Journal of a Living Lady #40

Nancy White Kelly

So much for patient privacy. Sitting in a hospital wheelchair, waiting for my turn at the x-ray machine, I noticed the duct-like tape attached to the front of my chart. In huge letters was written, "Patient mildly hallucinatory last p.m." I groaned.

Hallucinatory? I guess I was hallucinating when the aides were hauling me out of my hospital room onto an ambulance stretcher to make a trip to another facility at 3:00 a.m. Yes. 3:00 a.m. Seems this hospital's open MRI was on the blink. Even when available, all the out-patients got the day spots. Now we "in-patients" were being carted off like human cargo to somewhere else in the middle of the night for our turn. Seemed unreal to me, but it happened.

"How much do you weigh?" the technician asked when we got to the other facility's radiology department. I begrudgingly gave the three-digit number in an undertone. The techie, surrounded by an entourage of strangers, announced my weight quite loudly to someone in the isolation booth. I might have forgiven her if she had relayed it in kilograms. But no. She used pounds.

"Did you have to make a public announcement?" I asked disapprovingly as I laid strapped to the stretcher.

"Well, we are supposed to weigh you ourselves," she said, uncaring that I am sensitive about my weight even in the wee hours of the morning.

The idea of an open MRI is that you don't feel so confined. I confess to being extremely claustrophobic. The last open MRI I had at another hospital went fine as I could see sunshine, smell the fresh air, and was completely satisfied I could escape the machine at any moment I wished. This supposedly "open" MRI was more enclosed. It made me feel cooped. I was not a Merry Rider Incarcerated, but tried to cooperate.

The technician came back. "We have to do it all over again. You moved. "

I groaned again. "You will have to let me sit up a few minutes, " I said, commenting honestly that this was not my idea of an open MRI machine. Out-of-sight, but within hearing, I overheard the technician's comment to a co-worker that we had another one of those "deceptive" complainers.

The concrete-like tube moved down and I was assisted to an up-right position. Obviously I was causing a back-up in scheduling. Guess they were working on a deadline for me to be back to the original hospital before breakfast. Inquiring relatives might miss me and wonder if I was in the morgue.

Granted that night I was doped up. The sudden, excruciating pain from the cancer is what had sent me to the ER to start with. But I knew where I was at 3:00 a.m. I knew Buddy had not known when he kissed me "good-night" that I would be miles away in a few hours. I didn't enjoy being treated with such indifference.

Finally they got their pictures and I got another ambulance ride back to the first hospital.

Now it was post-breakfast and I was awaiting a bone scan in radiology department of the original hospital. There were certainly no delusions of grandeur. I was half-covered with a skimpy gown, sunken in a wheel chair, and reading somebody's assessment of my mental state posted in bold letters.

Hallucinatory? Dream on.