Cardiac wards are bloody noisy!

There’s always some alarm or other going off.

Then there’s conversations all around.

And the fellow in the next cubicle with thunderous flatulence.

It’s no wonder that I’m getting a migraine.

I wrap up the blankets around me and try to sleep. I get sweaty, and the pads from my ECG monitor fall off – BEEBEEBEE – I be am now causing the problem I’m trying to hide from!

A lovely nurse (I have heard tales of horrible nurses, but I’ve yet to meet one myself) offered me some earplugs. A kind thought, but they don’t go in and stay in unless I also put my fingers in my ears. It is clear that the designers of these earplugs haven’t used them themselves.

The nice nurse chases down a couple of sumatriptan migraine pills – I don’t understand why, but they are so difficult to get hold of, and doctors are reluctant to prescribe many at a time. Migraine sufferers tend to hoard them against the times when migraines attack in clusters.

Yesterday, an alarm was going off all the time. Attentive staff would keep asking me if I was alright. This particular idiot was bloody sat on the emergency button! 🤣

Isn’t it ironic, that in a ward intended to address an issue so often causes by stress, that the ward itself is so very stressful?

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The old fellow with noisy flatulence in the cubicle next to me seems to spend much of his time with his phone on speaker talking to a woman, possibly his wife or daughter. She is so scatterbrained and ditsy! She’s exhausting me!

She presents him with a problem, sometimes she’s sounding quite distressed. He gives her a detailed description of the solution, there will be a couple of “yes, buts…” (which to me often actually says “I don’t really want a solution”). Finally, she’ll say “anyway” and moves onto the next thing on her mind.

He will then repeat the process for this new problem.

This goes on for hours.

It is rather sweet that this old dude is so dedicated to looking after this girl, despite being so poorly himself.

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Having written so much that my husband has been a major stressor for me, I have found his visits to see me in the hospital welcome and pleasant: I look forward to them and I think that I would be disappointed if he didn’t come.

I know that this is stressful for him. He has his safe place (his flat) where he wants and needs to go to de-stress, he has to visit his old home and stay there to look after the dog, he has his own things that he needs to do, and he tries to come in to see me and bring me things that I need. I appreciate that – it’s very loving. He also says that he likes being useful.

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Now they’ve dimmed the lights and at least turned down the volume on the alarms and I’m thinking about things as I lie in the bed – not tired enough to sleep yet, and unable to get comfortable with the cannula in the side that I usually sleep on.

I’m thinking about other warning signs that I missed…

I do go the gym, although less frequently than before surgery because I wasn’t sleeping very well.

There’d been last summer without testosterone and without gym access, then there’d been a long period this year where I’ve just felt so fatigued that I couldn’t get to the gym.

Then if I did go, I would often do a circuit, which I’d normally be able to do three rounds of in an hour … however by the end of the first round I’d be getting dizzy and lightheaded.

That feels like a warning sign – and the fatigue I’d put down to low testosterone, but energy didn’t return to pre-castrate levels even when hormone therapy began. So I put it down to relationship stress.

I had ready made explanations for not being able to do the exercise to the levels of only a year or so ago, so didn’t look any further.

Of course, all these original explanations that I had we’re almost certainly true, but aren’t the full story.

It just goes to show, that there are often multiple solutions in the human equation.