The bad news is that it took an ambulance at 11:00 pm and four hours of testing to determine that she was just overwhelmingly ravaged by the ordinary flu (despite having a flu shot!).

She passed out last evening and was unresponsive to virtually everything for a few minutes.  And that kinda shook my confidence in our previous-but-amateur diagnosis, I am afraid.  That previous diagnosis (“It is just a flu hitting hard after surgery) was later confirmed by a doctor friend who took the trouble to stop by and check her vitals earlier yesterday.

Still, a limp person lying comatose on a moho floor is disturbing to say the least.  My confidence in it being ‘just the flu’ was shaken.  I cracked.  “Hmmmmm….it is very likely what we all think it is but if we are wrong, this is NOT the time or place to make that kind of error.  I’m gonna play it safe.  Hello?  911?”

They asked all the Covid-type questions and, surprisingly, those questions were all answered in the affirmative thus leading me to believe that MAYBE it was Covid!  But there was ONE question we could answer properly and that was, “Have you recently done any traveling?”  I said, ‘No’ because I thought they meant China, Japan, Italy or Iran…but we HAD briefly traveled to Vancouver to get the moho (in and out) so my answer was NOT quite accurate.  Still, they took her and ran every test known to science.  With the exception of the flu symptoms, she is perfect in every way.

But that is obvious to anyone who knows her.  

So, what is the upshot of all that?  Well, the surgeon was a genius.  The knee operation was a total success.  Sal healed from that remarkably well and did not aggravate her wound in the fainting episode (which the medics refer to as a ‘syncope’ incident).  The Physiotherapy was useless and detrimental to her health – not beneficial.  The facility was NOT clean and we are both convinced she got the flu from there.  The ambulance crew were very good.  The emergency team was also very good.

And I am guessing that nothing is the worse for wear from that unexpected outing except our sense of well-being….which is rapidly returning to normal.

All’s well that ends well.

I just hope this incident recedes into the past sooner rather than later.  We are much happier looking down our noses at the city than relying on it.  But, truth be told, with the exacerbating and egregiously delinquent (in my opinion) Physio department excepted, the new CR hospital did a very good job – TWO times out of three is not all bad.

Lesson to be learned.  Trust your instincts.  Both of us did NOT trust the physio lab from the get go.  We even acted on that lack of confidence to a lesser extent by doing our own ‘wiping’ of handles and equipment using alcohol wipes.  But we were NOT diligent enough about it and paid the price.  Well, Sal paid the price.