Day 7 - hospital

My wife had a pleural effusion. Of course we didn't know that yesterday - we didn't even know there was a membrane around the lungs (called the pleura) that usually contains 10ml (1/3 of an ounce) of fluid. They drained off 1.4 litres (47 ounces). There was more but they said draining more than 1.5 litres at one time could damage the lungs.

Her only symptoms were a cough and shortness of breath that had lasted more than a month. In February her GP referred her for a CT scan at the hospital, but they are always backed up and they scheduled it for end of March. 

Of course, that was before Covid-19 and the lockdown. We expected them to call any day to postpone the scan, but they didn't. Instead, they waited until the day before the scan to call and cancel it. 

The GP was very annoyed, made a few phone calls, and the next thing we heard was that it was going to be done at a private hospital the next day. That was Tuesday morning. Tuesday afternoon the hospital rang to make an appointment for the pleural effusion the next day.

We arrived at 930am and the parking lot was completely full! We ended up parking on the street, but thankfully the parking wardens had been deemed "non-essential" so you can park all day for free. 

We went inside expecting a zoo but it was very quiet. Again, because NZ implemented lockdown much earlier than other countries, we didn't have thousands of cases - in fact, today's count was 708 infected across the whole country. The hospital had braced for a tsunami and barely got its toes wet. 

(A friend who works there later told me  the parking lot was jammed because public transit was reduced, and parking was free, so the staff had started driving in.)

My wife had to get a before and after xray, before and after blood tests, plus the actual operation, and normally this would have taken several days. Because it was so quiet, they got it all done on the same day and we were out by 4pm.

I should note that cough and shortness of breath are two symptoms of Covid-19, so last week my wife had called the NZ Healthline to see if she should get tested. They told her they wouldn't test, regardless of symptoms, unless she had been out of country. Today our prime minister announced they had increased capacity for Covid-19 testing from 1500 to 5000 tests per day and would now test anyone with symptoms, not just people who had been abroad. I think it's fantastic to have a competent leader.

I also had to laugh at all the news stories which stated that everyone in New Zealand who had Covid-19 had contracted it overseas or from someone who had been overseas. As an old boss of mine used to say, "Be careful what you measure." Of course if you only test people who have been overseas, then everyone who tests positive has been overseas!! It will be very interesting to see how that skews over the next couple of weeks. 

Well that's end of week one of the lockdown, with three more weeks to go. I've actually been grocery shopping four times in the past eight days, so I need to manage that better. (Read: Send the kids to do it.)