The First Weekend of my hospital stay...

From my ER visit of 6 hours, I'm taken up to the 4^th floor, the “heart patient” unit because of my shortness of breath and lung pain...both of which have disappeared, since I'm in a controlled environment. I have all these sticky “pastie” things stuck to my chest, stomach, and other parts of my anatomy and these are connected to this little box, the size which is a bit larger than a card box. The biggest problem with this stupid thing is that the stickies don't always stay attached so the telemetry department calls the floor and sends someone in to check on the box...this was happening about every 2-3 hours, not much sleep for me!

The nurse in charge of my care when I came in,asked me about my meds and vitamins. Most of it was already in the computer from my last stay, so it was pretty easy, my just saying, “yes” except for vitamins. The last time I was in the hospital was for my knee surgery and the doc didn't want me taking anything that he didn't feel was necessary so I did update the area of vitamins, saying that I took 10,000 I.u. Of Vitamin D3 daily—which is 2 pills at home.

The next morning, the nurse comes in with my meds...and I find out that all they have it 1000 I.u. D3's. Yep, they brought me TEN vitamins! I refused, saying it just wasn't that important. Of course, the orders were never changed and every morning I would refuse those pills and the nurses thought it was pretty funny. The humor on it was lost on me after the third day and I will be checking my bill to see if I was charged for these, I'm sure I will be.

I was lucky enough to get the bed near the window on the 4^th floor and could look out upon the woods that are around Good Sam. The hospital campus backs up into the woods and the view allows me to remember the world outside...and not to jump OUT of the window. But, then, there were the vampires...

The vampires are obviously the blood sucking lab techs who show up in the middle of the night(and are perky! WTF?!?!?!? It's 3:30 a.m. And I haven't been drinking!). On the second night, I had one wake me up at 3:30 a.m. And another wake me up less than an hour later! I tell her that I just had labs. She says, “Oh, yeah, I'm supposed to do your labs at 6 a.m., but I was already on this floor so I checked with the nurse to see if I could get this done.” I asked her, “How about checking with the patient?!?!?!? I'd like to get some sleep—there's a rumour that sleep actually helps in the healing process!” She laughed. I was hooked up to the IV so I couldn't punch her.

I now have at least 3 doctors on my case: the ortho, my GP and infectious diseases maybe looking in, depending on what happens with the knee. He won't be called in unless they have to do surgery which they won't decide until Labor Day. My knee is doing something sort of funny...when I came in, it was swollen and a red around the knee cap and knee...now that redness is spreading to the inside of my leg, but the outside of my knee is now back to its normal color. As the weekend progresses, so does this redness—but as it progresses to the inside of my leg, it does retreat from the knee area...very strange and it does have the doctors and nurses puzzled. The term, “MRSA” was mentioned, but more as an afterthought than the real deal. The cellulitus is not spreading down or up the leg or to any other part of my body. If it was MRSA, it would not be contained to one part of my body. I'm on 500 ML of vancomycin, twice a day—a very strong antibiotic, but after 2 days, it doesn't seem to be having the effect that the doctors wanted. So they order another antibiotic, cy{mumble}cyclin...I just call it kickasscyclin—I'm now getting that for a day or 2 to see how that effects my fevers and swollen knee.

I also meet nicer nurses. The one asked me what I wanted to be my goals and I told her I like to sleep through the night! And, with that, Dawn changed my program....I love Dawn...

I think that some of the antics in the hospital will do better if they are different posts because of the “issues”...the vampires love to talk over the patients, dietary could mess up a wet dream, why am I only paired with patients that are over 70?!?!?!?!?

More to come---------

Mom gets out of hospital...and I go in!

On August 31, I left my mom at hospice about noon, feeling OK, except for my knee being sore. I had a total replacement done on this knee about 9 months ago and it'd been feeling OK, I think I slept on it wrong. The hospice rooms are very nice, but the sleeping arrangements for family members leave a bit to be desired. I'm looking forward to getting home and working on my neglected garden—I'm not going back to my mom's until tomorrow night so I actually get to sleep in my own bed for the first time in weeks!

I get home, get out of the car and now I'm noticeably limping...this is very strange. I decide to take my cane with me to go out to garden and within an hour I'm very glad I did. I can hardly put any weight on my left knee and its swelling! HUH? I decide to take it easy the rest of the day, thinking that maybe I twisted it or something.

The next morning, I'm on crutches and have a fever! I call a friend to first take me to my meeting(its too late to cancel and I'm the presenter) and then he drops me off at the hospital. I call my husband to let him know where I'm at, I tell the staff that my knee is bothering me and that I have a fever. They ask their “normal” questions: Shortness of breath? Some, but that's from my asthma. Chest pain? No, but I did have some lung/bronchial pain this morning—NEVER SAY THESE WORDS!!!

They put me in an examining room—first thing? EKG...why do I need an EKG for my knee? They ask me my name and birth date for each procedure. Temp is 103 degrees! The doc tells me that I will be getting a lung scan and some x-rays, and he thinks I should have a stress test when I get back to my doc. I tell him I had one a couple of years ago-my heart is fine. Well you just complained about chest pain...I said No, I complained about LUNG pain, not chest. “We have to be careful” were the last words....WHAT ABOUT MY KNEE!?!?!?!?!?!??! Oh...yeah...it looks like there's some infection and the tests we're doing will tell us more.

I'm wheeled into the Lung Scan machine—its actually kind of neat in a geeky sort of way. Its a smaller tube than an MRI, you're placed on a table, similar to taking x-rays or an MRI and they take “pictures” of your lungs—like a cat scan, but the lung scanner moves, not you. The staff rotates it around to get pictures of your lungs from front, both sides and back so they can tell if you have any real respiratory issues. Neat, huh? After the lung scan, they wheeled me into the old fashioned x-ray, but they had me stay on the gurney instead of changing to the table under the machine.

So, now I go back to the ER stall(there is room for 3 patients in each room with these nice little curtains between them to simulate privacy). I wait for the tests. I've now been here for oh...about 3 hours. They've decided that I'm able to eat and drink on my own. They've also found out that I DO NOT use a bed pan—I can't, just that simple. Plus, there are 2 male patients in the room with me and I just don't think I want to pee with 2 men right there, call me silly. So, the nurse wheels me down to the bathroom when I have to use it. Since they have a wheelchair, they don't want me using my crutches to assist with my getting on the toilet...they wheel me in as close as they can and then leave me there to sort of defend for myself. I pull the string when I'm done for assistance and  appears a nurse...or not.

They hook me up to the evil IV machine for fluids and some antibiotics and tell me that I'll be going up stairs fairly soon. They've also attached this heart telemetry thing to me which I really don't understand—I Don't Have Heart Problems! Probably one of the worst parts of this is how much the patient is ignored. After 2 normal EKG's, they still won't let it go!

The doc finally comes back in to tell me they think that I have cellulitus in my left knee, an infection of the skin, which I could have picked up in the hospital or nursing home that my mother has been in. Oh Great. They are trying to clear the infection with antibiotics and my normal doctors will see me tomorrow, both have been notified. OK then so 6 hours after I arrived...I'm taken up to the 4^th floor of Good Samaritan Hospital—wait, the 4^th FLOOR?!?!? That's not the right floor, that's the heart patient floor!!!! Yep, ladies and gentlemen, I'm now considered a “heart patient” with no symptoms, but they could show up at any time!!!!! AAAAARRRRGGGGGHHHHHH.

Mom's dinner and dance party

So...after the fun and laughs we had trying to get a room on Friday, mom was admitted to the hospital, I left the hospital at midnight, got home about 1/2 hour later and really wanted to just drink out of the bottle of Jamison...who needs a steenkin' glass?!? OK, I didn't but I really thought about it!

I didn't go to bed until about 2 a.m. and slept until 11 a.m.

I was woken by a terrific storm so I decided that I'd wait this out before trekking back to Joliet. It finally calmed down about 1p.m. And I set off to the hospital.

When I get there, the buzz is still about the storm, it seems that there was a power surge/outage that hit St. Joe's and has caused some issues, but no one is sure to what extent.

We had an uneventful afternoon and a great nurse. Mom's coloring is a bit better, but she's still not able to eat anything. The nurse tells me that the dietician saw mom in the morning and said that mom should get a tube feeding by the evening. Again, the wait begins...

About 6, I ask again and Super Julie(the good nurse) starts calling. It seems that the storm knocked out part of the pager system and even tho the hospital knew this, they didn't notify the departments(like doing a network broadcast--”Attention: pager system is trashed, go back to call center system”), staff didn't find out until they started calling around to different departments! Julie hadn't called earlier because the nutritionist had told her that mom probably wouldn't receive a feeding until 5 or 6. So, she calls dietary(which closes at 7) and they have no orders. The 2 nutritionists that had been on duty had left for the day and so she called the duty superintendent. The superintendent gets her the home phone number of the nutritionist and finds out that she had given the orders to the pharmacy at NOON! Sooo...what happened to it after that? Dietary already said they didn't have it and they were leaving in 10 minutes, pharmacy was already closed. The dietician said she would come in and get it herself if need be. She called the superintendent. My mother did get her g-tube feeding at 8 p.m,

Another cluster&*(! Avoided. But wait, there's more!

By Sunday, my mother has developed a lot of phlegm in her throat which is very hard for her to cough up because of all of the pain in her mouth, she is trying to cough it up, but its very painful...but even more painful is suctioning so she keeps at it. I notice a change in her breathing and tell the nurse so she can inform the doctor. The nurse does check and says her lungs seem to be clear. Then my sister shows up and fires me(not serious), since mom ended up back in the hospital under my watch. Hey, sounds good to me!

Monday I don't go in, but Tuesday I notice that mom is beginning to go down. When they suction, the mucous/phlegm is tinged with blood. Part of the reason is because of the sores, but it just keeps getting worse. One time she starts coughing and coughs up enough phlegm to almost fill the spit pan!

On Wednesday, I get a call from my sister. Mom has pneumonia and they are moving her to ICU. This is actually the first time that she had a “bad” nurse who wasn't watching her breathing. Sis called the charge nurse and everything moved very quickly...she was panting and we were told later than 15-30 minutes later, she wouldn't have been alive!

They took her to ICU, sedated her and intubated her...and our next saga begins.