Mythology, I... McCullough MD MPH, Pe... Check Amazon for Pricing.

I felt like this: as if my soul and my consciousness — which I experienced as being the same thing; but separate from my physical brain at that moment — were lost in a thick, dense primeval swamp; and though I understood the questions posed to me by the new people in scrubs perfectly well, the answers were located somewhere I could not reach, though my spirit/consciousness, united with my will, slogged painfully slowly through what felt like waist-deep mud or silt, toward where I knew the answers might be.

“What year is it?” Their voices were urgent, firm, like air traffic controllers trying to avoid a midair collision.

“Two thousand….nineteen?” The new faces around me looked as startled and upset as the previous group of faces had done.

I saw this reaction; and I also heard myself. I bowed my head in shame, and shook my head.

I could not find the actual year. It was gone, or it was in another part of the swamp altogether that I could not reach, or even imagine.

I could not do it.

“We are giving you an MRI!” I believe they said.

Then I was wheeled, faster than I have ever been wheeled before in any hospital, into an MRI room, and rolled carefully onto the belt that drew me into the machine. I was there for what felt like 45 minutes, trying to remain still, as banging and buzzing took place around my helpless mind and body.

I tried to pray, but I did not have the words to pray. When I realized that I could not locate the name of God, or any of the verbs for what I wished to ask of Him, I guess that the closest description of what I did then, was to surrender.

Then — this is blurry — I was out of there, and Brian was next to me. (He told me much later that he had come into my room in the hospital after I had been wheeled off, to find my bed empty, and staff members cleaning the room. “Where is my wife?” he had asked. He said that when they had replied “Talk to the front desk”, none of the staffers had made eye contact. So he had prepared himself to hear that I had passed away).

The people in scrubs near the MRI unit kindly but quickly explained to us that they did not have the facilities for what I needed, and that they were taking me in an ambulance to the hospital next door, which had a neurological ICU.

Then two burly, capable men, with the affect of senior cops or firefighters, appeared; they took over the gurney on which I lay and sped me through the hospital again, in and out of elevators, with Brian racing alongside us. In the elevator, the men said to the passengers, “Sorry, this is an emergency.” They did something to override the elevator buttons that would have otherwise slowed us down.

I saw the people crowded around me — patients on crutches, or with walkers, older and surely sicker than I was — looking down at me kindly, as they assented to this intervention. “Why are these men saying it’s an emergency?” I wondered. “Surely they are not talking about me.”

But I was disabused when we exited the elevator; they drew my gurney out somehow onto an external bay, and rolled me up onto a ramp. I was then in an ambulance. Brian was not allowed in, and he said he would meet us.

The ambulance took me about 100 feet across an open passageway, to the next-door hospital. There I was rolled out, and sped through a building once more. This time it was into hallways that seemed completely different from those of the legendary orthopedic hospital. Forbidden Facts: Gover... de Becker, Gavin Check Amazon for Pricing.

Those spaces had been quiet, peaceful, well-lit, lofty, airy, orderly; these hallways were buzzing with relentless fluorescent lights; busy, almost chaotic, with acid-yellow paint on walls adorned with floral pictures from the early 1990s.

“Why acid yellow?” I randomly thought, as I winced.

We were met by a group of nurses and doctors in scrubs, who seemed confused about what was happening. “I called about this,” said one of the gurney handlers irritably. There had, it seemed, been a shift change, and the information had not transferred.

The group of doctors and nurses quickly resolved the issue, and received me from the two ambulance drivers. There was another MRI, which lasted again for many minutes. A perfectly nice MRI technician — perhaps two? — rolled me from the gurney onto the MRI; this rolling from one surface to another involved rolling me first onto my right side, then onto my left, and then onto my back. Unlike at the orthopedic hospital, these MRI staffers made no allowances for my recently constructed hip. So as I was rolled onto my new right hip, I sought to muffle what would have been cries from the pain.

At this point I had not had a painkiller since about 8 am — it must have been three or four in the afternoon by now — and my hip, from the very bone to the ten-inch surgical incision under two layers of bandages, was starting to throb painfully.

Then I was wheeled into — It is difficult for me even to describe this setting. It was a room in the neuro ICU.

I am sure there were good reasons for my being in that particular room. I don’t mean to criticize unjustly the obviously devoted staff of that hospital, or the arrangements there that may well have saved my brain and — or — kept me alive to tell this story.

All of these things can be true at once; something can be torturous and salutary at the same time.

Maybe this was the only room left. Maybe there were good medical reasons for all of the elements of this room, and my treatment there, that seemed mysterious or humiliating or reckless or dangerous to me. But what transpired in the next 48 hours was so traumatic and excruciating that it is painful for me to revisit the scene of these events, even in memory.

The room was an oppressively-lit yellow box, about twelve feet by fifteen feet. I recall it being illuminated by harsh overhead fluorescent lights. There was no window onto anything — so no air circulation to or from the outside that I could feel; and no view at all; no sunlight.

In the center of the room was a hospital bed; but it could not be raised or made to recline, by the patient. It was positioned with the upper half at a forty-five degree angle at all times, unless the patient called for help in raising or lowering it. There was no task lighting or reading lighting. The patient could not affect the light. So all of this gave the patient in the half-raised, immobilized bed, the helpless role of a scientific specimen pinned under glass.

By now Brian was present. My memory of how my medical situation was explained to us, is blurry; Brian reports that we were in the neuro ICU because the fear was that I had suffered a stroke.

(Everything that follows is to the best of my recollection.)

I was hooked up to an IV unit, with the explanation that my sodium levels were very low. Otherwise, I was under observation for further signs of stroke or of related brain issues; and I spent two and a half days in that room for that purpose. Vaccines, Amen: The Re... Siri, Aaron Check Amazon for Pricing.

I know that this was critically important. Again, my stay in this ICU may well have saved my life, and/or my reason. I just don’t understand why some aspects of this care were so degrading, so difficult, so inhumane. Is it ungrateful to ask these questions?

One issue was that I had no privacy. One whole wall, the wall that separated the room from the busy hallways of the neuro ICU, was made entirely of clear glass panels, and the only privacy possible was from a floor-length curtain that could only be drawn by someone not impaired, across the glass. This was a curtain that a bedbound patient could not in any way reach or control.

On the other side of the glass, no more three feet away from it, the patient could see at all times, the backs of the nurses at the 24 hour nurses’ station.

The patient could hear at all times, shift after shift, 24 hours a day, everything that transpired at the nurses’ station, including incessant monologues in loud voices that carried.

The noise levels just outside soon became an obsession for me. There was no way to sleep through them. Again and again I would ask the very nice nurses looking after me, if we could do anything about the steady stream of very loud discussions of head-bangingly banal subjects, feet from the thin glass partition, that I could no nothing to escape. My primary nurse, an extremely kind and attentive young woman, looked doubtful, and seemed to imply that because these were nurses having these discussions, nothing could be done.

It also meant that though the nurses could eventually go home and sleep, a new shift of loudly talking nurses would arrive, and the bedbound patient could never be free of the noise, in order to get some sleep.

That positioning, and the useless curtain, also meant that anyone approaching the nurses’ station could see into the room — could see the helpless, bed-bound patient — if the curtain was not entirely closed.

Within hours, this curtain and its shortcomings also became an obsession. Staffers entered and left my room dozens of times a day. Though each time I would ask nicely for them to close the curtain all the way on their way out, nine times out of ten they would understandably simply yank at it behind them, but without looking back. They were busy.

Unfortunately, this curtain was configured on its track in such a way that their doing so inevitably left about ten inches by about seven full feet of clear glass, exposing my room from floor to ceiling.

This gap revealed to anyone who passed, or who might wish to peer into the brilliantly lit room, my suffering face; my helpless body now hooked up to an IV unit; and my often half-naked body, revealed in the backless hospital gown that always fell open, as I tried to get off of, or to regain, the steeply pitched hospital bed, in a tornado of agonies as I sought to use the severed muscles and nerves of my newly constructed hip.

The glass wall gap also meant that when I needed to use the toilet, if the curtain was not fully closed, I would be exposed to anyone passing by.

Now comes an issue that to this day I do not understand. I knew from the orthopedic hospital’s thorough preparation of me and Brian for my recovery from that surgery, that I would need (yes, I must discuss very unsexy things now) a raised toilet seat, at first, at home; a plastic shower seat, for safety; a walker, at first, to support me on my new hip; and then eventually, a cane. I knew that I mustn’t squat, at first, ever, more than 45 degrees, let alone to ninety degrees. That would be very dangerous. Dissolving Illusions: ... Bystrianyk, Roman Best Price: $38.50 Buy New $21.60 (as of 11:00 UTC - Details)

If I had those items, I would be safe, at least in terms of my recent orthopedic surgery, and I would be self-sufficient, in the neuro ER. I would be able to use the toilet safely and hygienically by myself, and move safely from the bed to the toilet and back.

But in the neuro ER, all of these items were prohibited to me. It was as if the hospital system in that institution was so compartmentalized, it could deal with my brain very well, but make no provisions at all for the fact that I had had major orthopedic surgery a day and then two days prior.

The toilet, and overall hygiene, situation in my ICU room was very odd. There was no separate bathroom in the room, with an actual door that closed. In that way, this room was unlike any hospital room I have ever experienced.

Rather, in one corner of the room, there was a metal unit with a hand sanitizer dispenser. There was no actual faucet. In place of running water, all you got was hand sanitizer. There was also a very low metal toilet. I am not sure that that toilet, either, was hooked up to running water. (I learned later that such units are manufactured for ICUs that have no dedicated washroom plumbing).

When I first saw the ICU room toilet, I was worried. The seat was so low that it would mean bending my hips at 90 degrees, categorically forbidden by my orthopedic surgeon.

I asked my nurses in the neuro ICU for a raised toilet seat, and for a walker or a cane. But I was forbidden to have these items.

“We don’t have them.”

“Don’t you have other units of this hospital that have this equipment?”

“We can’t take them from other units.”

“Can Brian just run out to CVS and get me these items?”

“No.”

I shared with my nurse that I was worried about how low the toilet unit was. To my astonishment, she pulled the whole unit right out of the wall — it turned out to be on wheels — and dragged it out of the room. In its place, she wheeled a higher-seated toilet apparatus, but one that I was horrified to have to use. It had handles on either side; it was unstable due to the fact that it was on wheels; and it did not flush with water. It was essentially a chamber pot, that simply caught and collected human waste.

This pre-Victorian object would for days be my only toilet, to which I would have to drag myself, if I did not wish to, or did not have time to, call for a nurse. I would have to manage this with no cane or walker, and on this unstable object I would have somehow to maintain strict hygiene, though with access to no soap and no running water.

[I am sorry to be so graphic here. But I did promise you, my readers, as I promised my Maker, the last time I almost died in a hospital, in 2023, that I would write everything honestly that I felt needed to be written, with no regard to my personal ego. So this next section is embarrassing and disgusting, but here goes.]

The metal wall unit had a curved curtain rod around it, which extended just about four inches from the edge of the former, and now the wheeled-in, toilet. Only a curtain hanging from this rod, pulled by the patient around the toilet area, provided any privacy at all. So when the miserable patient used the toilet, the curtain sat across his or her thighs; but his or her legs and feet were exposed to the rest of the room. When the wall curtain was not fully closed, as was the case several times when I was not able to wait for a nurse, I had to use the toilet while humiliatingly exposed in this way, and also while in great pain. The Vaccine-Friendly P... Paul Thomas M.D., Jenn... Best Price: $5.50 Buy New $11.19 (as of 06:55 UTC - Details)

I was absolutely appalled by the entire situation.

For two days, staffers came into my room wearing blue surgical gloves; they would handle the pre-Victorian chamber pot object; the food trays; and the opening of the IV tube into my vein. They would, to be fair, peel off and discard the surgical gloves after handling dirty objects. But this all still repulsed me and worried me.

Maybe they washed their hands with soap and water outside. I certainly hope so. But I never, ever saw them wash their hands in the room.

They couldn’t.

For two days, I felt the surfaces around me — including those of my own body — become less and less hygienic. I don’t mean to gross you out, but this issue is important. I saw that a cleaner came in to mop the floors. But I never saw a cleaner wipe down the other surfaces.

Certainly I was not given a bath of any kind, or the means to wash myself in any way with soap and water. I could not even wash my hands with soap and water after using the toilet.

This situation, as noted, filled me with horror. But also it led to my losing faith in the “science-iness” of the hospital’s policies. Did they not know about kindergarten-level hygiene? Haven’t we lived though years in which everyone understood the importance of regular handwashing with soap and water?

Soon enough I felt a near-desperation to wash my hands, and my entire body, with actual soap and water. But this was forbidden to me. Each time I asked please if I could wash my hands, indeed begged for soap and water, I was pointed to the hand sanitizer. Every time I pleaded to wash myself with soap and water, my nice nurse would tear open a plastic package of some kind and hold out to me a chemical-saturated microfibre fabric. The idea of cleaning myself with such an unhygienic object filled me with primeval disgust.

After one such exchange, while I was again miserably on the toilet, where I each time had to ask for privacy, the nice nurse offered literally to wipe me. “I really don’t want that,” I protested. “I am perfectly able to take care of myself. I just want soap and water.”

“We’re nurses, we are used to it,” she said.

This led to a bizarre moment in which I tried to escape her, moving painfully slowly on my newly-constructed hip, with my hospital gown flapping open as usual behind me, while she pursued me, holding out a warm microfiber chemical “cleaning product.”

She had the best of intentions, but the whole thing was appalling to me, as well as feeling degrading. And the levels of bacteria that I imagined proliferating around me, led me to a state of near-phobia.

I don’t think I was overreacting to the absence of basic hygiene facilities in this room. Sepsis is dramatically on the rise in hospitals; astonishingly, sepsis-related hospital stays have risen by 40 per cent and sepsis cases themselves are up 72%.

As you recall, I nearly died of sepsis from a hospital stay related to appendicitis, in 2023.

And this time around, just three years later almost to the day, I had a ten-inch, recently open surgical wound — a cut that extended from skin to bone, protected just by two thin layers of bandages, along my thigh.

In what felt to me like increasingly filthy conditions, I was terrified of getting sepsis yet again.

So I had this weird conversation more than once with my smart and capable nurse: 1 Body Magnesium Glyci... Check Amazon for Pricing.

“Soap and water are really better, you know?” said I.

She nodded and looked away.

It was disorienting. Was it the 1840s? Had Hungarian obstetrician Ignaz Semmelweiss never lived, to show the importance of handwashing in saving lives? Was it 1853? Were we in Crimea? Had Florence Nightingale, the “mother of nursing”, never done her work, revealing the medical value of cleanliness and hygiene?

Did these people in 2026 in Manhattan really not know about handwashing?

I did not understand why this was happening. During other hospital stays, even if I was bed-bound, I could use a bedpan, which would have been more hygienic than the weird medieval chamber pot; and I had at other times received sponge-baths with actual soap and water.

But none of that was available to me.

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