Losing Patients and Broken MRIs

Written by: Bob Rehak
Edited by: Sharon Estill
Joboja Staff Writers

It’s been a little more than three weeks since my gall bladder was sent to a landfill, or put down a drain, or made into a leather purse, or whatever it is they do with those things. (What do they do with the organs they take out of your body? On TV they just put the organ in a shiny silver pan and hand it to the extra playing a nurse, but never show where it goes from there. It has to go somewhere, right?).

I’m slowly returning to normal, meaning that my frustration level with work is returning and I’m slowly getting over several traumas. I’m recovering from sitting at home during the day and realizing that I never want to be a shut-in, because there is absolutely NOTHING on television during the day. Even Drew Carey seems bored with The Price Is Right. I couldn’t watch any soap operas, either, although I’m sure I could have picked up on the storyline of General Hospital in about 12 minutes. I used to watch it in college almost 30 years ago, and I’m pretty sure they’re still on the same plotline. They’re probably still in the same scene, too. That’s the beauty of soap operas. They advance the story about one sentence at a time. Per day. By the end of the week a whole paragraph has gone by. Why do you think some of these shows have been on for 50 years? It’s because everyone is waiting for the dramatic punch lines.

Speaking of hospitals, the other traumas I experienced have to do with the real life one I stayed in for the surgery. I won’t mention the hospital by name; let’s just say that it was centrally located in DuPage County. Last week I recounted part of my experience in the Recovery Room, but there was a little more to it than that.

The operation only took a few hours, and I was in Recovery around 11am. In my groggy state, I remember hearing the nurses talking about other patients as they wheeled them in and out like Dunkin Donuts employees bringing in fresh racks of crullers and warm bagels. Once in a while a nurse would come over to roust me, then walk away (laughing, I think). As the time dragged on and the other pastries got to leave, I started wondering when it would be my turn.

I was 70% conscious, but I kept my eyes closed to avoid drawing attention to myself. It was the same method I used on Saturday mornings in the summer when I was a teen. I heard every word the nurses said when they came to check on me, but I didn’t let on. Believe me, had I heard them talking about a trip to the morgue, I would have sat up and flapped my arms like I just won Jackpot Bingo at the VFW hall. At one point they let my wife in to see me and they let her know that since I was the only one left in the room, she could stay until they brought in another patient. They also told her that I was basically unconscious. I giggled inside at my deceptive skills. I’ve still got it.

My wife gently asked how I was and let me know that I’d be staying overnight. Maybe if I had been more active they would have released me. Sometimes the sleep-deception trick backfires. She was ushered out a short time later when another patient showed up. They told me that they were going to send me upstairs to a room. A few hours later, they told me the same thing. Now I was aware that it was getting late. I was also aware that they kept calling “upstairs,” looking for a room. How does a hospital get overbooked? They kept referring to the guy in 4319 who should be gone by now. I hope they meant “gone home” rather than “gone for good.” I heard them say that it was taking an awfully long time to get the room ready. By this time it was past 3:00. Finally, I heard one of the nurses use her best Nurse Ratched voice and call up there to give them an earful about what was taking so long to make up a simple bed. I felt special. Then I realized that I was the last Recovery Room patient standing, and the staff really wanted to go home. So they moved me to an ante-chamber. I believe it may have once been used to treat Al Capone and his gang. As they wheeled me out of Recovery and into the basement, I think the nurse asked if I could reach the switch and turn out the lights.

I spent another hour or so in the basement, with the occasional employee walking by with a surprised look on her face that anyone was down there. My wife had to leave to take our son to the doctor, so our best friend stayed with me, just in case 4319 never got cleaned up or they put a toe tag on me accidentally. Finally, somewhere around sunset they got 4319 ready and they came looking for me. I know I wasn’t easy to find, because they told me so. Then we were on the move, with a phalanx of nurses and our friend wheeling me down hallways and into elevators like a Secret Service detail. At one point we passed my wife, who was waiting on the 4^th floor. She had been to the boy’s doctor and back already. She tag-teamed with our neighbor and made the exchange of ownership.

A few times while I was in my room, we heard “Code: Silver” over the loudspeaker. We found out that a Code Silver meant a missing patient. I could relate.

On my second full day in the hospital, the doctor ordered an open MRI on my chest to make sure my liver wasn’t hanging on by a piece of dental floss. My wife went with me as they wheeled me back to the basement. I recognized some of the hallways. We were handed off to the MRI lady, Bonnie, who I’d guess was in her late 50s. She had me lay on the MRI “shelf”; a hard surface the width of a water slide. Then she tried to turn on the equipment. No response. She started talking about how she warned them that this machine was acting up and that it needed some maintenance. At one point she went around to the back of the machine and I heard her open the hood like she was checking out a Buick. No power. I suggested she reset the grounded outlet, but she already had done that. The MRI was pronounced dead.

The good news was that there was a spare right next door. The bad news was that I couldn’t sit up from the MRI shelf to get back into the wheelchair. Luckily, Bonnie had the strength of a dock worker. She put her hand behind my back and folded me over like a 200 pound sack of russet potatoes to move me next door. Once I was back on the shelf, so to speak, she powered up the MRI and I laid there for 45 minutes. When it was done, she folded me back up and put me back in the chair for the ride back upstairs.

Everything checked out with my liver. I’m glad I still have one that works. After I got upstairs my wife and I heard another Code: Silver. I told her to look in my bathroom for a stray. No one was in there, but it still made me wonder how they kept losing patients. Stuff like that keep me awake at night. But not as much as the whereabouts of my gall bladder.