“Got out of the left side of bed today…it still won’t go away…
…and even though I’m ashamed of this new world, I’ll do another day…”
You may or may not have noticed, I’ve been a little quiet lately. Well, there’s a reason for that.
I’m recovering, you see, I’ve been pretty badly hurt, and I’m struggling with the recovery. It’s taking way longer than I’d like and is having effects on me I don’t welcome at all. It’s a too slow process, and there’s been none of my additional energy to spend on reaching out to people or fighting online wars.
So what happened?
Well after not going to the Docs for roughly 2 years, I went back to get some issues checked out. I’ve been leery of the health system of late, I’ve heard bad stories, and I’ve seen a lot of misbehaviour and denial from our medical profession recently. As an unvaccinated person, I know that in some cases we’re treated differently.
Indeed my fears were realised immediately as I discovered on my consult that my GP has turned into a full-blown Covidian. We instantly had a pretty major difference of opinion, I think his stance on the vaccine issue is criminally negligent, frankly.
Basically his position is that any Covid vaccine adverse events are just coincidences or just in the minds of the people suffering them. When I pointed out to him I personally know people very sick from the vaccine, he pronounced that was simply not possible. I was quite offended, he suddenly went from treating me as if I had some credibility to treating me as if I had none at all.
Nonetheless, that’s not what I was there to discuss, so I pressed on with the treatment requirements I had. After some blood tests, a colonoscopy was recommended and the process initiated with my nearby hospital’s gastro ward.
On 17 March I went along to Armadale Hospital only a little nervous, I’ve stayed away from the medical system, so this was going to be my first time under sedation/unconscious. Other than that, I didn’t expect anything untoward whatsoever.
All my friends told me the prep work was the worst part of it. I endured that without much complaint, it wasn’t so bad. I did everything that was asked of me and all seemed well.
Well I was in for somewhat of a shock.
I came home after the procedure in the late afternoon, everything seemed fine. They’d removed two polyps and sent one off for a biopsy, but everything appeared quite routine. My mum had come and picked me up and after she stayed for a bit of tea, she went home.
I started feeling not that great.
Have you ever bled a lot? I mean, not a cup or two, but serious amounts of blood?
I went to the loo, and thought “wow, that’s a lot of blood, but I guess I just had surgery on my butt”.
I started feeling even worse.
I went to the loo again shortly later, this time, there was so much blood. So, so much blood.
I came out and said to my wife - “I don’t know what’s going on, but if I keep losing blood at this rate I might end up needing some help”.
Prophetic words, as it turned out.
I stood up to go to the loo again a little later, my guts felt horrible and there was an unholy churning going on like I’ve never experienced before.
I knew I was in trouble, but it was only a couple of steps to the hallway and I said to myself “I’ll just grab on to the wall here to steady myself”. It was only a step or two away.
That was the last thing I remember.
Next thing I knew I was looking at the ceiling and my wife’s face asking me if I was OK. She looked so worried, she asked me if I was alright. I sat up and felt a ringing in my head and instant weakness and dizziness, and just slumped back to the floor. I said “no, I’m not alright at all”. I was disoriented, my body was aching in a weird way and I felt like I might pass out again.
She asked me if I think I needed an ambulance and agreed this was a good idea. She called them and asked them to come out urgently.
I then proceeded to have what is probably the worst experience of my life.
As I lay there dizzy, the rumbling in my guts continued. I could feel liquid moving around inside of me. Then suddenly it just felt like something inside me gave way, and I lost complete control of my bowels. It started gushing out of me in huge quantities, I had no control at all.
My stomach roiled and gurgled as I lay there with my wife holding my hand. I’ve heard stories of ambulances in WA. Sometimes they can take hours to arrive. The thought that ran through my mind on the heels of that was “I’m not sure I’ll last that long”.
I started to panic a bit, I admit it. My consciousness seemed like it was a fragile thing, and I just lay there in the middle of this huge pool of spreading blood. First just my jeans, then as it continued, I could feel its warmth spreading up my back.
I felt so humiliated. I only got married a few years ago, this is not how I wanted my wife to see me die. I was basically continually “shitting my pants to death” in her presence and it felt awful, I kept apologising and explaining I couldn’t control it. Some part of me didn’t want to relinquish that shred of dignity that I’d just lost so spectacularly.
As time went by and I started to feel weaker, I started to feel cold, really cold. No, it’s not just a cliche, as it turns out.
I thought “you know what Pete, this might be the day”. I felt grateful for having such a wonderful, big life, but also incredibly sad. I only just met my wife a few years ago, and after a lifetime of broken hearts (mostly mine), she has been the most amazing romantic experience I have ever had and I want to be with her for the rest of my life, however long that may be. It seemed unjust that we should be pulled away from each other so soon, there’s so much time I still want to spend with her.
I told her that if this was goodbye, I just wanted her to remember that I love her. What else can you say in a situation like that? She sobbed and got back on the phone to the ambulance and asked them to hurry up. They wouldn’t say exactly when they were coming, but she told them she was really worried about me because of the amount of blood.
It seemed like the bleeding had slowed down to a degree, but I was still mightily relieved when I saw the ambulance arrive in the driveway.
After being stripped by the ambos and a towel wedged hard between my buttocks (to hopefully stem the bleeding), I was loaded up and they started to try to stabilise me right there. I responded well to fluids, and we exchanged a couple of jokes (I told them “this isn’t my usual Thursday night you know”).
They decided to take me to Royal Perth (oh no!) and after a weirdly long ride looking at the ceiling of an ambulance, I arrived at their ER. They spoke to my wife and explained what was happening and suggested she follow them to RPH in her own car so she had a ride back home.
So I got to RPH and some very stuffy bespectacled nurse immediately started questioning how much blood I’d lost and suggesting there was some sort of exaggeration or something happening. But after a chat with the ambos and confirming that I’d definitely fallen unconscious they admitted me.
I spent about 3 hours in their triage area, which was an interesting experience for me indeed. While I was there I saw probably about 3 Doctors and goodness knows how many nurses, who all grabbed me, poked me, prodded me, stuck fingers up my butt, took samples from me and so on. I felt like a test subject.
Some of the other patients in there were screaming in pain, and some of them were very upset. It was a dramatic place to be, in the very worst way. The nurses did a decent job but you could see they found it difficult to deal with some people’s demands.
A lot of ambos were hanging around the triage area, for a long time. Mostly chatting. I’m sorry to say but I was listening in a bit and my impressions of them after listening in were not favourable. I won’t get into too many specifics, but I will say, I think there’s a drug problem going on in that profession. Meth, it looks like.
I kept asking for my wife, knowing she was only a few metres away in the ER waiting area. They kept saying “yep no problem we’ll go get her” but nothing happened for at least a couple of hours. Eventually I prevailed on a personable young Doctor to please for the love of god go get her so I can let her off this hook and tell her to go home and get some sleep.
My heart jumped when I did see her, I sat up even though I had all this stuff hanging out of me (drips on BOTH arms??). It felt so good to see her again, last time we were alone together, we were both thinking this might be it for me. To feel her warm hand in mine after that feeling, knowing I was gonna make it, it was bliss.
So she went home, and I stayed. They eventually decided to wheel me off to the gastro ward and so I was wheeled into a dark room which already had a patient sleeping in it, so I tried to be quiet. The nurse was very nice.
I tried to get some sleep, I don’t think I got much at all. I was a bit agitated by everything that had happened, but eventually exhaustion took hold, and I ended up waking up really early in the morning.
I was told that the Doctors wanted to basically go in again and see where the bleeding was coming from and stem it. Seemed like a reasonable plan, and the only viable one, so of course I agreed. So in I went for another urgent colonoscopy, but not before a pretty traumatic enema. Some of the details I will spare you, let’s just say any dignity I had left was shredded completely over the couple of days I spent at RPH.
I actually woke up during the procedure this time, feeling sharp stabby feelings back there, I remember looking at a screen and thinking “oh that’s what I look like on the inside”. Weird, it’s only a half memory but it has really hung around, especially the memory of that stabby feeling.
They did the procedure that morning, initially indicating I might be able to go afterwards, but they then decided to hold me for another night for observation. Ah what a pain, I was exhausted and hungry and really just wanted to go home. But fair enough, I stayed the night.
The video you see at the beginning of this story is the experience I had at roughly 11.40 that Friday night. They have these trolleys that have the blood pressure monitoring and temperature monitoring equipment on it, right? They wheel them to your bedside, do the tests, write stuff down, and wheel it back off again.
So some demented nurse in the gastro ward decided that the particular trolley suitable for the task in the middle of the night was this one. As you can hear from about 14 seconds in, it makes a godawful noise as she wheels it around. Maybe I’m a suspicious guy, but it seems deliberate.
I didn’t react well when she wheeled that thing right up to my bed as I was sleeping. She feigned being baffled at my outrage but I think she was quite amused. That’s why I took the video. I could easily imagine her cackling sadistically as she wheeled the trolley away.
Oh, and here’s a picture of the ceiling above my bed.
It looks like a spatter of blood, faeces, or maybe even both. Thankfully it didn’t come from me, but as I said to one of the nurses before I departed “do you think it’s OK for that to be on the ceiling of a hospital? Is that hygienic, you think?”.
The people at RPH were at least nice, for the most part, I’ll give them that. But the place is run down, disorganised, and suffers from terrible communication issues. So by the time I was released the next afternoon, I couldn’t wait to get out of there. No disrespect to RPH or the good people working there, but it’s not somewhere you’d want to spend much time.
My roomie deserves a mention, Rob. He said this to me shortly before I left -
“Well, I hear that you, uh….lost your virginity back there several times this weekend. Only question I have for you is - did you like it?”
I hope he’s feeling better. We had a good chat.
I caught a cab home and was mightily relieved to have a shower and kick back on my own couch and cuddle my wife.
There’s nothing as good as home when you’re wounded.
Washed up on a lonely island
Before all this happened, I’d been working on a little musical slideshow. I was going to set it to the ABBA song “I still have faith in you” (cheesy I know, forgive me). I was going to set it to a bunch of inspiring moments in the freedom movement over the past couple of years. It was going to be my little gift back, to try to inspire/uplift people and make them see that even though we’ve struggled and not won every battle, we’ve achieved so much.
I still believe those things to a degree, but my reaction to seeing that folder when I got back home was just a contemptuous snort.
Something happened to me that night, bleeding out on the floor of my home, feeling that warmth spreading up my back. I lost something. It didn’t hit me straight away, but I felt it shortly after I got to the hospital.
Cynicism, bitterness, and resentment. I’d been treated so poorly, with such bad outcomes, and I literally felt like I had the shit kicked out of me. It’s actually difficult to describe how low and bleak I felt, but the opening lyric of this article was an attempt to capture it.
Something I’ve discovered in my travels insuring professionals is that most people aren’t very good at their job. Sorry, it’s true. It’s amazing how many people will seriously ask me to go and get them insurance, and the form I’ve asked them to complete is a mess, or missing information, or illegible - and it’s professional liability insurance they want me to get for them.
The truth is that probably only 3 in 10 people are truly good at their job. Another 4 are passingly competent on a day to day basis (but useless if you ask them to do something “outside the box” or actually think about something). 2 are more or less useless, and another 1 is potentially destructive in some way. That’s my honest assessment, harsh as it may be.
But it never occurred to me that I could be subject to such catastrophic incompetence from a Doctor, so that my “routine procedure” would turn into a life-threatening event.
I was bitter, and I’m still bitter. Why so bitter? Because I know about these types of events and I know that there’ll be no justice or anything of the sort for me. The Doctor who did this to me will continue on her incompetent medical journey with no consequence, and my suffering will not be acknowledged and no responsibility will be taken. I’ve seen this all before.
So I’ve come home and I feel terrible. Bleak, weak and like I’m stranded on some weird island, disassociated from the rest of the world, feeling like life is just passing me by. It became most apparent the first time I went to go to the shops. I hadn’t moved around much for a couple of days, and after a short amount of moving around at the shops, I realised just how bad this was going to be. I thought I was going to pass out for a start. Secondly I felt like I wanted to cry. Thirdly I looked at other people with new eyes, and I despised them.
This is not like me at all.
The lights seem so bright, the world feels so…aggressive and unyielding. Even the wind and sun on my skin feels different, I feel sensitive somehow, ordinary sensations almost feel like pain. It’s a very difficult thing to describe.
After a few weeks of me complaining of feeling absolutely terrible and being unable to resume exercise, they finally get around to checking out my blood iron levels…only to discover that yes, my blood iron levels are critical. I’ve now had an infusion, and it did help a bit, but I’m still left at about 20%, I reckon.
As a gauge, before all this calamity befell me, I could do about 8 at Jacob’s Ladder without too much problem, and on a good session I’d do 16 (which was what I did for many years). That’s about an hour of climbing stairs, and it keeps you in pretty reasonable fitness shape from a cardio perspective, that’s for sure.
I can now do 2. Well, today I did 3. But it gives you an indication of where it left me from a physical perspective. I feel like a ghost. Where before I was a mighty viking type dude, I now feel frail and weak. It’s a terrible thing for a bloke like me to go through, no joke.
My mind also seems to be having difficulty forgetting what happened, I assume it’s trauma-related, since I’ve woken up many times in the middle of the night, re-living the whole experience, from start to finish, feeling incredibly anxious, so much so it becomes a physical sensation. It’s easing off recently, but it was really bad for a while.
When you’re iron deficient you also don’t get good sleep, as it turns out. So you tire easily, and don’t get good sleep.
How long to recover from an event like this? Optimistic estimates are around 2 months but it’s not uncommon for it to take up to 12 after a major bleeding event. I’m just grateful I didn’t get a transfusion for all the obvious reasons.
So I’m working on it, but it’s been slow going, and some days I can’t do much at all before I just feel like collapsing again. Behind all this my horror at seeing how things continue to unfold in the world mean I want little to do with the rest of you right now, if I’m honest. Seems like humanity has become even more mean, petty, and irresponsible.
Believe me, I’m grateful to be alive. Mostly for the reason that I get to spend more time with my beautiful wife. But there’s been some damage done to me, and even I don’t really know the true extent of it yet.
So I’ve gone from feeling like “I still have faith in you”, to something more like this. I can’t get this song out of my head recently, it fits my mood so well.
Want to be free…
Want to be free…
It will last forever…
Eternally…
The Blame Game
So who is to blame? The answer should be obvious, shouldn’t it? Obviously you’ve gone along to the Docs and after their handling of you, you’ve had a major medical episode. It’s their fault, right?
One of my friends hit me with this take on it, which I hadn’t thought of, and it really made me laugh. He asked me if Mark McGowan had anything to do with what happened to me, with a suspicious look on his face. I hadn’t thought of that, maybe you’re onto something there, Craig!
“You can sue them, right?? You should totally sue them!!” is something I’ve heard a lot since this happened. That’s very nice, I appreciate the sentiment, but it’s not going to happen, and I can tell you why.
To litigate for compensation you need a cause of action, and a loss. Arguably I have the first, if you accept at face value that an outcome like that must have involved some negligence. But what about the second?
What’s my loss? I haven’t lost any days of work, because I don’t have any work. I will make a full recovery (eventually), and I am not disabled from the event. I effectively don’t have a loss worth litigating. I could claim for mental trauma of course, but given I have a pre-existing PTSD diagnosis, going down this road would mean an attempt to separate the pre-existing condition from what has been added to it from this event. That process is not worth going through for the pittance I would get at the end of the process, assuming I win.
It’s that simple. Believe me I think it sucks too, but those are the facts and I know them because I’ve dealt with plenty of stuff like this in my work.
So I’ve of course lodged a complaint. I lodged a complaint with Armadale Hospital and they don’t think there’s anything wrong with what happened to me, apparently. Oh well, never mind, carry on and all that.
I’ve also lodged a complaint with Department of Health, but remain convinced that I’m not going to get justice from a bunch of heartless bureaucrats with every incentive to look after their own.
There’s not going to be any justice, compensation or anything of that ilk over this. As I say, the Doctor gets to continue their life as if nothing happened, and I just have to suck it up and recover from this injury.
It’s a bitter pill to swallow, but it’s mine to swallow.
I also note that this incident has brought out the inevitable victim-blaming that Aussies do. It’s so infuriating, this has happened to me before and this time was no different. Apparently I’m to blame for this incident, in some way.
How am I to blame?
I went to Armadale Hospital, you see. People tell me I should have gone to Charlie’s, or Fiona Stanley, or whatever. I guess it makes them feel better thinking that their strategy of dealing with things is going to avoid an outcome like mine.
Well for a start that’s utter bollocks, and just to prove my point - the Doctor concerned doesn’t usually even work at Armadale Hospital, but a far more prestigious hospital.
So…sorry not sorry, this could totally happen to you too.
It could happen to anyone, and it’s not my fault this happened. You put your faith in a Doctor you’ve often never met before when you get this sort of thing done, and just hope for the best. That’s just the way this stuff works. I did that, and lost that bet. It’s not my fault that I took the bet, or that I lost.
Sometimes life is simply a case of - shit happens.
The Road to Recovery
For the first few weeks after this incident I was advised to not do anything strenuous at all. So there’s been a lot of couch time. I haven’t felt like being on my computer, firstly I just don’t feel very comfortable. Secondly I haven’t really felt like interacting with people much until fairly recently.
The day I got home I parked in front of my xbox and fired up a game I’d been meaning to check out, Valheim. It’d just been released on Xbox. It was about a viking that finds himself…in a strange world in the afterlife…it was just so fitting. It’s a brutal survival game, but it’s brilliant and deep and absolutely huge, you can just get totally lost in it.
So that’s what I’ve been doing a lot of. It’s a game intended for multiplayer co-op play, but I’ve just been solo-ing it. It’s my little world and I escape into it and I often don’t come out again for hours. This serene image gives a glimpse of its beauty, but it’s just as often brutal and heartless.
I have no doubt eventually I’ll come to associate this game with this event and never want to play it again, but for now, it’s a good escape.
After seeing what I went through, my wife has been particularly protective of me and pretty much wouldn’t let me do much physical at all for a while. I’ve actually gradually had to wean her off that, it’s understandable, but I do need to start pushing myself a bit physically.
So in the last few weeks I made a return to Jacob’s ladder. At first I just did 1 for a few days. It’s a pretty epic climb and I didn’t want to collapse in public on my own (ambulances are expensive!). I’ve been doing 2 for a while now, and just yesterday and today I did 3. Yesterday I also managed a decent amount of gardening, which is the other activity I am trying to work on a bit. I find I can do a decent amount of gardening if I just sit down as much as possible. It’s when I stand/squat I start having issues.
I’m on the road, and I’m gradually getting better. I’m well enough to write this article, which has been bubbling in my head for weeks. I’m back on Twitter, trolling the 77th Brigade and giving the Australian government the stick it deserves.
I’m coming back, but ever so slowly. I can tell I have a long road in front of me just to get back to where I was.
So I hope this explains my lack of activity, and I trust everyone will be a little forgiving if I either don’t contribute all that much, or even if I’m maybe a little grumpy on Twitter. I’m only human after all and I’ve been through the wringer, there’s no doubt about it, this is a massive setback for me.
For all the people who told me I didn’t deserve to get healthcare because I didn’t get vaccinated, I guess they got their wish come true, because I didn’t get healthcare. I also tip my hat to those who still wish me ill, they got what they wanted too.
But I’m not done yet, and I’ve got a lot still left in me! I have a feeling that in time, I’ll come back from this stronger than ever.
I’m just struggling to find any lessons learned from me in this, other than my previously stated “shit happens”. Makes me wonder why the universe handed me this one to endure, perhaps that will come clearer in time.
The below song is the song I most associate with healing, it is about the rune “Urur” which is about a wild primal force (in nature) that give us energy/healing. It’s both a healing and victory song for me. Highly recommend it if you are wounded, either mentally or physically.
Hopefully that healing turns into a victory for me soon.
If you’ve made it this far, thanks for reading! A big part of writing this for me was to get it off my chest and get some closure.
At the end of it all, I do still have faith in you.
The perils of Western Australia's public health system