This time 11 years ago, I was lying in the Emergency Ward at St George Hospital in Sydney. I was sure how I had got there but there were lots of details that were hazy at best. What I DID know was that I had been involved in a collision with a semi-trailer on Macquarie Pass and that the result had been pretty dramatic.
That morning, it was a Monday, like today, I had cleared some chores and then set out on the bike to go to the Pie Shop for a coffee and a cake. I didn’t get there.
The actual details of the accident I have never been able to recall. Apparently this is not uncommon, the brain simply switches off unpleasant and traumatic memories. The first thing I DO recall is being aware that I was lying down on a road. Like waking up in an unfamiliar room, the mind takes a few moments to orient itself and the sensation of lying on the tar was quite unnerving. On opening my eyes I saw the canopy of trees high above me and, again, this was confusing. Then the other sensations and sounds started to kick in. I realised that I wasn’t wearing my helmet and that my chin was sore, it’s funny how the brain begins to rearrange the pieces. Some kind soul had taken my helmet off but, not realising that it was a modular one, had taken it off as you would a normal helmet. If you DO try to pull a modular helmet off without lifting the chin guard first, it doesn’t really want to come off. If you FORCE it, it scrapes the wearer’s chin on the chin guard as it is taken off.
I was conscious that there were people around though how many I did not know and I have never found out. I never actually SAW any of them as they all seemed to be gathered around my head. Once my scrambled brain had made at least some sense of the scene I suddenly became aware that, if I was lying on the road, I’d better get OFF it as quickly as I could. I sat up and tried to move but I heard a voice say, “You’d better lie down, mate.” As I had sat up I looked down and saw that my right leg was pointing sideways at about a 90 degree angle. It was the first time that I started to become aware that I had been in an accident. I took his advice and lay back down and closed my eyes.
Whether or not I drifted in and out of consciousness, I am not really sure, though there are gaps in my memory so I probably did. The amazing thing was that I was not conscious of any pain at all. Given what proved to be my injuries, this fact has always perplexed me. Did my system simply block out the pain and not allow it to get through, or had I been unconscious for a longer period than I thought and the ambulance had arrived and administered pain killers? I will never know.
The next thing I remember is being put on a stretcher and loaded into an ambulance. Ambulance people have an unfortunate habit of talking about you as if you are not there and I recall hearing them discussing what was going to happen to me. It was then that I discovered that I was being taken to the bottom of the mountain where a helicopter was waiting to airlift me to a hospital to Sydney. I remember wondering why they were not going to take me to Wollongong Hospital as I knew it had a helipad; it was only much later that I found out that, as a part of the Greater Sydney Health District, St George Hospital in Kogarah was the designated hospital for all major orthopedic work and so, St George it was to be. The reason I had to be taken to the bottom of the mountain by road ambulance first was that there simply isn’t anywhere on the Pass where there is room for a helicopter to land.
They took me out of the ambulance and my stretcher was loaded into the helicopter. I was not aware of what first aid procedures had been effected by this stage, it was only later that I realised that my neck was stabilised in an inflatable collar and likewise my right leg and right arm. The stretcher was place crossways across the passenger area of the chopper and I had a prime view of the rotors rotating above me as we took off and headed north.
I’m told that the helicopter trip took only about 20 minutes; it certainly seemed to be a LOT longer than that. By now I guess I was pumped full of morphine because I wasn’t conscious of of being in any pain but, strapped down in the stretcher, unable to move, it was quite a daunting situation even allowing for the fact that the logical part of my brain was telling me that it was all for my own good! True to form, the ambulance officers didn’t speak to me at all (I was to get used to being ignored – it comes with the territory) but spent most of the journey shouting above the noise of the engine about all sorts of procedural matters.
The journey mercifully ended and we landed on the helipad at St George. I remember being taken out of the chopper and my next memory was lying on a bed in the Emergency Room. Now here I have to explain that, despite the fact that I was 61 years old at this stage, I had never been in hospital before apart from an overnight stay in Woden Valley many years ago with a suspected kidney stone. So all of this was completely new to me. The room was a buzz of noise and activity, much of it, it seemed, centered on me. For the umpeenth time someone asked me my name and date of birth (it comes with the territory of being a patient in hospital I was to discover). And, for the umpeenth time someone asked me if I could feel my fingers and toes, was I experiencing tingling in my extremities, was I experiencing back or neck pain? As before, the answer was no. Fact was that I wasn’t experiencing any pain at ALL. Damn, those drugs are good.
Not long afterwards my wife and daughter arrived, that was SUCH a comfort. Their story was a drama all in itself. Having been contacted by the authorities, my wife had called my daughter who, in her usual “take over” fashion, decided that SHE would drive them to Sydney as Helena wasn’t in any shape to do so. How she thought that she was in any BETTER shape is beyond me but that’s what was decided. But, almost as soon as they set out, they had car trouble and had to double back to Wollongong and change cars. Despite all this, they arrived fairly promptly, to be ushered into the room by the Welfare Officer from the hospital.
Later I was to find out that they had pretty much kept Helena in the dark as to the circumstances, limiting the information given to the fact that I had been involved in an accident and had been taken to Sydney. On arrival, said Welfare Officer greeted them and handed Helena my wallet and phone (an almost brand new Samsung that somehow survived the accident completely unscathed). Once inside, she handed Helena my wedding ring and, soon after, my watch. You can imagine what was going through her head by this stage. Despite assurances that I was “all right” the lie of the land suggested anything but.
Once they got into the ER they found me strapped to a gas-lift bed and pandemonium taking place all around me. People were running here and there, instructions were being shouted across the room and any semblance of trying to make the patient feel assured was missing entirely. Later I realised that they were just doing their job and that this was just the way they did it. As long as I was there, in one piece and alive, the rest of the niceties could wait while they figured out what to do with me. Despite this, it was wonderful to see Helena and Natalie and reestablish at least some sense of normality. Helena wanted to give me a kiss (some people, right?) but the bed was too high so one of the nurses dropped it down so she could. As she bent over me I whispered (at least, I THOUGHT I was whispering), “I supposed that mad night of passion I promised you is off the menu, right?”
Apparently I had chosen to say this in a moment when everything had gone quiet and it echoed around the room, whoops. Much mirth and hilarity ensued and my embarrassed nurse said, “Well, I guess you’re going to survive, then.”
Organised chaos is how someone has described an emergency room and that’s exactly what it was. Soon a very distinguished gentleman arrived accompanied by a clutch of young people, notebooks at the ready, intent on taking down any crumbs of wisdom that might fall from the master’s table. “Good afternoon, Mr Hall, my name is Dr Jones, I am the orthopedic surgeon here and it will be my job to try and put you back together,” he said. He then went through the whole enquiry thing again and I answered him as best I could. He looked a little rattled when I told him that the ambulance people had told me that I had had a head-on collision with a semi-trailer, but he pressed on. Dictating on-the-run as he examined me, he rattled off a list of spare parts that he was going to need to do the job, pins nails screws, it sounded like a shopping list for Bunnings. Notes were duly taken by the attendant tribe of acolytes and he leaned over me and said, “You’re going to be first on my list in the morning unless somebody worse off than you comes in in the mean time, though, God help me, I hope not.” With that he departed and I didn’t see him again till a day or so later.
In time (EVERYTHING takes time in a hospital) I was shifted upstairs into a ward with 4 beds in it and my first introduction to the angels that are hospital nurses. Everything was explained to me and much fussing to make me feel as comfortable was carried out. Unfortunately, I was to find out, two vital messages were not given.
It wasn’t until the next morning after spending an excruciating night in the gloom of the ward that I discovered what these two things were. Firstly, someone had neglected to tell me that I was hooked up to an on-demand morphine pump. All I needed to do when the pain got too bad was to press the button to release a dose of morphine to dull the pain. It wasn’t until the nurse asked me how my night had been and I told her that they realised this and they were horrified. The second thing they didn’t tell me was that I was lying on an inflatable mattress, used in orthopedic cases to make lying in a bed a more comfortable process. What someone hadn’t checked was whether the mattress was inflated. Mine wasn’t and, like so many other things that I discovered about hospitals in the next few weeks, since I didn’t know about this process, I hadn’t asked about why my mattress was so uncomfortable. Again, the staff was mortified and apologetic.
Shortly afterwards I was hustled down to the operating theatre and the rest of the day, as ALF used to say, was a blur. Late in the afternoon I awoke to find that I was trussed up like a turkey. The neck brace was gone, they were now confident that there were no neck or spinal injuries. My leg was in plaster as was my arm. I was told, as gently as possible, that I’d better get used to it because I was going to be like this for a while.
Later, Dr Jones appeared, flying solo this time. He asked me the usual questions and explained to me the full extent of my injuries and what he had done to put me back together. It was a sobering conversation. As he left he said, “I’m very happy with your prognosis; you’re going to be in a lot of pain for a while and a lot of inconvenience but you will be OK. If you need to talk to me, ask the staff and they will get a message to me. ” I thanked him profusely and he was gone. No sooner had he left than the sister rushed into the room and said, “Are you a private patient” I replied that I was just a public patient and she said, “That’s weird,” she said, “Dr Jones is our top Ortho and he only ever sees private patients.” Well, he saw me and man, I was grateful.
The rest of the details you know and, lots more besides. My past IS sure, I pretty much know everything that happened. My future, like it is for all of us, is uncertain and that is what makes life worth living. Living in the past IS fun because the past was so much better in so many ways, but the future is filled with the promise that it could be even better and I’m looking forward to it.
POSTSCRIPT.
After reading this, my wife pointed out an important error. She was NOT handed my watch at the hospital. In fact, in all of the confusion, the fact that I had been wearing a watch at all had completely slipped our memories. Until over a year later when I received a telephone call from the Ambulance Station at Albion Park Rail asking me if I was missing my watch. It seems that there was a clean-up going on and the watch, which had been in the Lost Property bin at the station was traced back to me from their records. We thanked them and drove down there to collect it only to find that, by the time we got there, the station was closed. The next day one of the officers from the station took it into town and delivered it to Helena at the SES Headquarters. I’d completely forgotten about this till she reminded me.
