The hospital, snowstorms, a wily Russian and ... snowstorms?!

It snowed in Wellington.

For the first time in 30-something years. Not just a one-off few minutes of it. Five days of it.

For a Canadian, it wasn't much of a siege. It would snow, then warm up a degree or two and rain. Or just warm up enough to melt the snow. Then it would snow again. Then some hail, sleet, porridge, styro-foam, dust, milkweed, and whatever else might fall from the sky in varying degrees of semi-frozen wetness. (The Inuit have 6,789 words for snow ... )


I took some photos of this horrible onslaught – that so terrified Wellingtonians, brought the city to its knees, caused schools to close, and had most people wringing their hands that this was alternately the most beautiful/most heinous event they'd ever witnessed.

Snow piled up in millimeters, and once, it almost
made it to a centimeter. It dusted the grass and
nearly made it impossible for me to use my BBQ.

As much of a non-event this was for me, and a Russian cab driver who made it up the hill in the slushy ice to take me to the doc's ... it did cause me some grief when it came to driving my prosthetic leg. I never though to ask for all-terrain capabilities when I got fitted ... at some point on the weekend when the deluge hit, I noticed I developed a robust, tennis-ball-size haematoma on the back of my knee. Right precisely where the pirate leg met the real me. 

No clue how this got there, but, it was making it nigh-on impossible to bend my knee and walk anywhere. And it hurt like a right -royal bastard.

So off to the doc I went on the Monday (day 2 or so of Snow-Pocalypse).

After a quick inspection, the GP hot-potato'd me to the Orthropods / A&E, and after a mere 12 hour wait, I finally got ensconced in ward room, and hooked into (yet more) anti-biotics. (It seems the treatment for big bloated haematomas is the same as what they dish out for cellulitis/infections). Drip, drip, wait 6 hours ... drip, drip wait ... rinse, repeat, wipe hands on pants. 

And so we come to the fun and the absurd. The snow was funny yet pesky, as everyone else was panicking and sliding off roads (no snow driving skills) and the city's electricity was nearing FAIL levels ... and office heating systems were neither heating, or anything resembling a system ... 

After calling a cab to get to the doc's, I went out and noted the road WAS indeed that nifty über slippery combination of ice and slush and snow and water, and maybe even black ice. Nothing serious for a Canadian, but I reckoned no Kiwi was going to be driving up that hill to get me. 

A Russian, however, is a whole other bear ... the comrade showed up driving the cab backwards up the hill, an SOP for getting anywhere in a front-wheel drive car going uphill in snow. He got me back down the road professionally, too. Enroute however, we noted several heinously dented and bashed cars and trucks ... many of which were clearly the victims of being parked by a rogue band of half-blind cretins, who prowled under the cover of darkness. The cars and trucks stuck out at odd angles, and a few feet from the street's edge – which of course on my narrow street, meant they were pretty much in the middle of the road.

My new Russian mate asked me to pull my mirror in as we skirted past this fool's parade of stupidly parked (and dented) vehicles. Before long we were down the mountain, and on the main road beelining for my GP's office.

Once in A&E and checked in, I was triaged minutes later – with the sensational news that an Orthropod doc would be coming to suss me out. And so began my 40 days and 40 nights in the waiting room ... the Orthropods, apparently, were outrageously busy. In the interim, I was treated to the spectacle of four women behind the "check in here" counter panicking as the large heater over the entrance doors suddenly cakked it. For no reason, apparently, other than it had been on for a while. It was now just blowing cold air. So they turned it off ... and then each of them (and several other employees who came by to see what was happening) took their turn activating the heater, staring at it for a few minutes, and then declaring: "Yes, it is only blowing cold air".

Rebooting a heater apparently does NOT cause it to fix itself. Perhaps Microsoft was now in the wonky heater business? It was anyone's guess.

After about 4 hours, with no appearance by an Orthropod, someone in A&E proper thought it might be a good idea to get me in and at least check my vitals, and rig me up with a canular and take a blood sample. Good plan ... at least now I was no longer sitting upright, but rather prone ... and waiting. And ... waiting ...

Finally the much-vaunted Orthropod materialised, to pronounce me in need of being admitted, and given drugs. This was the specially-trained expertise that was well worth the 6 (or was it 9?)-hour wait. Money well spent there.

But the waiting was not over ... a room was declared necessary for me to complete this complicated admission cycle. When I was finally wheeled in, it was indeed 12 hours after checking in to A&E.

In the interim, however, I can say they fed me twice in A&E. Sandwiches and tea for lunch, and a decent fish dish for dinner. 

And so began my week-long session 'inside'. Nothing unusual or absurd happened with the usual 6-hourly drip feeds, but on day 3 (or was it 4) there was a sudden splurge of activity around 9 pm, where it was announced pretty much everyone on the floor was being shifted to another room. I had visions of being plunged into the Pit of Despair like last time, but lo, I was awarded my own private room – because, as Adam the head nurse whispered to me, I had been subjected so much adversity ... and I indeed had, as they set a new record for attempts to put a new canular in me the day before. It took SEVEN tries to 'get 'er done ... Adam tried and failed twice, a house surgeon repeated his FAIL, a reg came by to try his hand and kept the "two failure" thing rolling ... until finally another reg materalised and nailed it on the 7th attempt.

Well done you lot! Money well spent again ... 

Especially when compared to how many tries it took the A&E nurse to get one into my arm (first time, both times I've been in there in the last month) and the 'once-upon-a-midnight bleary' time it took a gorgeous house surgeon to do it (again, just one – she got it first go) after the thing had collapsed yet again. (I'm lucky if I get 48 hours of out a canular before my veins bolt for the hills).

During the week, I glanced around my new palatial private room, and noted:

• I had an ensuite bathroom. But I shared this with a room on the other side of the wall. And the doors accessing the bathroom from my room, and from the other room, did not lock. It was a crap shoot (literally) to see who would walk in on who!
• An A4 (8 x 10) photo was stuck to the top-shelf door of my storage cupboard. In the photo were folded sheets and other things sitting on a shelf ... a modern-day hieroglyphic depicting what said cupboard was meant to be used for.  Well done you champions of communications!
• The tap handles (on the sink in my room, and in the bathroom), was a bizarre, ultra-long thing that jutted a good foot above the sink on an angle almost 90º from the tap itself. Anyone with wonky eyesight, or who was sick, crazy, or whacked on medication could easily poke an eye out on this lovely feature. Fortunately I seemed to be just shy of the level of whacked-on-medication-ness needed to do myself a grievous ... so I didn't succumb to this ninja-like death trap.
• For reasons that may never be explained, food orders were taken each morning via the swanky new wireless hand-held iMenu device (with plenty of details extolled - by the orderly - about each meal possibility). Then, come meal time, a completely different meal was presented. Not even close to what I'd asked for. This is the first time I've encountered this ... and, no explanations were forthcoming. Good thing I am a total omnivore, and don't have a real dislike of any sort of food ...
• There seemed to be some sort of elaborate "let's hide the good blood pressure machines from everyone", as each time a nurse came by to do the BP, temp and O2 checks, the trolleys available featured completely munted versions of each device.
• And finally, my release to 'home detention' was a mission ... vying for the new record, compared to the time it took to admit me. I was pronounced release-able by my doc just before 9 a.m. I finally walked out of my room at 4 pm. It apparently takes 7 hours to fill out the form that says I can go home, print out what they did to me, and get me some crucial drugs from the pharmacy ... that is IN THE HOSPITAL. It's not even a narcotic, just a blood thinner. But there is a PROCESS. A long one. 

Thankfully, my downstairs neighbour Sarah - who is a nurse - came by just before 4 to offer me a ride home. Her shift was just ending ... which means she started work right about the same time I was pronounced release-able. 

How sweetly, exquisitely absurd! But this time, it was a GOOD, FUN kind of absurd. Yay for Sarah!

And onwards and upwards ... I'll need to go see the Limb Centre guys in a day or two, to get the pirate leg tuned up so it doesn't abrade the spot where it hurts ... 

These guys usually have their shit together. I'm sure that'll go well.