Physiotherapy

by

Anna McDonald

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Time to go to physiotherapy. The transporter will be here in five minutes. Into a wheelchair my nurse's assistant places me and I am now ready to be placed in the hall where I wait for 15 minutes. There's been a mix-up as to who takes whom to physio. "Please, I need a drink of water. I feel faint." Request granted after a five-minute wait.

Finally the transporter arrived and we fly down to the elevator which takes us down to the tunnel corridor of the hospital. (Bone surgery is up on the fifth floor of the old part of the hospital.) Racing in and out of a maze of corridors we finally reach the elevator that will take us to the second floor. Around another corridor and we enter the physiotherapy room. There is another five-minute wait until the therapist comes to assess me for the day. In ten minutes, I am back in line in the corridor waiting for a different transporter to take me back along the same route to the elevator. But today is Saturday. Some elevators are shut down and so around more corridors we race to find one in operation.

At last we have reached my room. By now my head is swimming, my stomach, churning. Just in time we reach me bed. It takes three staff members to control my retching body and flailing arms and get a pan to catch everything that would no longer stay in my stomach.

This was only one of the many unpleasant experiences I had at the Winnipeg Health Science Centre where I had knee replacement surgery last fall.