chapter 12

With the new dressing technique, Jane’s wound was healing well. It was a sealed environment, so she was allowed out on day leave. Her husband brought her electric buggy onto the ward to that he could take her down to the car in the car park. They went to the supermarket to do some shopping. Jane buzzed along in her buggy, indicating what she wanted while her husband followed pushing the trolley. She told him, the hospital food was not very good. The portions were so small! She did not tell him she was supplementing this with two course meals from the restaurant (twice a day) and topping up with snacks from the hospital shop.
At home, she said she wanted good food that she could not get in hospital.
Her husband obliged her, serving her a massive plate of fried rice, with pieces of chicken, ham, pork, prawns, vegetables and scrambled egg.
Unfortunately, she had to go back to her hospital bed that evening, but she did not mind. She would tell everyone about taking her new vacuum partner to the supermarket!

Her trips out became more frequent, then extended. She could probably have been discharged and come back for dressing changes, but this type of dressing was so new! If she went to the regular out patients department, they would not have the supplies, the knowledge or experience with the vax. The sister decided to keep her bed on the ward for now.
The ward did not have the same external pressures to discharge early to get more patients in. Most patients came in as an emergency for a kidney from a cadaver donor. The number of organs they were offered was solely dependent on the supply. They might transplant one patient in a month, or they could do nearly 30. The average was about 140 a year. In addition to that, they would schedule one living related transplant a month. During lean times, the surgeons would be involved with dialysis access procedures, research, follow ups in the renal out patients unit, or they would be busy on the liver unit.
From the nursing point of view, empty beds meant taking borders from other wards - surgical or medical. They could not accept anyone with an obvious infection due to their other patients being immunosuppressed, but there was always the chance that they would be sent someone frail and elderly, who needed a lot of care and a lot of social input. It was better to have one of their own patients blocking the bed, on home leave. If there was an influx of patients overnight, they could always discharge a home leave patient, use the bed and see the patient who was on home leave as an out patient on the ward.

Jane was enjoying having the best of both worlds! She had all her husband’s loving attention when she was at home, and she got the best nursing care when she was in hospital. In addition, she could keep up with hospital gossip, see how the other patients were doing and stay reasonably busy.