Hospital Tales to make you Laugh, Cry and Rant! Omniher

Well hello all, its good to be back!  Thank you for all of your kind thoughts and wishes over the last week.

As the Twitterati will know, this blog has been neglected due to my recent hospital stay, but I am home now and have so much to share with you from the past couple of weeks!  Our date with the odd couple the day before I was admitted, progressions in the Miss Lovely saga...  But I thought I'd start with a random collection of hospital anecdotes, some funny and some seriously rant-worthy.  Enjoy!



Without going into the whole history, in intense pain I went to the Royal Melbourne Hospital Emergency Department in the wee hours of last Sunday morning.  After a long wait, I finally saw a doctor who barely examined me, decided it was probably not meningitis and advised me to see my GP whenever was convenient.  Of course, when I finally did see my GP that afternoon, she was like the Monopoly go to jail card "Go to hospital.  Go directly to St. Vincent's, do not pass go, do not collect $200."  And this is how I ended up at St. Vincent's Public Hospital.

Isn't that a bit of a conundrum?  A Catholic public hospital?  Anyway, I don't have private health insurance and there was no way I was going back to RMH so St. Vinnies it was.  The staff in emergency were amazing - I was in a bed within about 15 minutes, surrounded by the most onto it and caring medical staff one could wish for.  Long story short, I didn't leave for eight days - turns out my left kidney was covered in clumps of tiny abscesses.  Thanks RMH!

So first for a funny tale...  In the early stages in Emergency, obviously the doctors wanted to rule out all possibilities - this included all kinds of STIs etc.  While I was fairly sure I was fine, and Omnihim's most recent tests of about a month ago were totally clear, I was still getting to the point of being about due for another bout of testing so there's always that little niggling fear.  I was having dozens of blood tests a day, and I have to say that these were probably the least of my worries - I wanted to know what was wrong with me!  But when my team of doctors came round for their ward duties a few days later, they obviously thought that my sexual health was what I was worried about when I asked for the hundredth time if anything had come up on my bloodwork.

The one we called Sweater-vest (due to his penchant for said item of clothing) was quick to assure me that everything was clear and I did not need to worry about HIV, Hep C, and so on and so on.  Fine, but what I really wanted to know about was my possible infections...  I thought nothing more of it.

A few hours later, the kinda cute young intern comes to my room looking incredibly nervous.  He fumbles with the curtains as he's pulling them shut and seems barely able to control his clipboard and the file he's holding.  He stutters and mumbles a little before blurting out:

"You know how we told you this morning that your HIV test had come back negative?  Well, I just wanted to let you know that we didn't actually have the results back yet when we spoke to you this morning.  "

Holy fuck!!  My mind is reeling!  The emotional side is freaking out, OMG, I have HIV?  Nooooooo!  How could this happen?!  How is it even possible?  It is so rare to contract via vaginal intercourse, I can't even remember the last time I had anal with anyone other than Omnihim, I don't use IV drugs...  My practical side is like ok, who have I fucked recently, how do I get in touch with them, what's this going to mean in terms of my sex life, my life etc etc...

"But I do have your results back now..."

Yes?!?!  And?!?  Just give me the bad news dammit!

"You're clear.  It's all fine."

Oh.  My.  Freaking.  Lord!  What was even the point of all that??  Why even bother coming to tell me that?  I mean, I appreciate the thoroughness, but really?  Was it worth giving me a heart attack?  Anyway, all's well that ends well I guess!


Another little lol came when Miss Lovely was spending the day with me on Friday...  As she was ducking out to grab a coffee she bent over to give me a big cuddle and a bit of a smooch.  Unbeknown to us, the elderly husband of my room mate opposite had arrived and sat down.  Up to this point he had seen me first spending an afternoon with a very gay friend of ours (who I think he assumed was my partner), Mr O (who I guess he then realised was my partner), numerous friends (many of whom are more than just friends and thus received slightly more than the average length hello/goodbye hugs), and now finally he sees me kissing my leading lady...  The look on his face was absolutely priceless!  Just wish I could have found out what he was thinking!


And here comes the rant.  As I said, I was in a public hospital (i.e. being paid for by the Government via my Medicare card) which was also a Catholic hospital.  When I first arrived in Emergency I was asked what medications I was taking, and obviously the contraceptive pill came up.  No issues from the doctors, they wrote it up in my notes and carried on.  I didn't think any more of it until the next morning when my (lovely) nurse came in to my room, obviously embarrassed and apologising profusely; he had attempted to have it dispensed from the pharmacy as per the doctors' notes and prescriptions and had been informed by the pharmacy that they do not carry or dispense any brand of contraceptive pill as it is a Catholic hospital and against the religion.

 I went through the same thing with my ward nurse the next morning, she too had gone to the pharmacy to try to get it dispensed and been told the same thing.  Both nurses seemed very embarrassed to have to tell me this and neither seemed to have been put in the situation before.  I was told by both that I was more than welcome to bring in my own pills from home, and they would happily dispense them along with my other medications for the duration of my stay.  As I was due to start my sugar pills anyway and Mr O wouldn't have been able to get home and back in time for me not to miss a day (not that he wanted to leave me at all!), I chose to deal with a period on top of everything else - it just seemed easier.

Every time I had a new nurse reading through my notes there was this uncomfortable moment where they'd stutter and mumble and ask what was happening with my contraceptive that obviously wasn't being dispensed.

So here's what I don't get.  This is a public hospital, paid for by my taxes and your taxes.  How the fuck do they get away with denying me a legal medication?  What if I was taking it for reasons other than contraception?  And how come a public hospital can be a Catholic hospital at the same time?  And what REALLY confuses me is how their own doctors can prescribe a medication only to have it denied by the pharmacy?  Not that it makes sense on any level, but you'd think if it was really hospital policy not to prescribe contraceptives, the doctors might not have prescribed them?

And if that wasn't enough...  That first night in Emergency, I was sent for x-rays and an ultrasound to check out my innards and see if there was anything to see that might shed some light on why I was so ill.  In the x-ray room, the thing the technician was most concerned about was the fact that I could possibly be pregnant.  I informed her that I was on the pill, my last period was normal and I had no reason to suspect I was with child but that was not enough - she had to call the lab to see if they'd processed my pregnancy test yet.  They hadn't, and the only way I could convince her to do the x-ray was to insist that if I somehow was pregnant I wouldn't be keeping the foetus anyway.  Seriously, my life was potentially in grave danger and they were more concerned about the life of my improbable foetus?  Really?!

It doesn't end there.  A few days later, they finally send me in for a CT scan as the ultrasound hadn't shown enough conclusive evidence re what was wrong.  It was only then that the doctor admitted that the only reason they hadn't sent me in for one before was that too many can damage the ovaries, so with young women they generally try to stick to ultrasounds unless they have to get a closer look.  Now I do happen to want to breed one day, but what if I didn't?  What happened to informed consent?  What if my desire to live, and get better faster and find out what was wrong was greater than my desire to breed?  But I didn't get that choice, they made the decision for me.  Because obviously, as a woman, my role is to breed and you can't do anything to jeopardise that.

Don't forget, this is in a public hospital.  Gah!


Finally, a little sad story.  Being in the one room of four beds for seven days I saw many people come and go.  They were all a minimum of 40-50 years older than me and all of them were annoying in their different ways.  I poked fun here and there, but apart from the one super crazy dude who spent the day yelling in the bed next to me (I kid you not, he did not stop.  He yelled at various levels for about 14 hours straight and required an orderly with him at all times to stop him escaping) they were all ok.  Late the other night, Lorna - my diagonal room mate - was moved out, I kind of assumed she was going to intensive care as she was pretty ill.  The next day her daughter came back to the room to inform us that she had been moved to a private room and had passed away that afternoon. 

It was sad and weird and almost a little creepy to have been that close to death.  I have had relatives who have passed away, I've seen their open caskets at funerals, but to be lying in a hospital next to someone and for them to just go like that...  Well, it was not something I was expecting.  And then to see the flowers that had been next to her bed sitting next to the nurses' station in the hall, see what I'm fairly certain was her bed stripped and desolate next to the ice machine...  I felt, well, I'm still not really sure what I felt.  It was just really really weird.

My thoughts go out to her family wherever they are - I'm so glad she is no longer suffering.

Well, there's my week at the hospital, next up, back to our scheduled sexy stuff!! 

Omniher xx