On May 30 of last year I woke up in pain and barely able to get out of bed. Bad news, but this led to what was in many ways a wonderful experience.
The next day, July 1 (Canada day, the national holiday) I was worse, so we called 911. Soon a pair of friendly paramedics showed up with a kind of metal chair and strapped me in it. They wheeled me down the front stairs and into the ambulance. Off to the ER department of Vancouver General Hospital (VGH). (Later I was billed $50 for the ambulance ride. That was the only bill I ever got.)
I spent Canada Day in the VGH ER while they tried to figure out what was wrong with me. Luckily, as long as I was lying flat on my back, I was not in pain. I lay on a bed in the corridor while the investigation proceeded. Eventually a CT scan showed that my L1 vertebra had collapsed by a third. This totally messed up the muscles and nerves in my back and caused the incapacity.
No quick fix – they recommended against surgery. They said I should wait till it healed naturally though it wasn’t clear how long that would take.
I claw my way back to health
Turned out it took a very long time. It was tough at first. I remember laughing at my wife’s suggestion that I sit up in bed. I remember lying flat on my back drinking my morning coffee through a straw.
However slowly but surelyI got better. I was able to sit up, then walk with a walker, then go to the bathroom myself, then shower, then walk without the walker. I was pretty optimistic – la dee dah.
Disaster strikes again
Then came the phone call. A follow up MRI showed that the vertebra had collapsed further and was pressing on my spinal cord. They showed me the MRI. My spinal cord looked like a garden hose, squeezed almost flat by a fragment of L1. This was very dangerous and this time they recommended an operation. A major one, to clean out the fragments of L1, replace L1 by a metal box, and enclose several vertebra in a sort of metal cage held in place by “screws” (actually, bolts).
The operation was quite a production. I was on the table for 6 hours and had a 7 inch incision down my spine. At one point I needed a blood transfusion.
Of course I was oblivious to all this. One minute they put a mask over my mouth and nose and the (for me) very next minute I was waking up in the recovery room hearing someone saying “the operation went well”.
I thought, “good, the operation went well”. I felt no pain but I was in even worse shape than on Canada Day. Sit up? Forgot it. And the reason I felt no pain was morphine. I had a sort of call button that when pressed delivered a shot right into my IV. After a few days they took it away but gave me hydromorphone tablets instead.
Things start looking up
Pretty grim so far. But that was when the good stuff started. The good stuff being the care I received, and the wonderful people who delivered the care.
After two weeks at VGH I was transferred to Holy Family Hospital (HFH), a rehab facility. When I first arrived at HFH, I could barely sit up.
The orderlies, nurses, therapists etc at HFH were, like those at VGH, relentlessly cheerful, optimistic and encouraging. The same with the doctors, who you might expect to be bossy or arrogant. Not at all. As a result I never felt discouraged though I had plenty of reason to be.
I made the decision then to return the favour. I decided to be scrupulously careful to always be polite, grateful, cheerful, and respectful with the staff. First, because they deserved to be treated this way, and second, because I wanted to continue to be treated this way myself. And it wo
