I was away – this is what I did

About 2 years ago I went to the E.R to find out I had an infection in my back.
To get rid of this infection the doctors needed to remove some metal stuff I had in my back for my scoliosis, which as I understand was the source for all this.

Anyway, this was found out 2 years ago. A few days ago I was released from the hospital in which I had to stay for 3 weeks.

I went in to the hospital on novemeber 20th.
The operation was planned to be performed on the 21st.

In my life I have had many many operations all being performed as early in the day as possible. This one did not take place until 2pm which made me only get more and more nervous during the day.
Anyway, at 2pm I was brought down to the operating room, they gave me the sleeping gas and poof, I slept like a rock.

At approximently 9pm they woke me up in the recovery room in which I had to stay in to the next morning.
It wasn´t too bad since I slept most of the time and when I didn´t sleep I asked for pain killers and five minutes later I slept again.

From the 22nd I was brought back to the normal orthopaedic warden.
All was ok at this place considering I got new roommates every now with whom I had small chats with. Apart from this, I ate, slept and…ate again (what did you think? ) , not much more happened.

On december 1st I was transferred to another hospital (Karolinska Hospital) for 2 reasons:
1) I had an even nastier infection than they first expected
2) During the time I was on the first hospital, I was having treatments on this second hospital, which made it needed for me to be transported between the hospitals every day. To not having to be transported everyday they transferred me to the second hospital in which I had the treatments.
Confused? Don´t worry I was too, until they transferred me.

I was transferred to a ward where they were specialists at infections and I got intravenous treatments 3 times/day for 7-8 days.

Did I go from an ok place to paradise?
I surely did.

There was nothing wrong with the first hospital. They gave me food, pills, shots and such basic needed things to surivive.

But there was one huge difference between these two places, the people at the first place did this because they had too. The people at the second place put some effort in their work and did what they did because they wanted too, atleast it´s how I understood it.

To give you some examples on the differencies:
- When someone start their shift on a hospital here in Sweden, they visit each patients room and say hello, introducing themselves and says they are working the following shift.
The people at place 1 did not, while the people at place 2 did this.
While it may not be needed it is very nice from a patients perspective to know who will be taking care of you.

- At place 1 you would often have to wait 10-15 minutes for a nurse no matter you were in pain or had dropped a pen on the floor and usually with no “unneeded” words spoken. At place 2 it was rare with waiting times over 1 minute and not all but many of the nurses actually said “Sorry that you had to wait.” When someone apologises for a 1 minute waiting time I can not be anything but happily surprised.

- One other thing… This one was not done by all nurses either but many of them. In the morning I was often woken by the friendliest faces I have ever met saying “Good morning Thomas, My name is (name) and I will be your nurse today. Just ring the bell when you need help and I will be here. First, what would you like to have for breakfast?”.

These people did not have to be this nice or apologising for answering times, it´s not told in their instructions I think, but each and every time someone puts in some more in their work than its instructions says, other people becomes happy and in this case, a patients recovery goes better.

There was only one small incident happening at this place and it was one morning when one of the nurses woke me up with saying something like “Good morning Thomas, I have to take some bloodtests from you”. Since I hate needles, I hated this way of waking up. The nurse knows who she is and I hope we discussed it over and that she accepted my apologies for my temperament that morning. If not, I sincerely hope she understand it was not my intention to get angry on someone who was not to blame. I am deeply sorry, but now I know your routines and I had bloodtests taken many times after with no problem.

To Martin, Fisnik, Pernilla, Katarina, Debbie, Carolina, Stina, Yvonne and all other people working at warden B 24, YOU ROCK!!!
Thank you for the very best hospital time I have ever had.

I was earlier in this post telling you I had to go to treatments on the second hospital (Karolinska Hospital).
These treatments are called Hyperbaric Oxygene therapy (HBO).
There is only one hospital in the Stockholm that performs these treatments.

Basically what the people at HBO do is to put me in a hyperbaric chamber for 1 hour and 40 minutes and let me dive down to 18 metres. This way the body gets a lot more oxygene than it would “here on land” and together with antibiotics for example the body heals quicker.

The very first time I was going for a HBO treatment I was asked to be there 30 minutes before the actual treatment.
When I arrived, I met their boss (Folke Lind) who told everything about how my body worked at the moment, how it should work and what these treatments will do. I was also taught how to take care of some situations that either would or could happen while I was in the chamber and that I shouldn´t panic if anything else happened.

This HBO therapy are a part of the ICU on the hospital as I understand so everyone that works with it are very well trained with everything concerning intensive care and everything around it, with these people I never ever have anything to be worried about.

I am not sure if it´s a hospital thing, but the people at the HBO place are also very kind and caring.
Folke, Johan, Anders, Anneli, Cissi, Peter, Helena and everyone else on HBO, you are one other group of people that certainly rocks!