THE REST OF THE STAY AT C.C.C.R HOSPITAL

I was admitted into Cape Coast hospital on a Sunday night, and I would be there until Tuesday afternoon. While I was admitted to the emergency ward, I was moved to the Men’s Ward by Monday morning, where most of the beds were full. I was in an area with three connected rooms and about ten patients.

In terms of my health, it was not until Tuesday morning that I could really eat anything, but gradually, my health was getting better. Over the course of those two days though, it was an ordeal.

Where do I begin?

There was the washroom. It was absolutely disgusting. The smell was dreadful, making you lose the urge to do whatever you came to do, and encouraging new – not so natural – bodily reactions. If you are faint of stomach, scroll down. The washroom had not been cleaned with more than a wet mop in the hallway (not even around the toilets) for a long time. Stains and pieces of all kinds of stuff were on the floor, toilets, and walls. There is no reason a washroom anywhere that people live should be like this. It’s not like this was Lebanon or a war zone, where dodging missiles is the priority and cleaning supplies are limited. There is a paid cleaner there everyday, and this is a hospital! I really felt it for the guy who was sitting over the toilet for much of the night.

The next morning I asked the cleaning lady to have a look at it and if she could clean it. She said “yes, no problem”. I saw her go in and out and she was in our ward for quite a while. When I went to the washroom later that day, I found that she had not done anything. That was Monday morning.

Tuesday morning, I saw her again and asked if she would clean it. She said “Yes”, but then started speaking in Fante to some other people and waving her hands. She was upset. After a couple of hours, she left the ward and had done nothing again.

That was too much for me, so when the doctor came to do his rounds, he spoke to me last. His first question was, “how is your condition?”

I replied, “I don’t want to talk about my condition, I want to talk about the condition of the washroom”.

I explained it, and then I asked him to accompany me in there. He did, but barely went in before he stepped out from the smell and the sight of it. He was quite concerned as he explained that if anyone had something like cholera, than the whole ward could be infected. While he was disgusted, I don’t know if he did anything, because he was all buddy-buddy with the cleaning lady when she came back around.

Because I was thinking of the guys that I started to bond with while staying there, I decided to take the issue to hospital management. I am not sure how it has been dealt with, but Sharon (a very nice nurse that I met at the hospital) contacted me and told me that she was personally following up with the situation.

Another crazy thing happened when a guy in the room on the other side of the wall from my bed passed away. I could not see his bed, but the guys across the room from me could. One of them, a guy named Emmanuel got really scared. He had never seen someone die before, and he started freaking out (note that he is in his 20’s). He was crying and begging to be moved, but there was only one open bed and that was the one from the man that had passed, and he was not going there. After pleading with the nurse, she just continued to tell him, “this is a hospital, it happens, people die”. Not very comforting.

Amidst all of this, he decided he wanted to sit near me. He picked up two chairs and set them up beside my bed. I got up to walk around, and when I came back he was stretched out on the chairs and had his head on my bed. To me, that was not cool, because he did not look well at all. I don’t know what he had, but I know that he was not bathing, and the nurses had no plan to bathe him (or even provide a towel, a rag and soap). I tried speaking with him and showing him some scriptures to explain that there was no reason to be afraid. Eventually, he went back to his bed. However, when I was checking out, the next day, he was visibly happy at the chance to take my bed. One funny thing about this all, is that the next day, he came near my bed and asked me “Tu parle francais?”…I then realized that all of the words I had spoken were not understood by him as he spoke French.

The third and last story that I will share was about the intravenous. Once I came-to, and the needle in the backside to make me sleep had worn off, I realized that my arm was red and swollen. When I told the orderly that it was hurting and swollen, he actually said to me, “your arm doesn’t hurt”. I was stunned at first, but then told him, “you can’t be serious. It’s my arm, and I am telling you that it is swelling and it hurts”. His reply was, “oh, you have a response for everything I say”. It was crazy. I showed him my arm, but he still did not take it seriously. Eventually, I asked the nurse on duty to look at it and she had a nurse in training came to change it. After she messed with the drip and had the bag spilling on the floor, I asked the other nurse to move the intravenous. After an hour or two, that one started to swell too.

So, they would try the next arm. That was a nightmare, as she kept pushing the needle in and out and even moved it in a circular motion. When that vein didn’t work she was about to try another, but I was not having that. I told her I needed a break for an hour before anyone tried to put another needle in me.

Being that I could still not hold down food, I could not take the necessary medication orally; so they had to use the intravenous. For the next hour, I didn’t sleep well as every footstep made me think that she was coming back early.

When she finally did come back, I began to pray as she made what was, in my mind, a final attempt. Thankfully it worked, though over a week and a half later I still have bruises and swelling of the veins that they used.

So those were the highlights of my stay in Cape Coast Central Region Hospital. One thing I can say is that I felt much better upon leaving then I had when I arrived. It got to the point though, that I felt I would get worse if I stayed.

As I left, it did not take long before I began to feel similar symptoms which concerned me. The plan was to take the prescriptions, and head to the Ackerson house in Accra where I could rest and recover under some good, loving care.

The mistakes that I made (eating too liberally and going back to normal before I fully recovered) will not be made again.