Wednesday, July 25, 2007

Hospital rant...

I have to get this out, so if you don't want to hear me complain feel free to click on by. You will not hurt my feelings.

The one thing I hate worse than anything is incompetence. Peoples incompetence at their jobs and how it effects other people. I think I mentioned that I took Mom to chemo last Friday already, well before she started chemo they gave her the option of putting in a picc port. It's a contraption that is surgically implanted into her left upper arm so that they don't have to find a vein every week and stick her. They use what can only be described as a giant thumb tack to access her vein and get started. Hers has hurt since the day they inserted it. She's had horrible pains down her arm and it's only been used once. Well Friday we went and they couldn't get into the port. She held my hand and squeeze so tight I almost started crying. Second nurse came and again, no luck. It's very hard to feel your mother go through such agony and keep from kicking the nurse right in the face, let me tell you. Finally they determined that the port had flipped over and they were essentially trying to stick the needle into the hard plastic/metal backing...that's why it wouldn't go in. So we made an appointment to go back into the hospital for another procedure to flip it back right side up.

That was yesterday. I couldn't go because the new bed was coming to be installed, so my 2 sister's went. She had to be there at 10am. At 11:20 they take her downstairs where she proceeds to sit for 3 1/2 hours on the gurney waiting. My sister calls about 3:45 to say they called and they are just now taking her back for surgery. Turns out they had emergencies and kept thinking they'd would be ready in 20 mins and wouldn't let the gal bring her back upstairs to wait in her room. Finally she wakes up and they say they did NOTHING! The left arm is twisted multiple times and that's why it hurt so badly. They were going to move it to the right arm and that arm has horrid veins and can't be used. SO the doctor decided that he didn't feel comfortable to do the fix on the left arm since the other guy did it first, so her just closed her up and sent her BACK! to wait for the original doctor when he comes back from vacation. WHY did he even attempt it if he was going to punk out and throw up his hands? Why put her through that? He just didn't feel like doing it. Hope he likes NOT getting paid.

She's so depressed now I think they have finally just about broken her spirit. She went into this very strong and ready to go and time after time, stupid doctors, stupid office workers and stupid mistakes have been made that just keep beating her down. At some point she's going to just give up and once that happens she will be defeated. A positive attitude is very important in this whole fight and little by little they are just beating it out of her. She feels horrid, we tried to explain that they were going slow with the chemo and just because she felt fine the first 2 weeks she wouldn't always feel that great. Now with 3 weeks of poison in her...{lets face it that's what chemo is...poison} she feels sick, tired and can't sleep. I have to beg her to take the nausea pills, she thinks it's better to just tough it out. Her hair is coming out in handfuls and even though she said it wouldn't bother her, it is...as we knew it would.

I am just so mad that one more incompetent jerk had to lay on another layer of pain and frustration. Worst yet I can't do anything about it...but boy would I love to give some people a piece of my mind. But I have her to think about and that's worse. Just makes my blood boil. Thanks for listening if you got this far. I'm going back to try and finish this quilt. Quilting is always a good place to retreat to!

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