And so there he was, in another hospital, starting over from the beginning again.
The first time I saw him there I couldn't find him and the staff were the most unhelpful people I had ever had the displeasure of interacting with - which is saying something because I generally found doctors, and on a rare occasion a few nurses, unhelpful - but at this place it seems like disdain and unhelpfulness was part of their training program.
At least when I saw him this time, he was alert, unhappy to have taken such a far step backwards, but as communicative as he could be considering he couldn't talk. I still hadn't developed decent lip reading skills though (spoiler alert - I never did). My husband was with me this time, and when he came in he said the usual hi and how are you and my dad instantly [ut on that bravado that only men are capable of around other males. I don't remember his exact words, but I think he mouthed back something like 'I'm all good'. Yes, right. All good.
This hospital gave me the worst of icky feelings, the staff all but vanished during the visiting hour (I didn't like this either, we could come and go almost as we pleased at the previous hospital, here there were 2 one hour periods a day you could visit and being a much bigger hospital it was overwhelmingly busy). I just knew straight away that I wasn't going to like this place. It had horror movie mental hospital green coloured walls, construction going on, and it just felt off. The equipment was ancient and I hated that I didn't know how to read their ventilator settings. I had gotten awfully used to and somewhat comfortable at the old hospital. I never got comfortable at this hospital. Maybe because they were so lax about visitors washing their hands and wearing gloves, it just didn't seem right. I was sure he had accidentally been sent to a public hospital instead of a private one, but alas not quite the case. To be perfectly honest, if that is a private hospital, I feel the deepest despair just thinking about what an actual public hospital must be like. I feel so appreciative and grateful for being able to afford medical aid.
I think I did about 7 or 8 visits to this hospital, that was about how many weeks he stayed there. The ups and downs seemed to get more severe here, or maybe we just finally knew better. The doctors wouldn't arrange neuro physio for him in ICU, even though they had 'one of the best' neuro rehabs just a few floors down. Fucking ridiculous if you ask me, so he didn't progress quite like we had seen before.
My second visit there I couldn't find him (again). There was always that moment of sheer panic in those situations. He had been moved one bed over, however I didn't see him because this bed happened to be in an isolation room. At the previous hospital in Nelspruit I had very morbidly named the isolation ward in their ICU the dying box. 1. Because I obviously have no tact (to be fair I didn't say it out loud to anyone that wasn;t a family member) and 2. Because we never saw anyone come out of there. Now this was not necessarily true, but we hadn't to date witnessed anyone come out of there, but we had seen new people go in. In my dad's case it certainly wasn't true because he did leave, I won't talk about how it was only so that he could go into another isolation room at a different hospital just yet.
I have blocked out a lot of the memories from this hospital so I can't remember too many of the emotions and finer details, it just wasn't a good time, but some significant events happened here.
I met hallucinating dad for the first time. ICU syndrome it was called. He had this in Nelspruit as well when he was telling us about his stashed millions and where to find them, but that was kind of endearing, the hallucinations became more severe and definitely more sobering while he was here. It was utterly insane. I never knew whether to indulge the ridiculous hallucinations, like walking out of the room to fetch his welding gloves so that he could help the old man being mauled by the bear. My stepmom and I ducked from bats, hid from bears, got on the boat (bed) to get away from crocodiles. And the one day he was absolutely insistent that someone was out to hurt me and my sister, he was incredibly worried. The only one I could get on board with was to help him try and find the R 74 million blue diamond he claims he had procured who knows where.
It was here that he found and gave his life over to God, an achievement which goes beyond the miraculous. He also decided that he did in fact now want to be recusitated afterall, and he was - with cpr - twice.
He became afraid of breathing without the ventilator and the doctors were asked not to tell him when they were turning down the settings because his panic attacks alone would set him back. And he did have many set backs. He started to get lung infections more regularly and they got more and more drug resistant every time. He didn't really make much progress neurologically.
One particularly bad day I wasn't myself and I struggled to communicate with him. Luckily I wasn't the only one visiting so I held back closer to the door. It was that day that I watched in sheer horroe, through the glass partition between his isolation room and the one next to him, as a man's heart flatlined 4 times in the space of 10-15 minutes. No curtains were closed, nothing, I just watched it all happen, and let me tell you it is SO much calmer than Grey's Anatomy would have you believe. I'm just impressed there were staff present during visiting hour to assist him. Two weeks later this man went home. Try reconcile that in your mind. I saw him 'die' over and over, his condition was particularly horrific but I don't feel comfortable discussing it here, and two weeks later he was ready to go home - yet my dad after now 3 months was no where near ready for rehab never mind home.
Somehow, dad did start to get better at breathing again though, and that word 'rehab' was starting to be thrown around. I didn't get my hopes up this time. What had happened though was that we had all become increasingly disastified with this hospital. My dad would tell me how horrible the nursing staff were, but I mustn't complain or else they would make it worse for him. For once when he said this I actually believed him. My stepmom visited the rehab downstairs and she wasn't impressed. She then went to another one at a hospital about 15 minutes away and the choice was clear, she immediately made a request to the medical aid to have him transferred again. It was a long shot, by this point the medical aid had already paid millions in claims for my dad so why should they move him, but by some miracle they agreed. Grateful doesn't even come close to how we felt.
My last visit to this hospital turned out to be one of my favourites with my dad. He was in an amazing mood. He was 'singing' along to the songs on the radio, and we generally just had a great, easy visit. I think he was as happy as we were that he was moving, and also that it was to go to rehab. Yay progress!
The receiving hospital was at least smarter than this one. They had no plans to receive him directly into the rehab. He would be admitted to ICU for 5 days for assessment before placing him in the rehab unit and it was definitely one of those decisions that was for the best.
Because, you guessed it, the guy that was ready for rehab, the one that was once again doing so well, the one that only had a 20 minute ambulance ride to the new hospital, went into respiratory failure on the drive. Again. It was the 31st of August. Three and half months since the accident and he was back on full ventilation again.
Square one.
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