Pool of tears - Part Two

Vague awareness of the uses of chemically induced coma as a healing tool had not prepared me for its stark reality.  Anxiety shredded my consciousness.  ‘Life support’ took on a charged immediacy forever etched in memory.  Tubes and line inputs now managed all Carolie’s bodily functions.  Fluid retention became a massive problem.  Her whole body was awash with an oedema response that to this day I do not understand – her whole body swelled to the point where she was unrecognizable.  

 I have read that leaking capillaries (tiny blood vessels) will cause the kidneys to accumulate higher than normal quantities of sodium (salt) and water in order to compensate for the capillary fluid loss. This results in more blood circulating in the body, which in turn causes even more capillary leakage into the surrounding tissue, which produces additional swelling - a vicious cycle. 

The operation of the bladder and its regular measurement becomes critical on life support.  Diuretics manage fluid retention rates and laxatives move the bowel as necessary.  Drug interventions become pivotal to the maintenance of a much-suppressed metabolism.  All hope of a 'touchy-feely' gentle recovery evaporated.  Carolie was in a grim fight for survival and all the gloves were off.

As the fatty tissue in the body absorbs ‘Thio’ (the in-house description of Sodium Thiopental), it can disburse at indeterminate rates, subject to uncertain metabolic variables.  In Carolie’s case, I knew it would be slow.  She is highly susceptible to drugs and would typically take one analgesic at a time.  I could take four with less effect.  This drug would hit her like a sledgehammer. I repeated the insight to everyone who would listen and resigned myself to a long vigil.

I was lost in a discordant world of brain waves, pulses, blood and ICP pressures, drug intakes and breathing calibrations.  The earlier ICU experience had prepared me for the peculiar workings of the labyrinth but now its full enormity overcame me; the survival stakes had risen sharply.   

Again, the nurses gave me the most succour.  They would explain the inner workings of the care regime and advised against taking the words of medical staff as finite declarations.  Nurse managers and a junior registrar were of inestimable help in this area – they chatted away and eased my mind on so many fronts.  I owe them a great debt of gratitude; I was a long way from home and bouncing alarmingly inside a surreal space. 

More than once a member of the patrician specialist cadre left me floundering through inept language or outright insensitivity - dressed up as a self-righteous dictum not to ‘gild the lily’.  Many clothe themselves in a persona of elitist detachment from the hoi polloi, speaking in a perfunctory technical dialect that keeps ‘outsiders’ at an appropriate distance. It can be tiresome and damaging at times.   

 My sense of time distorted; I hungered for ‘structure’, reference points to locate myself in a miasma of worry and loneliness.  The sense of loss was visceral.  I needed someone to talk to, who did not lecture, give gratuitous advice and ask endless questions.  As an intensely private person, my body language was signalling confused messages – intensely focussed, deeply troubled and emotionally needy.  Only someone with highly attuned translation skills would come near to ‘getting it’.  It is hard to locate yourself in a fog of pain. 

To be continued...