After a tumultuous 38-day hospital stay, Matt Robichaud is back at home with his dog, Sandy, and a gnarly scar.
Robichaud, 26, was admitted to the QEII Health Sciences Centre in early March for chronic pancreatitis after a three day bout of bad stomach pains. He was at the Victoria General site for most of his stay.
It ended up being a lot more serious than he anticipated. His pancreatitis necrotized and he needed to get emergency surgery which ended up with him losing around a third of his bowels and half his colon. He then had many complications post-surgery.
“To me, at the time, I thought I’d probably be back to work within two or three days, right? The doctors looked at me, and when I said it they laughed.”
Robichaud grew up in Campbellton, New Brunswick, but has lived all over Canada doing bartending and other odd jobs. He says he got caught up in the partying lifestyle and developed an alcohol abuse problem. While he always kept his jobs and had a roof over his head, the alcohol caused his health to deteriorate.
“I was never in control of the abuse itself, but I was always in control of my life, as far as I was concerned,” he says.
He says he had stopped drinking several months before he got admitted to the hospital.
For Robichaud, one of the worst things about his extended stay was the boredom. So he decided to have some fun with it.
He and his friend wrote a Yelp review about the hospital as if he was a guest in a five star resort. He also had a “hospital Tinder” account, which included pictures of hospital food, him showing his abdominal scar, and his naked backside in a hospital gown.
He says there were times he thought he would die. But for him, humour was a way to help him cope.
“After a while you start rolling with the punches. You can get upset at yourself, you can wish that you changed everything in your life and your past, but there’s literally nothing you can do.”
