WARD ROUNDS

View from the balcony

A quick update in a short break before my “shift” begins at 10 am. Our lovely English speaking nurse, Katerina works from 7 pm until 7 am and has been a life saver over the last week or two in helping us to look after K and noting signs of improvement and signs that we should point out to his Doctor. The nurses have not deflected from their strict timetable of trolley rounds, followed by doctors rounds, doctor and students rounds, anyone who turns up and feels important rounds – all which signify that the family carers who have been doing all the donkey work are to be summarily dismissed to the corridor for periods which can be an hour at a time. As I have been here five weeks now, I have seen masses of patients come and go in that time and made lots of short term friendships with some extraordinary people. Having been around for so long, I am almost part of the furniture and have armed myself with a folding beach chair, a large bag which holds everything and settle myself out in the corridor for however long it is that they need the room clear of extra bodies. Kimon's doctor demands the room to himself every time he does an “aspiration” - suction – which sounds like an unlikely song title. He is very kind, very earnest and we are immensely grateful to him, even though he is very, very serious in his manner.

I pointed out the George Clooney look-alike to Leo as we were ensconced in the corridor. Close up, there is less of a resemblance but we wonder if he has any other function than to strut up and down the corridor, with his white coat, greying at the temples in and out of doors, looking important. We had a few minutes speculating what his job actually was. Anyway, Leo has made a difference to our ability to cope and our treatment here. All of a sudden daughters are appearing with their families to give TLC to Pappous and help Yaya and engaging in conversation with us. Mama loses no time in telling us that their daughter is highly educated - a doctor perhaps or an economist.  A request for more hand gel or supplies from me to the hospital nurses at the desk resulted in a grudging response, possibly or not at all. Leo's requests met with different treatment altogether and a smile. What it is to have an eligible, courteous, kind and caring son with us. People have offered to go to the shop for us, all these Mamas have lost no time in making introductions … It reminds me so much of the antics in my big, fat Greek Wedding! Katerina the Nurse made us a cake on her last night and artlessly asks who will be on early shift tomorrow.  Leo, wisely is keeping his own counsel and is friendly to everyone young and old alike.  

Church in the Hospital grounds

Anyway, K is improving day by day to the point where he is getting fed up with it all and wants to get out of bed, not really aware that he is hitched up to catheter bags, feeding tubes, IV drips and so on. The doctor is trying to dispense with all these things in a slow process of winding down and removal, so it is slowly, slowly for now. We are all fed up with the tracheostomy which prevents K from feeding properly and shoots mucus as far as 5 feet when K coughs, if you don't get there fast enough. This has meant that someone has to stand over him with tissues nearly all the time unless he is given an “aspiration”. There has to be a moral in this story somewhere. The result is very nearly back-breaking work before we even reach bed bathing and changing. Fortunately Leo brought a slip sheet with him as well as strong muscles which has made the whole task much easier as well as K getting stronger each day and now able to move much better.

Festival for St Luke the Physician was held this week

Thank you all for your kindest thoughts, prayers and newsy photos. It helps us feel that we haven't been forgotten. It will be 5 weeks, nearly 6 this weekend and I really want to go home and do some washing! We hope that the next stop will be a Clinic for Physiotherapy in Chania and also that it will be covered by our IKA insurance and not completely break the bank. Anyway, there are signs that K will be OK, although there is a neuropathy in his legs and feet which might get better with help, or may be more permanent – the doctors can't tell at the moment.

Love, joy and peace to all our brilliant friends.  They have brought great big hugs, home made goodies, English chocolates, helped with nappy changing, and one wonderful couple turned up to our house in the middle of their holiday to clean the terraces and waterproof the roof for the winter.  Others sent money enough to pay for our lovely nurse for a night or so.  Such friendship cannot be measured or adequately repaid.  A huge thank you to you all.

Perry Family only ... At my lowest point, Laddie turned up in the hospital grounds ...
As ever, he was in need of a bath ... !

JUST WHEN YOU THINK ITS ALL OVER …

Our first place to stay, highly recommended! 

 K came out of Intensive Care some days ago, the impact on us has been so overwhelming that I can't actually remember which day. It happened with almost no warning; we went to visit him and a rather hatchet faced lady doctor said that he was moving upstairs today. We thought that this was cause for celebration and waited for an hour to accompany him and the bed to the new ward.

We arrived at a room absolutely full of people, chairs, baggage and heat to K's new quarters. It was heaving with people and obstacles and the nurses on the new ward were nothing like the nice people we had left two weeks before in Urology. K is a heavy lad, all his limbs were swollen and immobile, he needed tracheotomy care, feeding via a tube and syringe and for us to keep him clean and tidy. Anna and I looked at one another with complete horror, because neither of us had a clue where to start, but most of our time was spent dealing with all the mucus from a serious chest infection which happened every time K took a breath. We went through 200 plastic gloves and mountains of tissue trying to keep the infection at bay and this was tiring but OK since K was unable to move his hands to begin with.

I can't imagine what it must be like to emerge from two weeks of darkness to the light of day with all this plumbing and wiring sticking out all over, but K has been only a little agitated so far.

View from the Brods

We worked in 5 hour shifts round the clock to begin with – sitting with Kimon and just falling into bed with or without something to eat and drink when we got to our room. We were lucky that Stavros Niarchos, a shipping magnate, donated a hostel for families within the hospital grounds and after lots of to-ng and fro-ing to satisfy the administration, we got a very nice room there. Our lives were saved by Katerina, an English speaking nurse who agreed to come in to look after K at night, initially for two days, but she was so good that we realised that we had to keep her on for now.  We were limited in what we could do because during the day we had to take turns to work and sleep and even together couldn't shift Kimon up the bed or over to one side. We are not sure why the ward nurses are so hostile or unco-operative, but it is almost asking for a gold mine to get a complete set of sheets and pillow case every morning, let alone a draw sheet, which would have made life easier. This all sounds very negative but there is plus side of this in the families in the same ward doing their share of caring because day to day life in the midst of everybody else’s crises is a bit like a soap opera and there is wonderful sense of looking out for each other. I have seen two ladies keel over with the work and strain of it from our room alone.

There are the elderly couple in one corner. Old Dad is in the bed and his poor elderly wife is there day and night arguing with him and asking him questions of a personal nature in a very loud voice. There are obviously 3 or 4 who are extremely elderly and not expected to come home. Our best bit of luck was finding that the private nurse of the patient in the next bed to Kimon who also had a tracheotomy was very kind in helping with the suction tube when Anna and I couldn't stand to see K suffering any longer. Lena is a very experienced nurse from Georgia and a great source of knowledge and the odd greek coffee when her patient is quiet enough to let her make some!

The harbour at Heraklion

Then there are the ward rounds, masses of them each day. Sometimes Doctors, sometimes nurses, sometimes doctors and students, the cleaning lady, the pills ladies, the doctors again, the food trolley with liquid stuff for K. Each time one of these packs of people arrive, all the families are herded out of the room, no matter if you are in the middle of syringing up milk or recording the quantities on a chart. To begin with, we were annoyed with all this disturbance and couldn't get on with anything, but that was before I armed myself with a chair and tote bag to sit in the corridor and catch up with messaging before we could go back again. There have been days when we have been stranded in the corridor for almost an hour. Now that K is beginning to mend and wants to fiddle with all the nozzles, wires and scratch his moustache and eyebrows, as well as objecting to the oxygen masks and tubes, it is a relief to get out of the room and let someone else worry about it for a spell.

5 new puppies in the hospital grounds

Angel Nurse Katerina has taught us the rudiments (no pun intended) bed- bathing and changing Anna and I have clocked it in theory but in practice, K is just as heavy as ever and no amount of tugging and heaving can get him shifted so my back is very sore and we have to help our Angel when she comes in the evening and rely on one of the ward rounds to sort K out in the morning while doing the things we can manage without doing ourselves a nasty.

I gave K a shave this morning and trimmed his moustache. We needed to do this so that we had a better chance of reading his lips when he is trying to speak. It's all very difficult, but we are persevering. Keep praying for his Carers as well as for him because we are showing signs of wear and tear! x

HANGING IN THERE

This will have to be a brief update as I only have a small tablet with me which will not easily insert photos.

Kimon is still in intensive care and we keep getting positive updates daily in our 5 minute slot with doctors at 3 pm - then we gown up in green overalls and blue overshoes and give our hands a good scrub.  Only after this all the relatives who have been queuing so stoically day by day can  catch up with the patient - all of whom seem fast asleep and not easy to talk to.  However I am practicing one way conversation s and trying to remember all the love and good wishes which have come our way.  Progress is so slow, it is hard to stay patient.  However we hope that kimon will soon be over this setback and back to the Urology Ward where he started.

After nearly three weeks of enquiring, we managed to get a room in a hostel/hotel in the hospital grounds, which has made life easier although I needed emergency chocolate today when a 'problemma'  drove away the doctor before talking to us and meant waiting an extra hour to be admitted to visit our loved ones.  We have begun to make friends with all the other families waiting for news each day.  All of us were out of our minds with worry, but it was a new arrival and all seemed calm when we eventually beat our way inside and checked that our patient was doing OK.

All your prayers are helping and I will try to collect my laptop for a fuller blog asap x