Sunday, January 13, 2008

After Surgery: Struggling with Speech Deficiency & Paralysis

I was having a lot of trouble trying to manage with only one hand and that one hand being my left. I had always been right-handed. And because I couldn't speak and couldn't ask for help, it seemed I was always needing it. When meals were brought to me I couldn't get started eating until someone was sent in to help me open the packets. There were so many! A packet with the eating utensils in it, a little packet of salt, one of pepper, of sugar, a little packet of butter, of jelly. I needed my carton of milk opened and the butter spread on my toast. If someone came to help me, I could eat. If nobody came, most of the food was wasted. I, for the first time, was experiencing how it was going to feel to be wholly dependent on someone else. And I didn't like the feeling!

I was embarrassed to buzz the hall nurse when I wanted to use the bedpan because, try as I may, I couldn't think how to tell her what I needed. Many times I just lay there, frantically trying to think what to say to her so she would understand. But I could not think of the word. My mind was just blank. I pondered, and tried again and again. Then finally....finally, I thought of ''Pee Pee” the name Mother used when I was a little girl. So with great anticipation, I buzzed...............and waited...............and waited for the nurses station to answer....... Then by this time I would have forgotten the word I had finally thought of to say. I couldn't hold the word in my mind. (Even now in trying to write this story words don't come easily. I have been rewording and rewriting it time and time again for many years. Everytime I read it, I find that I am no longer satisfied with the way it sounds, so I rewrite it. I wonder if I will ever finish it!)

When I was finally told that from now on I could get up and go to the bathroom by myself, I felt that my woes were over. I would no longer have to buzz the nurse’s station and suffer the embarrassment of not being able to tell her what I needed. But I was soon to find out I had a problem equally as bad. To go to the bathroom by myself I would have to hold, with my one usable left hand, the sack that the incision drained into in order to keep the weight of the sack from pulling on the drain tube which in turn would tug at the bulky dressing and would rub painfully against the raw incision. So with the sack in my left hand and the right arm paralyzed, I had no way to tend to my toilet needs.

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