Dancing With Miss Ivy

Acute  pancreatitis means you don't eat or drink for a few days, or more. Since it follows a prodigious period of diarrhea  - and I mean the kind that requires a couple showers,  laundering several outfits, a couple bathroom rugs and the shower floor mat, a bath towel and washcloth , all in the space of a couple hours while you still plan to go on that planned vacation - one is often dehydrated as other symptoms start to appear. (BTW, two washings in the machine made nearly everything usable again, though the shower mat got replaced.) One is prohibited from taking anything by mouth for a few days or so, depending on each individual case of course, so IV fluids are a must. Not an IV fluid, but combinations thereof, from multiple bags simultaneously, and repeatedly.

Hope you still have good veins... somewhere. The hospital staff will do whatever they have to in order to locate usable ones, regardless of their convenience to your planned activities. You know, like reading a book, or pushing buttons on the remote to hunt for tolerable TV programs. Other activities, like moving pillows around, or ridding yourself in some socially accepted manner of all the fluids being pumped into you, can be a whole different challenge.

Let me introduce you to Miss Ivy. She is a pole with five wheeled feet, spread out in a circle, mostly equidistant from each other. The wheels do actually work... perhaps not in the same direction as each other,  or the one you are going with her. Because you will be going with her. Everywhere!

The top half of her pole has little fastenings for hanging the IV bags from, whether the large liter sized ones or the tiny ones holding perhaps half a cup of whatever minor additive to your system is needed in lieu of food. There are at least five places to bags from, and somehow they can also be persuaded to hang little box-shaped pumps which regulate the speed of the individual drip and also give an alarm when a tolerable level of variety has been breached. For example, if your main IV line is in your elbow, and said elbow gets bent, slowing fluid intake, an alarm goes off. Since all lines merge into the one tube, the attending nurse checks the readout on every box to figure what's wrong. It sometimes is as simple as something is out of fluid. Hang another? Disconnect the box? It depends.

Each box/pump/alarm has its own power cord which plugs into a wall outlet. Four plugs is the outlet limit, in a 2x2 square pattern. Mine started with two, which was enough fun. They are held in very tightly.

OK, your internal pressure builds, and you must get across the room and behind the modesty curtain. I use modesty loosely, with just a fabric curtain on a curved rod stretching across most of the curve, no doors or exhaust fans to block sounds or smells. You're here on your bed, the goal is about 20 feet away, if it were a straight line. Alas!  

Remember, don't bend that elbow!

Knees and head are higher than the middle of the bed, so first find the controls in the side rails. Once flat, using only your own core muscle power, (no shoulders, remember, as they're to be fixed some other time) raise your torso, swing legs off the side, and steady yourself on the floor, presumably in an upright position.

Now gather up your tubing in several loops through your hand while the other grabs the pole, aka Miss Ivy. The dance is about to begin. Your first goal is the wall sockets, totally in the wrong direction from your increasingly pressing need. Each step in that direction means Miss Ivy's five wheels are each choosing different directions they wish to roll in. Grasp the pole tighter while, with the same hand, not squeezing your tubing so tight you become the source of cutting off their flow. In those few steps to the wall, you learn Miss Ivy is a precocious, bratty three-year-old dancer, twirling and dipping and spinning her way everywhere but where you wish to go. Hang on tight! Tighter!

Once at the wall outlet panel, you see the plugs are themselves little boxes, perfectly sized and shaped so as to prevent fingers from getting between them while in the wall in order to pull them out. As you struggle, it does not escape your notice that as close to floor level as they are, your bending over is putting additional pressure on a segment of your lower torso which is already exerting enough pressure of its own, and not in any way that can be considered helpful for removing any plug from the wall. At least this first journey has only two in use.

Now you have to gather the cords up in your hand(s) along with tubing and Miss Ivy's pole, and waltz your way across the floor to your original goal. Options at this point include the light switch on the wall just outside the curtain. You may have managed to 1. notice it and 2. flip it on while you hurry in. If you missed it, urgency requires there be no hunt  to locate and change its status. Spinning around so you are in the needed position, everything currently in your hands gets unceremoniously dropped on the floor while you use both of them to fumble with clothing ASAP. Faster!

There will be no discussion here as to whether your dance  allowed success in completing your journey on time... or not. None, you hear? SHUSH!!!  STFU!

Once your business is completed, the tubing and cords must again be gathered tightly to Miss Ivy so you can dance with her past the curtain's other side to drop again while using the sink, soap dispenser, and paper towels. The room's only mirror is there as well, should you be bold enough to try to decipher who that disgracefully unkempt visage mocking you from inside it belongs to.

With allegedly clean dry hands, it is time again to gather tubes, cords and Miss Ivy, dancing your way back - no, not to bed! - to the wall socket plate and do your best to push, shove, wiggle, wrestle the plugs just removed back into place so the pumps will again work before their battery reserve runs out, setting off yet another (series of) alarms. Then it's just you, tubing and Miss Ivy doing your courtesy dance back to the side of the bed. Time to climb back in, trying to remember ahead of time how best to arrange the pillows before you get in both so they are high enough for you when you lie back down, and not so high they slide down while you do so. 

Get what rest you can! There will be more alarms, additional dances for the next 4 days, some times with a third cord nobody told you they plugged in while you dozed so you suddenly get stopped 3 feet from the wall - at the worst time of course! - and eventually with a 4th one plugged in, all now so tight it's impossible to get the first one out.

Just revel in either the fun of dancing with Miss Ivy, or the bliss of possibly never having to be in her company ever again! I could suggest it's your choice here, but we all know that would just be a lie. Next time won't be choice any more than this time was. Just be prepared eh?