Day 9 Friday Goodbye Roger

This is my last day on ketamine. The night nurse comes in and they change my ketamine before it runs out – they stopped Roger from complaining before he started. Brilliant! I opened the laptop and felt I could manage to do a little work that had come in overnight. I knew I shouldn’t, that I should wait for Kay to wake up, but it was pretty simple and I triple-checked it before I finished. I read the newspaper and started to look forward to returning to normal. Apparently at midday they will start bringing me down and maybe at midnight the real Karen will return. The one that is not so gracious, warm and forgiving, the one that rubs people up the wrong way, but at least the real Karen will get to sleep through the night.

The door is still banging, the back of my neck is a little sore and my arm where I have the PICC line hurts a little. At 7.30am Nurse Kerala arrives - what a clever girl she is to get from the backwaters of beautiful Kerala, India (I have been there, on one of their dreamy boat trips), to being a nurse in a private hospital in Melbourne. Kerala girl tells me I might be able to make it to a friend’s party at Docklands tomorrow night. Which would be nice I would like to be there for him, he is such a lovely friend.

7.35am I speak to Nick on the phone. He was off to work early as he had woken up at 6 when I did. We made a bit of a plan for Saturday when I leave. We will pick up Pip the dog, go home and rest and then maybe I can go to the party for an hour or so. I like that plan. 

After having breakfast and a shower Roger and I go for an ultrasound to check the pain in my arm.

The results come back showing that I don’t have a blood clot. I return to my room at 10.30. Marie arrives immediately. It seems that everything I want and need is just happening perfectly – amazing timing. We both rest for a while, me on the bed, Marie with her eyes closed in a chair and then we go for coffee in the cafe before her son John arrives to pick her up at 12.30. I wave to John from inside the front door, Roger and I can’t go past Roger’s rumble strips (like speed bumps for cars) on the floor in front of the front door without help. 

As soon as I get back Kerala girl arrives. Apparently she had come in earlier while we were having coffee. She has a beautiful smile. She drops my ketamine 4mg to 36 and I am on my way to coming down and going home. Yay!

At 1pm I am on the phone to Nick and Kerala girl comes in and says the ultrasound has shown a small thrombosis (I am not surprised they found something as I know the difference between normal pain and pain when there is something wrong). They remove the PICC and replace it with a cannula in the back of my left hand. At 1.30 I drop another 4mg, I am getting there!

When I fill out my menu I finally manage to spell it with only one L. 

At 1.30pm Kerala girl hands me over to Beautiful Girl. What luck I have that BG will look after me until 10pm, she and Red Lips are my favourites. I say goodbye to Kerala and thank her for caring for me so wonderfully and explain to BG how hard Kerala’s journey must have been to get here. However, I know BG has her own story. I haven’t heard it yet, one day she might share it with me.

These girls are worked so hard, they don’t spend more than a couple of minutes doing something that might not be considered essential work, like talking to a patient high on ketamine. They have a punishing schedule to keep, they have worked so hard to get here and they have to keep moving forward. They can’t slow down or they know someone else will pass them and it will all have been for naught!

That door is still banging. How low will the ketamine need to get for this annoying hallucination to disappear?

Doc Malik arrives and dangles a carrot. He asks me if I would like to go home tonight. I tell him that is too hard a decision for me to make, I want to do the right thing and not jeopardise my hard work. He tells me I have done it, it’s over and I can go home! One tear runs down my cheek. I hadn’t realised how much I wanted to go home, I have been keeping myself in the zone, the right head space to do this, to make it through to the end.

We discuss how I will be from here on, he expects that pain-wise I will be the same as before. I can manage that, I know what to do. He says he doesn’t believe fentanyl works after a while and probably the only relief I have been getting is from the Panadeine Forte. He gives me permission to go to the party, winned again! I think someone has finally shut that door as I haven’t heard it for a while. Damn! It just banged again!

Just before 5pm Roger knows I am nearly done with him and starts making his presence felt – beeping away. I feel my eyes starting to open up, they have been half closed since last Saturday lunchtime. I message a few friends with my news and they all send me lovely messages back. I notice my handwriting starts to improve, I am coming back.

I get a message from Martina, saying she could feel it in her waters that I would be busting out tonight. Nick leaves home at 6pm to pick me up, Roger and I say goodbye. No tears there, I am happy to see the back of him! Then the cannula is removed and I am told I have to wait an hour. I walk four laps of the ward, the first time I have been able to walk any distance unaided since the infusion started. I then go to Mr Garden Bench to wait for Nick and give him a surprise when he arrives.

It is lovely getting home but not long after arriving I start to struggle with lower back pain, which I have never had before and I try walking around the house to alleviate it. I get quite grumpy, I suppose you can’t be “up” for that long and not come “down”.