I had a very odd nurse that last day in ICU. She kept grabbing me by my painful cannula arm (like literally grabbing my cannulas) or grabbing me by my shoulder injury. At some point she managed to hit me in my swollen face and instead of just trying to apologise she tried to grab my face. I pushed her away. I feared slightly for my life.

I asked if I could go to the bathroom. I don’t know why but they wouldn’t let me walk there. So they brought me a portable one. She insisted on getting me sitting on it and said ‘would you like me to leave and give you some privacy?’ I nodded profusely. She then proceeded to keep pottering around my room doing things. After about 5 minutes I grabbed my book and wrote ‘are you going to leave and give me some privacy for a bit?’

‘Oh not now…’ she replied.

I didn’t get it.

After about another 5 mins she left.

I’m a very private person. I really am not ok with doing these things in front of people, which I think is fair! Though I did manage to deal with the fact that more people than I feel comfortable with saw me naked in this time but there wasn’t a lot I could do about it.

Apparently I was getting moved out of ICU that afternoon. We took final bloods from my arterial line and then took it out. One less thing in me to worry about!

We packed things up and I waited. As we were finishing gathering things, someone poked their head through the door to ask my nurse something.

‘Jen?’ I heard through the door and looked up.

It was Ronnie! I didn’t think I would get to see her again!

She came and sat next to me and held my hand. I felt like crying, I was so happy to see her face!

She was confused as to why I was back in ICU, as last time we had seen each other, it was Friday morning and I was heading out of ICU and into the ward. It was now Monday, and I explained how between then and now it had all gone downhill and I had ended up back in surgery. She got worried it was because of the Doppler going missing during her shift. I assured her it wasn’t.

What a fortuitous accidental re-meeting! It was seriously like a breath of fresh air seeing her again. Ronnie, you made my day!

As she was leaving, someone else came in and informed me that the blood taken that morning had been lost. This isn’t even the first time I’ve heard this. Unfortunately now, my arterial line was gone and this meant that I was going to require needling. Great. My favourite. And it was necessary to get these bloods in order to to be allowed back into the ward.

Amazingly, after about 5 attempts, we finally got some blood. Phew. 5 attempts is stressful and painful though.

And right on time, the porter turned up and it was my time to go zooming down the corridor and back up to T6. Back into the ward. I could only hope that this time I would be there longer than one night.

At this point it was Monday. 2 days post surgery #2. The swelling was starting to come up.