Guests, wellness garden, happy moments, a disappointment

Top: Martijn with Merle and Sjoerd Soeters, Sunday, October 21, 2007, azM (Academic Hospital Maastricht
Middle: Herman Rouw and Ton Schaap prepare a feast for Suze after a day of visiting Martijn at hospital, Friday, October 19, 2007
Below: After Ton and Herman help Susan purchase and transport plants, here is the resulting evergreen, winter healing garden to aid Martijn's wellness when he returns home.

Today was one of those days that caught us off-guard. Somber reminders about what “progress” means in such circumstances. Martijn had literally hopped out of bed the other day and was off to the races as the video clip from the previous entry shows; somewhere with all this surprising forward movement there were the words of his surgeon warning that he could experience swelling in his legs from the drainage of lymph fluids. (He had been hooked up to a drainage system for his wounds for almost three weeks but those were removed earlier in the week.)

Martijn was off on one of his very long walks around the hospital showing off its mainly regional (and impressive) art collection to our dear friends, Sjoerd and Merle Soeters, who came to see us from Amsterdam. Just prior to taking this walk he mentioned to me that his thigh wound was swollen, (where the plastic surgeon removed his grisailles muscle and harvested some skin to transplant over his posterior amputation). I asked to see and didn’t like the look of the swelling at all, but off he went showing his off not only the art collection and architecture of the hospital, but his spunk and resolve as well. Unfortunately, the swelling was indeed pooled lymph fluid that he was warned about. By the time we got him back to his bed the wound sprouted like a fountain and when I left the hospital Martijn was laying unattended in a pool of this unsavory liquid. This wound which is over nine inches long had opened over an inch. I really didn’t want to leave but Martijn insisted I go. I left with a sinking feeling about the incident – both the physical element and the almost total lack of medical care.

As always, Martijn bravely accepted what seemed to me like too little measures to address this situation. It took quite some time before the nursing staff finally cleaned his bedclothes and the wound, placing a colostomy bag over it to collect the fluids. This will be the solution he has to accept for the entire evening. To me it seems crude and rather unprofessional. At the best of times hospitals in the Netherlands are understaffed; the weekends make me cringe. Ironically, our new general practitioner, Dr. Bom, postponed Martijn’s release from the hospital on Saturday, when he was originally scheduled. Thank goodness. I wouldn’t have known at all how to handle this situation even though I’m not pleased with the hospital’s treatment. I’m afraid of wound infection and who knows what else. Now we’ll have to see what tomorrow brings.

One step forward, two steps back? Or two steps forward, one step back? I’m not sure how to read this but nevertheless, I feel Martijn is better off still in hospital and fingers crossed that this situation is readily treated.

I intended to write happily about the round of anticipated guests who graciously visited with us this weekend, Ton Schaap and Herman Rouw, making a roundtrip from Amsterdam, on Friday returning Saturday and today the Soeters, but for the moment, this entry will have to suffice. I feel queasy in my tummy and very sad and tired. I realize that I cannot grow too dependent upon “progress”, but how do I manage? What straw should I grasp? I’ll try hard to remember my meditations and living for each moment, but as I’m not a zen master, this isn’t always in my grasp.