Night on the Surgical Ward.

False night reigns over the slightly darkened ward…it’s never truly dark enough to call it night. Yet it brings the same terrors and frustrations as true night.
Somewhere someone is sobbing quietly, a pitiful sound that is half pain and half despair. Sleep is almost impossible, though a few of the elderly patients manage a kind of half-doze, with much muttering and snoring. Beds creak, farts ripple through the stagnant air and a large groan precedes a spasm of vomiting.
Buzzers are pressed, but it seems ages before the call is answered. The nightly noises from the nursing station are ones of quiet laughter, the clink of cups and the radio playing in the background. We all have our places and our own routines.
Sometimes it’s frantic, with new admissions and the clatter of beds and trolleys going to and from theatre. These are the emergencies, not those waiting in fear for an operation, or recovering from one.
Patterns emerge, with pre-op patients often wandering the corridors, too afraid to sleep. Dreading the morning, but wishing it was all over. Unlike those who are hooked unmercifully to drips and chained by bulging catheters. Flat on our backs, unable to move, we slide down our pillows and lie like broken dolls, our limbs heavy with pain and fatigue, bruises darkening our skin from countless injections and sites of previous drips.
Around each hour, several patients have their obs done. This isn’t the quick and painless procedure seen on popular television shows.
Arms are sore and often the machine needs a kick-start, or a previous user has left the equipment in a tangle. New patients groan aloud. Older ones submit without a murmur, it’s all part of the process.
Fevers develop often in the night, causing fans to be switched on, adding to the background hum of machinery. Medications are given to those who would wait longer in the daytime. Night pain is much worse, somehow. Underlying the pain, fever and vomiting, is the spectre of death, even with the most routine of operations or illnesses. Things can change so quickly. A stable heart starts to beat erratically, oxygen levels drop suddenly. These things happen with no time to explain to the patient what is happening.
Gone is the resignation of another sleepless night. Fear overrides all else. Amidst the bustle of tending a very sick patient, another is left crooning to herself, while sat on a commode. She is old and confused, but the ward is busy.
Eventually she is seen to and we settle back to our various moans and groans. Little things become monstrous. I lick my dry lips and wish I could pick my water jug up, but it’s too heavy for my taped arm. I could press the buzzer, but the ward has settled into a false sense of light slumber. I’ll wait for the next patient to buzz.
And so it continues. The ones who wait, the scared, the confused, the morphine-induced sleep that will last a few hours until it’s 6am and time for early morning medication.
The night hasn’t let up yet though. The night-shift changes to the day-shift and greetings are exchanged.
“Happy New Year…”
“Lucky you, I had to work…”
“What will you do with your days off?”
“Sleep and more sleep.”

In the surgical ward we have missed the New Year in a welter of panic and pain. Was that one day ago or three days? Nights overshadow the days as we watch our bodies take in fluids and pass out the waste fluids. Please let the morning come quickly and banish the primitive fears that night has provoked.

…………………………………………….