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---------

Complicatons After Surgery

Its taken me some time to write this update on my adventure with Endometrial Cancer; the surgery went well, I went home on the fourth day, just as scheduled. After I got home, things got a bit crazy.

I came home on December 19(Monday night). I couldn't sleep in the bed because I couldn't get out of bed, so I slept on the recliner, but even that was very difficult for me to get up and out. My mother has one of those chairs that lift you--I thought that might work.

I called my insurance company and they told me what they needed from the doctor to approve me to rent one(I only wanted one for 2 weeks, just until I could move easily by myself).I first call the oncologist's office. I explain that I'm in a great deal of pain, having problems getting out of the chair and can't get in bed. I'm also bleeding more and told them about my idea about a lift chair for a couple of weeks. "You're an HMO patient, we don't know how to prepare that." I say I've already called the insurance, all the doctor has to do is fax a prescription/note to the insurance company. Ms. "I work here and knowitall" tells me that with real insurance, all they usually do is make a phone call. What this fool doesn't know(and I tell her) is that I used to work with insurance and insurance companies aren't going to approve anything without written documentation! She's flustered, but won't take my question--OK, have the doctor call me.

I then call my gynocologist with same request and get told by the doctor on call that I just need the excercise! I again ask that my doctor to call me.

Two days later(Thursday), I'm still waiting, but now I have a temperature. I call the surgeon's office, stating that I'm in more pain and I have a temperature of just under 100(that being the magic number) and that this started about 24 hours before. They said don't worry about it unless it goes over 100. Only problem with this formula is that it works if you normal temp is close to the 98.6....my normal temp is closer to 97.3!

Saturday evening, I took a shower. I'd been feeling weak that day and temp hit 100, but only for an hour. I got out of the shower and started shivering violently. My temp dropped to 96.4! My husband calls the doctor and we go to ER.

We were waiting about 20 minutes at the ER before we got a room(there had been a bad accident right before I got in). The nurse takes my temp and I'm now at 104! I'm probably not as surprised as the staff; I usually spike when I get a bad fever/flu/infection, but that doesn't mean I'm not worried.

I'm diagnosed with an infection at the incision and they have to take out some of the staples early to let the infection drain. I'm also put on IV antibiotics for the next 4 days. I was placed on the 5th floor(medical/surgical) instead of the 3rd(neo-natal, obstetrics/gynocology). It was like going from a 5 star hotel to Motel 6 in care--and there was no light waiting for me!

I'm in the hospital from Saturday, December 22 until Tuesday, December 26. Although my fever goes down, I still have a fever when I go home. I've also now added a complication with my blood pressure which has also "spiked" to around 150/90. Is that really high? No, but for me it is. During this stay, I had to wait for 7 hours one time to get pain meds(the next shift came on and I finally had a nurse that read the DIRECTIONS!)