Escaping Nurse Ratchet and the asylum

I was about ready to have a conniption fit when the hospital nutritionist came into my private room at the main campus of WakeMed Health and Hospitals in Raleigh to take an order for the following day’s menu options twenty-four hours after being involved in a single-vehicle collision with a ditch.

The monitors which I was connected to must have been going berserk because it felt like my heart rate was surely in the triple digit range; and my blood pressure was inevitably through the roof.

They probably set off every single buzzer at the nurse’s station and most likely put everyone into panic mode thinking their car crash victim was going into cardiac arrest, which would have sent a team of medical personnel running down the hall.

While I was hot under the collar, it’s not what I would call a five-alarm fire.

Albeit, I was going to blow up the cheese even if I had to crawl out of that medical institution on my hands and knees before letting the sun set on another day.

Upon dealing with a steady stream of doctors and nurses during the intervening hours before dawn, I was not about to lose another night’s sleep after being awake for an entire revolution around the Earth’s axis.

If I don’t get my eight hours of sleep, I am a bear to deal with no matter what side of the bed I climb out from.

When the charge nurse entered my temporary sleeping quarters, she got hit with an earful of ranting and raving from a hot-blooded Irishman attempting to escape Nurse Ratchet and the asylum.

“There is no way I’m staying here another night,” I fumed with bulging eyes as steam blew from my ears like a train whistle. “Even if I have to rip out this intravenous needle myself and hitchhike down the 440, I am leaving here before the sun goes down; because y’all cannot keep me here against my will.”

After enduring party central with a boisterous bunch in the emergency room for half the night, I was at long last taken to a more quiet and serene setting away from all the noise where sleep would eventually carry me off to dreamland.

No such luck!

Once the night-duty nurse so graciously brought me a pre-packaged turkey sandwich – the first thing I had eaten since breakfast, I drifted off towards a state of semi-unconsciousness as my heavy eyelids pulled me into slumber until a pair of technicians from radiology entered the sterile room.

With one eye open, I watched as those same giggling lassies from earlier in the evening came to take more x-rays of my broken pinky finger with bandages completely encompassing my entire hand and forearm.

Although I wasn’t exactly sure just how they intended to get the necessary images, I was in no position to argue at this point. If I kept my mouth shut long enough, maybe they would disappear with a poof of magic; and I would realize they were just a figment of my imagination.

However, I quickly realized a cruel plot to keep me awake was beginning to unfold when a doctor from some unknown department within the hospital interrupted my next little catnap to talk to me about something or other.

Since I was woozy and cranky from a lack of shut eye, I lost count as to the number of doctors, nurses and other members of the medical staff which paraded into my confined space throughout the night and into the wee hours of the morning.

Due to the fact that my rollator walker had been destroyed in the harrowing wreck on Isaac Weeks Road, I was getting antsy when a new one hadn’t been delivered after lunch as had been promised by the Medicaid coordinator who had called me midway through the morning.

Nevertheless, Nurse Ratchet and her minions came bursting onto the scene carrying a practice walker for me to acclimate myself with before being discharged from the medical facility.

I took one look at that granny walker featuring two stationary wheels on the front with rubber tips attached to the back and turned my nose up at it.

I was used to rolling around on four wheels. If I was forced to use this modified piece of equipment, it would take me a week just to get to the bathroom.

“How do you expect me to walk around with this hunk of metal,” I questioned with flared nostrils while looking up at the arm lift sporting a Velcro strap. “Since I have a balance problem associated with my cerebral palsy, I’m going to be picking myself up off the floor the first time I attempt to use this ridiculous contraption.”

Considering my left pinky finger was supposed to remain immobilized, the strapped arm lift was intended to utilize the forearm to push the walker in a forward motion, thereby relieving pressure from the broken digit while in transit.

As soon as the “Bully of New Bern Avenue” was conversing with the nurse about my reluctance to use the walker, I was plotting mutiny with her congenial candy-stripers on the opposite side of the bed.

Unfortunately, our little conspiracy to overthrow the reigning “Queen of Tyranny” never took root.

When I was forced to walk down the long corridor and around the nurse’s station with my new mode of transportation, the “Intimidator” was sitting pretty with an Alice in Wonderland Cheshire Cat grin splashed across her smug face.

Despite the fact that she may have won the battle, I was determined that she was not going to win the war.

Immediately after I was safely in the back seat of my parents’ vehicle later that same evening, I ordered a new rollator from Amazon Prime and received a fifty percent discount due to the cash back points which had been accumulating since Christmas.