I feel like Hank Williams tonight

Free Sunday column. What all happened in this week’s hospital adventure.

How much to share? Here we are at instalment number three of a tale that I hoped, expected, to be just two bookends: the prostate operation, and the all-clear six weeks later: off you go, run again, swim again, enjoy that mighty feeling of emptying your bladder like you're twenty again, lift any old thing you like, knock yourself out.

How much to share? I waded into shark-infested waters of metaphor last time, let’s go a little bit further. It's been one wild week.

In the last instalment I described an unnerving clot washout procedure and implied a happy resolution of things. That was my thinking. 

By Monday night it was becoming apparent I was wrong. Another round of bleeding. However, inside a couple of hours the problem was resolved - due warning: this is where we start wading in a bit further -  a clot was expelled by natural process and immediately the stream was clear again.

 All that night and all the next day and into Wednesday morning, things remained that way, up until about half past nine. Oh god more shark attack.

More blood, more pain, more worry, and onto the phone once more to the surgeon's office. He’s not in a position to see me so we run through alternative options: nearby GP, ambulance to Auckland hospital, or up the road to Shorecare, and I choose that. 

As I'm picking up the car keys, there’s a text from a mate: still good for coffee on Friday?

I say: hope so but I'm on the way to Shorecare again and this bleeding can stop any time it likes.

Once more onto the gurney and once more the doctor is saying looks as though you need a washout. He says I’ll check with your surgeon. Surgeon says he'd prefer I be admitted to urology at Auckland hospital. 

Half an hour on and I'm at the window of Auckland City Hospital ED with referral papers and I’m wearing my mask because wouldn't you know it I have an actual cold. We go through the Covid checklist.

She hands me back the papers, with a few more attached, tells me to follow the yellow line to the Clinical Decision Unit.

This is all new for me, readers!  Entering the ED upright and walking! Not the way I usually arrive, flat on my back and wheeled in.

I hand over my papers, they say come this way to your room, they say take a seat, they close the door.

After a few minutes I notice in the adjacent room a nurse in full PPE gear lining up her various sealed packets of tubes and instruments and I think: that looks pretty heavy duty, wonder what she's dealing with.

A few more minutes pass and I think: wait a minute. Is that all for me? 

And then the door swings open and in she comes and yep, that kit, all that kit and heavy duty PPE gear, is for me.

And now I'm on the gurney getting my wrist tagged and bloods drawn and IV line put in, and she’s asking about all the recent technicolour adventures. She says the doctor will be along to see you soon. 

Now I'm on the phone to Karren to bring her up to speed with the exciting developments when a disconnected voice crackles from a speaker somewhere and I assume it's some sound system failure and ignore it. 

But it doesn't cease and now I register it’s my name they're calling, this disembodied voice. I say hello and they explain they need to confirm my details and we go through them and they say thanks very much and I go back to Karren waiting patiently on the phone. 

Now as we talk and I look out at the ward beyond my windows the penny finally drops. I say: fuck I’m in Covid isolation.

One interpretation that could be drawn from this little story: that sorry dude will never be observant enough to make a journo.

A kinder one: poor bugger. Must have been really distracted by the pain and bleeding.

In comes the doctor and we go through my recent history and the reason I'm here and she says: what comes next is a gentle washout and then we’ll put you on irrigation to monitor it and probably send you up to the urology ward once we have a room, and send you home tomorrow.

We talk about the aspirin I take in my daily meds to protect me from a heart attack; it tends to make me bleed like a stuck pig from the smallest cut. She says it might be a good idea to suspend that while the prostate is trying to heal. They’ll give it some assessment.

She says we need to give you a Covid swab. Are you okay with that?

Well, I mean, why not? Barely a curtain raiser when you consider the main event.

Up goes the swab, and out it goes to the lab and to my impressed surprise, they will have the result back inside four hours: Covid 19 negative,  rhinovirus positive. Yep, my common cold now has official papers and I will continue to be a PPE-gear-and-isolation proposition.

The nurse arrives for the gentle washout and it is more or less everything I described in the last leg-crossing instalment, except that he says, each time: take a deep breath in, and this is a very good and helpful suggestion.

This might be as good a time as any to say hey! They said breathe in! Just like they tell you when you're in labour! This might also be as good a time as any to say oh you bet I entirely get that this is nothing like childbirth.  

I'm also very much aware that anyone with a uterus may be thinking yeah welcome to this whole colourful carnival of fun. Will we be seeing you back here next month, Sparky?

Still and all, there is pain, plenty of it and there is the worry of where this goes if it doesn't mend. So I breathe in and I breathe out until we’re all done. Look at them all, he says, that was a lot of clots. 

Brother you are not kidding. 

Next I’m hooked up to a drip which will keep sluicing blood away from the wound and out of my system, and I'm left to relax. 

Karren arrives to collect the car keys and wipe germs and/or Covid off them and fair enough. I really don't want her to get this virus.

Soon she’s back with a packed bag from home and something to eat because she’s forever the best.

And then I’m on my own in Covid isolation with a tube of drip running into me and a catheter running out of me and I'm doing everything within my power not to cough because this may very well be what's opening the wound.

When you have a cold, the best thing you can do is just take to bed, gate some Panadol, ball up, and go to sleep. But it's not easy to ball up when you have a catheter running through you and you're trying to not move at all.

And now I’m alone with my thoughts, and things are not going the way they usually do in my glass-half-full world, because the cold has thrown a heavy sodden blanket over everything and it’s pulling me all the way down. 

I’m wondering: how did this happen so late in the recovery? Is this wound healing at all? Is it not going to mend? What if the bleeding doesn’t stop? What do you do then? What happens now? What if this is the start of some kind of downward spiral? 

I'm playing music but not with the usual joy. I’m playing a whole bunch of country music and for exactly the reason Jerry Jeff Walker sang about 

Cause when I'm real high, I play rock and roll

I play country when I'm losin' control

I don't play Chuck Berry quite as much as I'd like

But I feel like Hank Williams tonight

The nurse is there through the night in her PPE gear, as she carries each bucket away. It needs to be the colour of rosé, not merlot, they tell you, and it looks good. I just feel discouraged there's any red at all. When will it stop, is what I want to know. 

The morning brings the doctor to say: that's a good colour, what we plan to do is disconnect you from the irrigation and strap a bag to your leg, so you can walk around and we’ll see how you go and if it goes well you  hould be home later today and yes we think it’s a good idea to stop the aspirin for a week.

Someone arrives to wheel me and my bed to the lift and up to Ward 73 and hello! check out my pretty amazing room-for-one with a view out to the Sky Tower and over to Starship where we once spent so many anguished nights with our girl. I am so full of appreciation for everything about this place.

And I'm thinking: I’m in this room because I have a cold and I feel rotten for how much more work this puts them all to, having to fully gown up each time they come in.

And also I'm thinking, often, during this stay, about what these poor people would have had to try and cope with if we’d had a Boris Johnson PM trying to straddle the two aims of not overloading the health system but also keeping the economy somewhat open, and failing at both; that absurd compromise that caused so much avoidable death and misery and pushed the people working in those hospitals to breaking point.

Thank God it didn't happen to these marvellous people in our health system. Thank God it didn't happen to us. 

I spend the morning watching the bag fill, walking very carefully to the bathroom, and emptying it.

There is a steady rhythm to it as I drink cup after cup of water, watch the bag fill, and  empty it, right up until the moment I realise the bag has stopped filling but I have not in the least stopped drinking. 

And now the feeling begins of a full bladder that you should not be having at all when you have a catheter to drain it all away. This is a thing they warn you about - that it may get blocked by a clot. If that happens you must push the call button.

This is what I do. But no-one is able to come and I will soon learn that this is because they are dealing with multiple code reds.

So now I'm sitting on the edge of the bed urgently needing to empty my bloodied bladder and it’s an even worse scenario than not having a catheter because at least in that scenario you’re able to get rid of at least a little at a time before the clot impedes things. But not in this arrangement. The line is closed.

I’m in agony.

As much as I'm not thrilled about the prospect of a third washout, when the nurse arrives to perform one so capably I am in all senses enormously indescribably relieved.

There, she says, it was just  one little clot, here it is.

I have great enmity for that little clot that I made with my own body, honestly what was I thinking. I also hope it's the last of them.

The afternoon now brings a contentment I have not felt all week. The cold is moving on a good bit, and I am clear of clots and the bag fills as it ought to and I drink and I drink and I drink.

The wonderful nurse who removed my clot is back to check on me and we talk at length, because I’m worried about whether the bleeding will ever stop. She tells me: we see this a lot, it happens a lot, it’s okay.

Night comes and I sleep a good bit more, and the morning brings a righteous breakfast. People will bag hospital food but God I’ve had a lot of these meals, all told, and I have yet to fall on one feeling anything but grateful and happy.

I'm still fretting, though, from hour to hour; confident and positive, then full of doubt again.

The doctor arrives to say: that's a very good colour. I'm happy with that, you'll be okay to go home later this morning. 

The nurse comes to remove the catheter and boy it's amazing what you can get accustomed to inside a week. Just breathe in and out. 

Showered and dressed now, ready to go, sort of.

The last doctor arrives with my discharge papers. We talk about clotting. She explains: you can't stop them, it’s a part of bleeding, the crucial thing is to be sluicing it away with plenty of fluids.

Karren arrives and home we go. I begin sluicing and drinking and sluicing and drinking like a demon.

So far so good.