On this Mother's Day

Today is Mother's Day. My mum was warded since Friday afternoon for very high fever and joint pains. Chikugunya has been rampant lately and she is convinced she is having it.

The first night, I went to visit her at 8 pm. Her fever was recorded at 39.5 degrees Celcius. There was a small basin of water with pieces of washcloth thrown in on her bedside drawer. She was sleeping [on her side] when I arrived and I didn't want to wake her up.

There was an electric wire plugged in to an outlet above her head and it ran down her back to a nebulizer used by a patient on the next bed. I was concerned that should my mum turn on her back she might be lying right over a live wire so I went looking for the staff nurse on duty.

There were 4 of them, sitting in a circle and looked to me like they were chatting. Also there was a bunch [approximately 10 ... I didn't count] of student nurses from Kolej Shahputra posing for pictures.

One of the staff nurse told one of the student nurse to unplug the nebuliser because it was no longer in use then. But the student nurse acted like it was the very first second she step foot in the ward. The beds, the patients, the plugs and the equipments seemed so out of her schema. The staff nurse reluctantly left her chat circle and came over to point things out to the student nurse.

That done, she woke my sleeping mum by patting her bum and shouting rather roughly. My mum opened her eyes and looked confused. The staff nurse asked if she had urinated and collected the sample. I saw the unused sample bottle on her side drawer. My mum had a hard time comprehending and responding while the nurse kept patting her and asking in her loud manner.

I went near and asked my mum if she want to go to toilet. My mum said she has been holding her bladder since afternoon because she found it difficult to get out of bed. She was having high fever and her joints pained every time she moved. The loud mouthed nurse turned to me and instructed me to get my mum the disposable adult diaper.

I asked her why would my mum need disposable diaper?

She said pity my mum having to hold her bladder since afternoon.

I went ???

I asked her, couldn't a bed pan be used? Afterall, they needed to collect her urine sample. Furthermore isn't that part of what a nurse is paid to do ... patient care? Anyway, there were bunches of student nurses around who actually need to learn about bed pan and stuff.

No doubt I would do all I can to make my mum comfortable but I think the nurse has a totally wrong attitude. She expects me to care for my mum in the ward. I have no problem with that.

...

MEA Post Ops - Two Months later

Internet connection has been unstable these past weeks. With the advent of 3G to my area, my once 'state-of-the-art' Samsung SGH-E590 handphone cum 460.8 Kbps speed modem is getting to be obsolete. He!he!he! Making futile excuse for my inability to update the blog. However, it is kind of a real put off everytime I tried to access my blog and I got kicked out by my server. Furthermore, I have this suspicion that my computer is taken over by the hyped 1st April virus [I forgot the name. Was it ficker?] which is supposed to turn an infected computer into a 'zombie'. I stayed away from my computer that day ... only turning it on AFTER midnight.

Only after that, it occured to me that it was 1st of April on the other side of midnight where the virus might have been hatched. Darn!!! Also, there was fresh news on yahoo. The virus inventors changed their minds since precautions were tightened worldwide and decided to release the virus later. *rolling eyes*. My computer has been behaving very strangely since. I tried reformatting but it is not working. My computer is still 'drunk'.

I am writing today because I feel I need to record my experience after the MEA procedure I undergone on 11 March. I noticed my posting here about MEA got hits from google search.

In the previous posting I mentioned about the discharge after the procedure was done. It lasted about three weeks. I went back to the gynae clinic and was given antibiotics to ward of infection. Well, I kept putting off taking the antibiotics. The discharge was 'straight forward'. There was nothing unusual about it. In the end I didn't take the antibiotics prescribed.

While I was having the discharge, I was also troubled by pain. Intense grippling pain that weakened me at times. It was not like the usual period cramps pain. It was more of a 'raw' kind. Just as the cramps were not fully subdued by the painkillers the doctors prescribed, neither did this one. It really crunched my face when it surfed.

After the fourth week, everything dried up and the pain was gone. I woke up on Monday morning without the usual 'heaviness'. My steps felt light and I was 'running' around at work place. I went back to swimming and managed to add the laps [I would like to think those laps added up to at least half a km].

On the sixth week, I began having terrible back pain. I attributed it to the swimming. My mood began swinging and boy, the ups and the downs took a dizzying height. It so happened that the weather was also begining to change. The fan churned up steamy air day and night. The couch that has served as my bed in front of the tv turned into a 'hot spot'. I couldn't even sit on it let alone sleep there.

Then on the morning of Monday 27 April, there was a slight spotting. I was alarmed. Towards evening, it became heavier and I noticed pink spot amid the brown stain. Could it be my menses? My reading on MEA mentioned about the 'failure' of the procedure and the menses returning. The next day, it got heavier but I did not see the colour of blood. Only brown stain with sourish smell. I never have problem with smelly menses before so I am a bit concerned with the smell. My next appointment with the gynae will be on May 19. At the moment, the discharge is more or less like a normal menses and is not bothering me much so I will just wait and see what will happen next before I press the panic button.