PeGsOn’s Blog – My First Hospital Experience 1998 (Runsickboyrun)

My First Hospital Experience.

After reading runisckboyrun’s post on his first Hospital stay It gave me the motivation to write about my first Hospital Admission experience..

PICC LINE. Threaded up arm and sit in the vein just above the heart

At 22 years and 10 months of age I have had a total of 23 Cystic Fibrosis related Hospital Admission, however to put that number into a better perspective you have to understand that my first Hospital admission wasn’t until 1998 when I was 12 years old..

So let me take you back 11 years to 1998…I was in year 6 (Final year of Primary school)..Now at this stage I was heavily involved in sport playing both Rugby League and Cricket both in and out of school. I was relatively healthy and when I would get a cold, My body usually had the strength to recover on its own, or if needed I would have a course of Augmentin Duo Forte (Today that’s like treating a Raging Bush fire with half a cup of piss)….Now like Ronnie Said the famous so called “Tune Up” that us CF’ers have, well back when I was 12, Tune ups in my household were a 3 week stint of Nebulised Gentamicin and Ticarsilin…Which I fondly remember describing as cat piss because it stunk and stuck to everything and required a long tube to direct the fumes out the window…One camping trip the people in the Caravan next door thought we were all smoking a piece pipe……Ok so the meaning of the typical “Tune up” being a treatment of nebs at home was about to drastically upgrade!!!!!!

The Year 6 end of year trip was coming up…The whole year was going on a week log coach trip to Canberra to visit the snow. Canberra is Australia’s capital city, Now the school was worried about my health, which I had no idea was the case at the time…

Now this was in the days when my mum made all the decisions regarding my CF while seeing the Doctor, I was to busy looking through the cabinet full of Drug company gadgets. I remember My mum and the Doctors came to the decision that to make sure my health was in top condition for my Canberra trip that I would go into hospital for the so called “tune-up“….

I remember them talking to me about the proposed situation where I would receive a PICC line and spend 3 weeks in hospital….I didn’t say much initially but since the admission was organised in Advanced I had a whole week to think it over…and I was scarred, I even considering hiding in the cubby in the bush at the back of my house…

My Original room before I got kicked out by the Chemo Kid.

So the day came and I had a full anaesthetic, I was terribly scarred of needles at the time..still am.But instead of having a shot of Midazolam I went with the gas instead..I will get to the after effects soon. So the PICC line insertion took less than half an hour and I woke up to a big fat obnoxious nurse screaming in my ear to breath..I felt like I had been hit my a truck, which they said was a side effect of the sleeping gas..Now I remember all I wanted was a Bottle of Coke and Thins light and tangy chips, and still to this day its what I feel like after a aseptic.. Anyway there was an issues with my dressing. The Nurse, she was trying to redress the dressing the surgeons had placed over the PICC line as they had stuck the plastic plaster down, while my arm was bent….Now my arms have always been very hairy so having a PICC line dressing replaced always causesme grief, especially when it was my virgin PICC Line and having an old grump of a nurse poke at it again straight after surgery when it’s usually only dressed once a week….it made the whole experience that much worse…I still remember letting a few F-Ducks rip

Getting me clobber on

Now my mum had decided that since this was my first hospital experience she would stay the first night…and thank gawd….I was a wreck. I couldn’t bend my arm even though the nurses and physiotherapists were trying to force it (and I have never ever been able to bend my arm with a PICC in)…my throat felt like it had a 2 inch gash which was from the breathing tube they used during surgery..and I was just feeling a tad overwhelmed going from drawing with crayons and doing 5 x 5 to going into hospital and having surgery.

Now there is the person usually a woman and she still exists to this days even at my last admission 7 months ago but I remember vividly at 5.30 A.M a woman screaming “JUG OF WATER” “JUG OF WATER” are you awake…… I felt like and in previous stays once I moved into the adult wards replying “Gatorade…Gatorade” get it…waterboy haha..I’m so funny….ok so this gave me an early morning rise…the first hospital meal I ever saw was a soggy sorry disgrace of a sandwich, Microwaved bacon and
Weet Bix….To say the least it was a big culture shock to my system going from mums hot bacon and eggs in the morning before school to a smelly tray of food one side chilled, one side heated so if you meal happened to slide on the tray into the middle like my steak did one night, you end up with a well cooked half steak equalled out by a cold raw arterial blood oozing other half…ok sorry the use of the descriptive words….lol

Now they allowed me to get out of physio the first day as I remember pretending to be asleep..

Me and Blacky

Now back in 1998 here in Australia, Cross infection issues were only just starting to surface. Cepacia and Non Cepacia were segregated at opposite ends of the same ward and if possible all CF’ers would be put in separate rooms to other CF’ers however the days of a guaranteed single room were still 3 to 5 years off.

To give you a good idea of the importance on the overall scale of things that us CF’ers held….In H1 which was the children ward at the time of my first admission. I was in the 2nd morning of my admission, the nurses walked in and said “your being moved” …My bag was grabbed and I was wheeled off down the corridor to a four bedroom ward with curtains as walls and a communal TV that looked so filthy it would be fair to assume it had full blown Aids…The reason

I was moved was because a boy who had been on chemo needed the room…I wasn’t to impressed as I just lost me own loo and now had to share a rinsed out Mcdonald’s cup…..J

One of my most vivid memories of my first Hospital admission was the Physiotherapy Department.
Now I clearly remember going to a room full of gym equipment, but in the centre was 5 physiotherapy tables and my first in-hospital physio was not performed by Physiotherapist….. My physio was performed by a 16 year old girl, her name is Lisa and I still remember her toes were painted red….random lol. Anway while the physiotherapist whacked her, I was told to sit close enough to so Lisa could whack me. I remember having mixed thoughts about the situation….since she was older and I had a crush on her I kind of enjoyed it, except it was a bit awkward when I had to role on my stomach *Wink Wink* but I wasn’t to fond of having some whacking away, while hacking up their own muck ball….But that’s how things were done back in 1998. On a side note Lisa has since had a lung transplant and is doing well..she is now 26 and living life to the full..

One thing most of us CFers who spend time in hospital as a child experience is the Hospital School….and by crikey did

PeGsOn in the Middle

I hate it…They had this old lady who was so persistent…When I’m in hospital I want to watch TV and lay around not do mathematics while my Tobramycin is flowing in..Constant avoidance was my way of getting out of school in hospital. When the teacher came a-knockin I was a-hidin

Showering…well I remember and still hate the tiresome act of having a shower in hospital….you would have to wheel your trolley out and get some towels….I always liked plenty of towels…you than buzz the nurse and ask for some tape and a plastic bag, but during my first admission I hadn‘t learn that little trick so I remember 45 minutes showers, while holding my PICC Line up arm above my head and only having half a leg washed…After a couple of showers I learnt. The next 20 minutes I remember trying to tape my arm up right…finally I was able to have shower without having to hold my arm above my head…although I must say not without a few leaks here or there…

Now remember earlier when I wrote about waking up in recovery to the nurse changing my dressing because the surgeons had placed the dressing on while my arm was bent…Well 6 days in and I still couldn’t bend my arm even when I tried to slowly extend it I couldn’t ,,,I had an X-Ray just to confirmed the placement of the line, the X-Ray showed the line was a little to far into the heart so if I wanted to go home for a day over the weekend I would have to have the line pulled back a bit. So a day after having a fresh dressing put on, it had to come off again….So out came the Citrus scented dressing remover…the memories of the plastic dressing being slowly pulled back than some Citrus scented dressing remover being wiped with teasers and gauze in the gap between the plastic dressing and my yellowee bruised arm …it still makes me hold my elbow closed…

Now the dressing was off, it was time for the PICC line to be pulled back an inch…I remember by this stage I had

Syringe on the Balcony

already had enough and was getting quite stroppy…However the nurse discovered the line was stitched in…It wasn’t unheard of to have a PICC line stitched to your arm to prevent it moving about however it meant the stitches would have to be removed before the line could be pulled back….So the stitches were picked out and I remember the pain wasn’t like an extreme pain, it was like a real awkward frustrating pain almost like when some rubs/tickles you and the skin turns sensitive and feels raw…Once the stitches were out, the line was pulled back and surprisingly it didn’t hurt all that much as the inside of your veins don’t have regular nerve endings. The nurse wanted the resident to put a fresh lot of stitches in but thankfully my mum could see the state I was in and layed the law down so they constructed a sturdy dressing…

After my 2 and half weeks of IV’s I had my PICC line removed and was able to go on my school trip to the snow where I had a great time and was able to do everything without worry about my CF so in hindsight having that first admission at the time allowed me to have a great week with my mates…who I’m still mates to this day.

Group Photo Canberra Trip 1998

However this was the start of a constant run of hospital admissions and a lead up to one of the scariest time of my Cystic Fibrosis life….The Cross Infection Segregation…which I will write about another time/

One last thing, there were a few good things that came out of my first CF hospital stay, the start of friendships with nurses, doctors and patients that still exist today…

I hope this wasn’t too boring I really started to ramble.

PeGsOn

pegson1986@hotmail.com