Musings
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Normal day.
5:45 am. Time for taking blood. 6:00 am blood pressure and temperature. 7:00 nurse arrives and scans your bracelet. Gets your medicines. Administers. 7:30 breakfast lady brings coffee and dry toast, like melba, with jam. Activity levels in halls ratchet up. 8:00 they come remake or change your bed and wash you some. Around 8:30 a gaggle of medical students comes and hears about the cases. PT person comes around this time too. Lunch arrives around 12 – 12:30. Afternoon is more random. More bracelet scans and meds. Coffee break in late afternoon. Dinner comes around 7pm. After dinner more scans and night meds. Ta da. Day is done.
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I contemplated the Italian word for pain, dolore. Or painful, dolorosso. I looked up an ache. Dolore. Hmmm. Seems like they should have that distinction. Fa male means it hurts. Male is the word for bad. Pronounced mah-lay.
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Some people who stood out. Dr. Pain, the first physical therapist. Nurse Ratchet, evil morning nurse who does meds. Sr. Huffinpuff – he does stuff like move beds, bring dinner, move trash bins out, stuff like that. He constantly sighs and pants while doing his work. One blond nurse who was kind and gave me a sleeping pill one night. The nurse who complained I peed too much. Dr. Trinchese, my surgeon. I call him the stealth surgeon. I saw him in the OR and then he did a drive by visit that lasted at most 15 seconds. “Come stai. Bend your leg. Lift your leg. Belissimo” and gone.
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Random thoughts and observations
Full time monks inhabit the hospital, gliding down the hallways.
Bringing your own coffee cup is key.
Bring cutlery.
Some hospitals do not provide toilet paper. I was told I was in a posh hospital because it did provide it.
They move you around in your bed for procedures.
Some nurses are tolerant of my bad Italian, many are not.
In my opinion the food is pretty bad. They try. You get three courses. Not sure if that’s a plus or minus. Bring salt, pepper, olive oil, lemon juice, Tabasco, anything to spice it up. Next time (hopefully a long time off!!) I would not order all the courses each meal. Breakfast is a cup of your favorite drink (not wine) and a packet of dry toast (like Melba) with a container of jam.
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Stay tuned for Part 3.

Much of the following posts about my hospital stay are musings of the experience as well as my documentation of what occurred. Most, I wrote while in the hospital.
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The surgery went well. The hospital is pretty modern. Not a young building but up to date. It is also enormous. A University Hospital. I saw very little of my surgeon. He showed up for the operation. Before surgery they take all your clothes and give you a completely transparent gown! I pulled my blanket up for the ride to the OR. As soon as I arrived they cut it off. What was the point?

Returned to my room. During the operation I had only an epidural. Could not move my legs when the tranqs ran out. The surgeon prescribed a bag of morphine for the first night. Since that there were no opiates to be seen. So my intell was correct. What they gave me was ok but my pain when I tried to exercise was through the roof. I was discussing this with one or Luther’s cousins who is a pharmacist. Opiates are properly used for recovery from surgery and for a short time afterward. As she said, “the pain actually increases the fight/flight hormones and delays healing. Also makes physical therapy a lot harder. I think they were giving prescriptions for too many pills at once and not scrutinizing refills [in the US]….” European mainland countries in general do not give pain meds. They do in the UK.

My PT started the day after surgery. It involved a machine that bent your knee over and over to the most painful angle you could stand. Then leg lifts, toe thrusts, tensing the muscles on the back of your thigh and more flexing. I kinda sat on the side of the bed and stood at a walker for a second. Unfortunately the next day was Sunday and then Monday a holiday so things slowed down. I was unable to lift my leg. It was like the signal wasn’t getting there but with a little help to start I could lift it with much pain. I think this is when some codeine would come in handy 😕 the leg was extremely swollen and I was convinced that had to be a part of the problem. I wanted to learn how to use the crutches. It would give me some freedom in the hospital. That was one of the hardest things, being unable to help myself with anything. I took great pains to keep things from falling on the floor. If they did, they were lost to me. The nursing staff are not there to help you. Sure, they would bring me a bedpan if I asked but one night, I had been instructed to drink water after a shot so I had to pee, three times in around a two hour span. She let me know she didn’t appreciate it and said it was not “normale”. I told her I had had 2 bottles of water. I was no longer trying to be nice.

The other thing was the total lack of privacy. I shared my room with another woman knee replacement patient…and her husband. He literally lived in the hospital with her. He brought a small chaise longue. With blankets and pillows and slept next to her. He was a nice man who occasionally helped me with an ice refill or cranked my bed up or down (no electric bed there!). I noticed other people walking up and down the hall with these beds. They expect family members to come care for the patients. I lived with just visits from Luther but they were invaluable.

I was not ready for the loneliness of not being able to speak to anyone, even to casually chat with the nurse or aide. I discouraged visitors so maybe I must take some blame for the loneliness. Luther visited every day and I know even HE was bored. And he hadn’t been there for 5 days
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Stay tuned for Part 2.

I was told to arrive at noon today. Which I did. But last time here I neglected to take a picture of this directional board with all its colors. There are building depictions on the sides and on the floors everywhere are colored arrrows to help you find your way.

They checked me in with much paperwork. Then I arrived in my room. It is a semi-private room and has a curtain on one side only and is very much like a US hospital. I guess it depends on the hospital. This one has nearly everything. There is toilet paper. At lunch there was plastic cutlery. There is a small shared TV. But tonight for dinner I did not have a spoon for the broth I was allowed. So I used the one I brought. They don’t provide water.

My roommate was in bad pain and I spent the afternoon listening to her cry and her husband calling for nurses. They tried a few different things none of which worked. Finally she got morphine. She’s eating and blabbing on the phone tonight. I hope they manage my pain OK. Now her husband has gotten his lawn chair and cushions and a blanket to spend the night. I had hoped it would not be necessary for me. Crossing my fingers. Poor Luther has no lawn chair.