Eeeeeeeeee-nough!

Romance!

Adventure!

Excitement!

Spectacle!

Nah.

More like “Pissed Off!”

Okay…. I like this poster because my name is on it.

Never mind that “Kim” is a guy.

Errol Flynn, no less!

I really should see this movie, now that I think about it.

I’ve had a thing for Dean Stockwell ever since “Quantum Leap”. And don’t even get me started on Scott Bakula…I’d need a whole ‘nuther blog for him!

This poster pretty much sums up how I felt while John was deep in the propofol haze of OR.

Except I kept my shirt on.

******************************

It started with a call from my daughter in Portland.

I began reiterating all the frustrations of the past 24 hours. The more I talked, the angrier I got. I began, well, ranting, loudly, my voice echoing in the empty hospital lobby.

And then I realized. My daughter was not the one who needed to hear this.

I wanted the nursing supervisor. And I wanted her NOW.

I walked over to the hospital operator, who no doubt was privvy to my emotional state, being about 20 feet away from “the ranting family member” and asked, with firmness (and a politeness I didn’t feel) for the nursing supervisor to be paged.

She came within ten minutes.

Aw geeze! Not only had I worked with her in that hospital’s ER 6 years before, she had been the one to sign me out the night I had chest pain and had come in to work extra the night John had been admitted. She moonlighted as supervisor on the weekends.

The world of EMS is very small.

She’s the type of nurse who has a tough-as-nails attitude and look, but would literally fight for her patients if she had to.

We talked for over half-an-hour.

I told her my frustrations. The interminable waits. How fourteen hours from ER door to med/surg room was inappropriate. Why waiting one hour for pain medication was unacceptable. Why a 51-year-old man with abdominal pain radiating to his back doesn’t get seen by a doctor for three hours. Or get any pain medication for four. How I could not see his lab work but received report from his roommate and all the other patients were able to hear it.

I told her a four-bed ward was not acceptable. How was anyone supposed to rest? How eleven people had crowded into that tiny space that day. The risk for iatrogenic infection. Good ol’ HIPPA.

A.J. the supervisor (not her real name) was quite frank with me, probably because I was an nurse (finally!).

The night John was admitted, the ER (that hellacious, busy, trauma-based ER where I worked for a whole two months and left because of the nasty environment - and I’m talkin’ the nurses here) was short two nurses and they were literally having people come in for 2-3 hour bits and pieces of shifts.

The nurse in me understood, but it’s funny, it doesn’t seem to matter when you are the family member/patient.

I’ll have to remember that.

Also, the ER docs are not allowed to write holding orders because the hospitalists want to see the patient in the ER, hence the nine-hour wait before we saw him.

For ten minutes.

John had been diagnosed with gallstones at approximately 1700. He was an automatic admit, especially with the hyperglycemia/newly discovered diabetes.

The ER doc should have written holding orders then - just basic diagnosis, bathroom privledges and NPO until evaluated. John could have been evaluated by both the hospitalist and the surgeon upstairs in a room. That’s how my ER does it and door-to-pt room is approximately 4 hours.

At this local-hospital-with-trauma-center, 14 hours ER waits were the norm. Ah, that’s another reason I don’t work there anymore, even though it is 3 miles from my home.

I should have known. It happened to me at the same hospital in 1990. Sixteen years later it’s no better? But that’s for another post.

I felt much better after A.J. and I talked. Although, she basically said the nursing care on this particular floor was not the best in the west, if I got her drift.

Great.

Oh, and by-the-way, all John had to do was sign a paper and I could have had access to the entire chart.

******************************

The surgery did not take long and soon Dr. God-the-Spitfire-Surgeon came out to let me know I could come in and see John in recovery.

She said that he should have been much sicker from the way the gallbladder looked on removal (UPDATE: two weeks later, at his follow-up appointment, John was told it was gangrenous - dodged that bullet! Good thing I was sitting and blogging when I heard the news or I would have had a syncopal episode on the spot!).

John has no memory of recovery - in fact he thought he had not even gone to surgery yet.

Oh, the joys of propofol.

Which means he has no recollection of the wonderful anesthesiologist giving him a great pep talk on taking care of himself so he could enjoy retirement, or, keep going the way he is and dying in 5-10 years! I heard it, so I was able to reiterate it to John, but I wonder if anesthesiologists know that their patients don’t remember what they say.

And that the families are eternally grateful for their expertise.

Now I figure I have the surgeon in front of me. Exhausted and writing her post-op orders and notes. I’d like to have a copy of the lab work, I say.

She can’t give me one. HIPPA. She’s not an employee of the hospital, so no-can-do.

I. Am. Going. To. Scream. Not at the doc. I’m sick of this bureaucratic S*** that won’t give me, a health care professional, access to my husband’s freakin’ labwork!

Like I’m going to use his bilirubin against him in a court-of-law or announce it to the world or use it against him the next time we have an argument!

Geeze.

After Dr. God-the-Spitfire said her goodbyes, the recovery room nurse with whom I had shared some, shall we say, nursing class experiences, wanted to know if I’d like to see, as a fellow nurse “how our facility puts their charts together”. Wink. Wink. And it happened to be open to lab section. Wink. Wink.

And darn it she accidentally made an extra copy for the floor! Ooops, better put it in the special bin for “patient confidentiality”!

Never heard my purse described that way before.

I won’t give the numbers, but let’s just say the “liver test” that was elevated was John’s bilirubin and it had doubled overnight, hence the decision to do surgery that day.

******************************

A.J. had done some work while John was in surgery.

The next day I found him in a double room, with no roomate, at the end of the hall. He had no roommate the entire time he was there. She must have said something to the nurses up there because when I came to visit the next night I heard whispers at the nursing station as I walked down the hall.

Or, maybe I’m just paranoid.

I still plan to write the CEO with a cc to the ER Medical Director, the Director of Nursing and the Nurse Manager of the floor John was on.

The medical care was perfect. 50% of the nursing care was perfect. But the system there needs some major improvements.

And yes, I have the names of the great nurses (and the ER doc) who introduced themseves and made things easier when they could.

I’ll start off the letter with their names.

After all, ya gotta give props when they are due, even if the situation as a whole was frustrating.

Next: Gotta Get Movin’!