The clunky moonboot is off!
When told I could take it off and walk around in soft shoes, I was delighted...until the practicality of what I was going to do sank in and then I worried about not having my safety blanket.
What if my ankle muscles were so weak I fell over again and BAM! end of beautiful healing process to start all over again.
I kept it on for another three days and then finally on the weekend took the boot off permanently on the Saturday morning (yes I was still sleeping with it on!)
Greg clucking like a mother hen "isn't it too soon", "be careful", "don't overdo it". Geez, why don't you add to my fears please!
I was pleasantly surprised once I gingerly put my foot down, to discover I wasn't as broken as I thought. You can see how the muscle has atrophied through lack of use, but my body (I should have known) remembers how to do things lol.
Since then I've been going from strength to strength. Took me a while to get back into walking properly after walking with an unforgiving boot. Heel toe, heel toe.
It hurts, of course, but the more I move the better the range of movement. Although by the end of the day my ankle is aching, has turned red and ballooned in size. Icing icing icing.
I try not to walk too much at work and put my foot up, so mostly I'm behind a desk.
I walked a distance (to the other side of a very large hospital) on Thursday to get the voluntary COVID swabbing the hospital has requested of staff. My ankle shouted at me, making it's dissatisfaction at my stupidity and pigheadedness felt. Oh wow did I suffer that night :-)
Thankfully tested negative.
****
We're trying to figure out the way forward when we go down to Level 3 on Tuesday. We don't want to have any clinical interaction with patients if possible.
There is no problem with our home study kits and machines as we can courier these out. The biggest headache are the overnight inpatient studies as we are not equipped with negative pressure rooms and our treatment on PAP is aerosolising. We go into a patient's room anything between 4-15x during the study (depending on the patient). Which means a LOT of PPE per patient per night.
Donning station outside a room isn't an issue, but taking off the PPE is. We need to contain any potential infection and don't have the space for this.
As this all takes time, we will only be able to have one patient per physiologist instead of two.
I've requested the carpet replaced with linoleum (yes we have carpets for the noise levels) and asked property and infrastructure to look at filtering our airconditioning system (negative pressure) as I don't want any viruses moving from room to room. Not sure if any of this is possible, as we are in a very old building that doesn't meet current building regulations. I once asked for our doorways to be widened to get wheelchairs, beds and hoists in, but was advised that once they start structural changes (a doorway for goodness sakes!) the whole building will have to be brought up to regulation. Therefore they don't do this and can get away with sub-standard hospital building?! Which means that we have to take everything apart and reassemble in the room and vice versa. Pain in the arse.
I cannot tell you how often we've Datixed difficulties for risk which are flagged but not dealt with.
Another of our difficulties is the toilet (we only have one) which is long and narrow. Not great for those who are in wheelchairs, use walkers or generally need assistance. We have a lot of patients with co-morbidities, progressive neurological diseases, tetraplegics, etc.
As little is known about sleep and what the labs do (really sleep pffft you just watch people sleeping all night), we are not as important as cardiology, respiratory, ICU, etc. But little is it understood that patients of those Wards are more than likely our patients too. Sleep apnoea is probably the cause of most of their co-morbidities - generalised statement of course but more than likely true.
By the time they are referred to us, they have many health issues caused by stopping breathing during sleep. We're last stop in a long line of medical issues.
Sigh...
Watch this space ...
Good ole South African gem "waiting in the shadows"
When told I could take it off and walk around in soft shoes, I was delighted...until the practicality of what I was going to do sank in and then I worried about not having my safety blanket.
What if my ankle muscles were so weak I fell over again and BAM! end of beautiful healing process to start all over again.
I kept it on for another three days and then finally on the weekend took the boot off permanently on the Saturday morning (yes I was still sleeping with it on!)
Greg clucking like a mother hen "isn't it too soon", "be careful", "don't overdo it". Geez, why don't you add to my fears please!
I was pleasantly surprised once I gingerly put my foot down, to discover I wasn't as broken as I thought. You can see how the muscle has atrophied through lack of use, but my body (I should have known) remembers how to do things lol.
Since then I've been going from strength to strength. Took me a while to get back into walking properly after walking with an unforgiving boot. Heel toe, heel toe.
It hurts, of course, but the more I move the better the range of movement. Although by the end of the day my ankle is aching, has turned red and ballooned in size. Icing icing icing.
I try not to walk too much at work and put my foot up, so mostly I'm behind a desk.
I walked a distance (to the other side of a very large hospital) on Thursday to get the voluntary COVID swabbing the hospital has requested of staff. My ankle shouted at me, making it's dissatisfaction at my stupidity and pigheadedness felt. Oh wow did I suffer that night :-)
Thankfully tested negative.
****
We're trying to figure out the way forward when we go down to Level 3 on Tuesday. We don't want to have any clinical interaction with patients if possible.
There is no problem with our home study kits and machines as we can courier these out. The biggest headache are the overnight inpatient studies as we are not equipped with negative pressure rooms and our treatment on PAP is aerosolising. We go into a patient's room anything between 4-15x during the study (depending on the patient). Which means a LOT of PPE per patient per night.
Donning station outside a room isn't an issue, but taking off the PPE is. We need to contain any potential infection and don't have the space for this.
As this all takes time, we will only be able to have one patient per physiologist instead of two.
I've requested the carpet replaced with linoleum (yes we have carpets for the noise levels) and asked property and infrastructure to look at filtering our airconditioning system (negative pressure) as I don't want any viruses moving from room to room. Not sure if any of this is possible, as we are in a very old building that doesn't meet current building regulations. I once asked for our doorways to be widened to get wheelchairs, beds and hoists in, but was advised that once they start structural changes (a doorway for goodness sakes!) the whole building will have to be brought up to regulation. Therefore they don't do this and can get away with sub-standard hospital building?! Which means that we have to take everything apart and reassemble in the room and vice versa. Pain in the arse.
I cannot tell you how often we've Datixed difficulties for risk which are flagged but not dealt with.
Another of our difficulties is the toilet (we only have one) which is long and narrow. Not great for those who are in wheelchairs, use walkers or generally need assistance. We have a lot of patients with co-morbidities, progressive neurological diseases, tetraplegics, etc.
As little is known about sleep and what the labs do (really sleep pffft you just watch people sleeping all night), we are not as important as cardiology, respiratory, ICU, etc. But little is it understood that patients of those Wards are more than likely our patients too. Sleep apnoea is probably the cause of most of their co-morbidities - generalised statement of course but more than likely true.
By the time they are referred to us, they have many health issues caused by stopping breathing during sleep. We're last stop in a long line of medical issues.
Sigh...
Watch this space ...
Good ole South African gem "waiting in the shadows"
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