“The Queen and the Grape” is skipping “Part II” for today and we will be posting, “Part III” first. This post is aptly called, “Who can you trust?” Mark (brother) graciously offered to come up from San Francisco today to sit with mom and be the texting pipe line to Trish (wife), Susie (mom’s sister) and Jimmy (other brother) so that I could take the day and work on the kinks in my back, get some work done for work and more, I agreed and jumped at the offer. He knows I am persistent in getting text messages out to the collective regarding the update I receive when I’m there with her and of course when it comes to my mom I would expect nothing less. We knew that mom would possibly be going home sometime between Friday and Monday all depending on how mom felt and when they could get her back on her own regimen of medicines.
It was just about two hours into the day when I start getting calls from Susie regarding mom and her medicines as well as mom needing food or at least water. What the issues was is Susie was set that mom was to have a meal tray no matter what and that’s all there was to it. The second issue was mom getting her regimen of meds at the moment Susie was under the impression mom was to be getting them and finally the nurses “Call Button, which is not wrapped around the nurses neck handling that bed on that day. Issue one with the food and water, I couldn’t see an issue there because yesterday, the day after the surgery they had her up and were feeding her a normal diet so I at a loss for words on the issue last night after I left. Regarding Issue 2, I explained it to her, exactly how moms cardiologist Dr. Pratt explained the medication issue to me back when mom was getting her lung drained of blood and then scrapped clean of 40+ years of cigarette tar. When the patient goes through a surgery where anesthesia is involved there is a formula more or less that takes into account the patients body weight, height, male/female, amount of anesthesia used during the surgery, number of hours the patient was on anesthesia during surgery and so on. This information is joined with what the patients normal daily regimen of medications are and from that they determine “about” how long before the anesthesia will be out of the patients system so when the normal meds are administered there is no possibility of a negative interaction between them.
Issue 3, revolves around the nurses call button and them not responding within seconds of you pushing it. I’m surprised on this issue due to the number of times between mom (1of7) her sister Martha (2of7) have been in the hospital over the years that this would be known, so if its not here goes, nurses handle on average 6-10 patients a shift and at any time you press the “call button” your nurse could be six rooms down changing a soiled bed, or three rooms up doing the in take of a new patient, even next door assisting a 90 year old patient in the restroom all of these things take time and the call buttons are taken in order of importance, so if your needing another blanket may be set behind someone needing their medicine or again cleaning up soiled linen or helping physical therapy with a patient who just had a hip replaced. So the key word here is, Patience. I understand while in the room with my mom who snapped her femur inches above the knee and just had surgery to insert a rod and then add a plate and six screws, moaning and tearing up and if barely touched, screams at the top of her lungs in utter pain. I get it, I’ve pressed the “Call button” more than twice or even four time before. All I’m saying is that, Patience needs to be key here and remember the nurses have bosses and their called the doctors, they can’t give the patients anything without the doctors approval and that includes but not limited to, food, water, medicines. They cannot even allow the patient up unless there is an approval from the doctor in their file. Nurses are over looked in the amount of work they do, the hours they work and the crap they put up with from people like you and me when our loved one are in pain. Pain without Humor is Just Painful, says it all, your loved one is in pain and there’s nothing funny about it and it is painful to watch.
Finally, the issue of transportation and care facilities, nursing homes, what ever you want to call them. This is an area that I’ve always handled when it came down to it but with not being there today it threw Mark and Susie for a loop. The case manager it sounds like visited the room to explain that mom would most likely be going home either tomorrow or Saturday. From there Mark heard, “And you are responsible for finding a skilled care facility for her to go to as well as the transportation to that facility.” Of course they go into a panic and wonder why are we having to set all this up and also pay for it and in turn call me to find out whats going on. I explain that he must not have heard her correctly and that it is the hospitals responsibility to get this all set up and he then swears up/down that’s what he heard. Upon insuring him I will call the case manager and resolve this I hang up and proceed to make the call to confirm what I know, I hope is right. I receive the case managers assistant who it turns out will be the one actually setting everything up, “Did you catch that?” I explain to her what was going on and what Mark heard and then explained what I thought was the process or at least what it was the last time mom had a knee replaced and she does confirm that, upon mom’s release we have the option of choosing which facility she will go to, from there the case managers assistant will do everything possible to get that approved if they have a bed available. Regarding the transportation, depending on the severity of moms injury if she can go via standard transportation, insurance will not pay for medical transportation, or if she can go via a wheelchair they will not pay for a gurney or they may only pay a portion of the cost and we would be responsible for the remainder. Simple misunderstanding that was corrected with one phone call. I should have business card made up to hand out to the doctor, case manager, therapist, physical therapist, etc. with my contact information on it and to save this from happening again they just contact me and we go from there. (IDEA!!) The next blog post, Part II will cover mom’s time while in the hospital and the issues that came up with regard to pain killers, doctors, hearing aids and the such.
“Be the best CareGiver you can be”
For update contact me at :
“www.PickYourPain.org, PickYourPain@att.net”
iCareTalk.net 