My week in Waikato Hospital’s Ward 8
Through the night the nurses check me regularly. I remember Soji from Southern India in particular
. . . She calms me as I cry like a young boy, reassuring me I am safe.
Waikato Hospital. I look from my Ward
8 room to Mt Pirongia. I’m about to spend my first ever night in hospital. I am finally getting to see where some of my taxes have gone over the last 40 years. They certainly haven’t been wasted on cosmetics as I note the peeling paint in the toilets and showers. Ward 8 could do with a makeover. A preop discussion with anaesthetist Ollie (who bears a striking resemblance to Ed Sheeran) and it’s time for bed.
Three days earlier my neurosurgeon, Dr Muthu, ordered urgent surgery to cut a 4.6cm tumour from my brain. ‘‘Debulking’’ it is called. It’s a shock I need such a drastic weight loss procedure.
8am on Day 2 I’m wheeled to the operating theatre shrouded beneath a sheet. My mind goes to Monty Python and the Holy Grail and I call out ‘‘I’m not dead yet!’’ The orderly replies, ‘‘You’re not fooling anyone mate.’’
At midday I’m relieved to come around in post-op, and the lovely nurse Kat tells me about her life in Te Awamutu with husband Stuart and their bach at Mt Maunganui. In no time I’m eating my dinner back in Ward 8, complete with drainage tube dangling from my head.
Night 2 in Ward 8 is one to remember. Along with two others in my room I listen to a hallucinating woman repeatedly calling out to her family, and the nurses gently sedating her.
Through the night the nurses check me regularly. I remember Soji from Southern India in particular, who looks younger than my daughter. She calms me as I cry like a young boy, reassuring me I am safe. After almost no sleep, morning brings the calming daylight and breakfast, which has never tasted so good. Those who complain about Waikato Hospital food must be very fussy indeed.
Day 3. Ward 8 certainly teaches you some humility, with the smell of neighbouring patients’ bedpans, while I find my way to the toilet with a nurse carefully holding my arm.
Night 3 again brings a racing brain, and two hours’ sleep, due partly to the steroids to reduce my brain swelling.
Day 4 is brain scan day. I await the next doctors’ round with trepidation. Assistant neurosurgeon Ram fills me with relief as he gives me a quick thumbs up (‘‘scan is good – really good’’) before filing out of my room with the other 10 doctors.
Visitors are great, but it’s the hospital staff who give the greatest comfort, and not just the nursing staff. Like Helen who has been the cleaner on Ward 8 for the past 27 years – it’s nice to see someone on Ward 8 who is more than 25 years old.
Day 5, climbing three steps with the Irish physiotherapist feels like an achievement. Partial loss of my peripheral vision seems not such a big deal.
Day 6, after four nights with almost no sleep, and amazingly I am being discharged, with the hair barely starting to regrow over the 35 metal staples in my scalp.
I spend the morning walking quietly around the ward, my first proper look since my operation. In the visitors’ waiting room Helen the cleaner is on her break and Jill, a 72-year-old woman from Tauranga, is waiting to see her husband who has been admitted with a stroke.
As I stand between Helen and Jill, I can’t hold back tears as I look at the outside world. Helen goes back to work so I sit with Jill and reassure her that her husband is in the best of hands in Ward 8.
Jill looks at me and asks, ‘‘Yes, but why are there so many brown faces here?’’ I look at her and think to myself, two of those brown faces saved my life in the operating theatre, and another one calmed me from night terrors. I simply say to her, ‘‘I wonder if that’s what the Ma¯ ori said to each other back in the 1860s – why are there so many white faces here now?’’
The senior nurse tells me what I can and can’t do after discharge to avoid a seizure. I ask if sex is OK while my
27-year-old son beside me sinks through his chair in embarrassment. The nurse says that’s fine so long as there is no swinging from the rafters. I think I’m safe.
As my sister wheels me out of Ward
8, I feel thankful my taxes are being well spent. That I live in a country where topclass medical care is available to everyone. My only regret is that ex-CEO Nigel Murray did not spend time in Ward 8 to learn about hard work and integrity before taking on his CEO role.
Since the operation I’ve been recommended radiotherapy and possibly chemotherapy to slow the regrowth of the tumour.
●➤ Patient names have been changed.