Hospital #2

     As I said in the last post, I was admitted to three different hospitals. I talked about the first one, now I'm gonna talk about the second one. Next, I stayed at the "Retreat Hospital" in Richmond Virginia. I never did understand why they named it "Retreat Hospital." I would always make the comment, "this is not like being at a retreat." When I said this, I was meaning it in a joking manner. The only problem was you couldn't tell I was  joking. I was told that I looked angry.
    On top of all my physical challenges, I also had to re-learn emotions, for example, it took me about 8 months before I could cry again. I knew I had all these emotions bottled up, I just didn't know what to do with them or how to express them. After being on both sides of having mental and physical challenges,  I would much rather take the physical struggles over the mental ones. Living day to day life in a state of constant confusion, is not a fun place to be.
      The top picture shows how my left arm was bent upward. My left arm  stayed in that position for several months. It was no picnic trying to stretch it out in order to extend it straight.
      On my right arm, there were bruises from IV's and restraints. The nurses had to put restraints on me because as I said in the last post, I pulled on everything. When I say "everything," that even includes my clothes. I was told  I had a hard time staying dressed. When I did start to understand what was going on around me,  I remember everything feeling to tight. In order to solve that problem, I would just take it off (oh man, I was a mess). The feeding tube through my nose also became a problem for me. I had yanked it out on many occasions and the nurses had to put it back in so many times. The left side of my nose started to collapse. My husband (at the time), decided to go through with having a tube surgically inserted through my stomach. The tube was located right near my broken ribs. Can you say ouch!...
         This  next picture shows how I had a crooked smile and my cheek bones were all sunk in .
        At that time I think  I had lost about 30 to 40 pounds (this was just within the first month after the accident). I remember the nurses would try an convince me that I wasn't hungry because they had just given me "nutrients" through my IV. I would get so angry with them, because I felt like I was starving (and I kinda looked like it too).
      The reason why I was being fed through a tube still, was because I hadn't past my "barium swallow test." If you want to learn more on what this test is, check out this link http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/healthlibrary/test_procedures/gastroenterology/barium_swallow_92,P07688/. I failed about 2 of these tests before they would put me on a "thick diet." After each time I would fail, I had to wait about two weeks before they would let me try to re-take the test. The reason behind this, my doctors wanted to limit the amount of radiation I was being around.
     That pretty much sums up Hospital number 2. Next I will write about "NRH," or the third and final Hospital I visited. I stayed at "NRH" for about a month and a half. In this Hospital, I was the most coherent.