Called the family physician to see about having her moved.
We are still here a full week later and my story continues to amaze me. She would be dead if I had not been by her side as her advocate. She is being moved to an inpatient rehab facility and I can't seem to get her out fast enough. She is still on oxygen 2 liters per minute, She was never sat up or attempted to rehabilitate or even rotated for almost 4 days after her almost dying on Wednesday. She has 2 ulcers that have developed on her butt from the pressure of lying in the same spot all week with minimum care. It feels like they have tucked her away in here and are hiding their mistake. I just found out today they are moving her and ran into the nurse that was caring for her the night before she crashed that I personally mentioned as being witness to the swelling and the overnight in and out cath they were performing the night prior to the flash edema, Code Blue, and she physically stopped me in the hall recognizing me and said I looked familiar and wanted to know how we knew each other. I feel like a freak at this point in time and do not trust any of the staff around me after going through this week of trauma and distrust, so I whispered to her in the hall that she was our nurse that night, and she asked how she knew me again, so I told her what room and day and a basic rundown until she remembered and how my mom was a code blue after she had left for the day on Wednesday. She said with a faint remembrance " Oh yeah, I heard about that" I am shocked because I figured the staff had already inquired about the nights' events with her because the ICU nurse told me he would inquire through Risk about it. This is the girl that knows about the foot thing I have been talking about in all of the videos. Lie after lie they continue to tell because this young lady had zero ideas it was her patient that had crashed. I think I would have wanted to know that personally if I was an RN.
Heart doctors want to talk about shoulder surgery only not hardly addressing the actual diagnosis at all, (i have them recorded in earlier blog posts) or even better the lady Cardiologist Dr. Smith on for Lechin office over the weekend would not speak to us or my mom other than small talk. Period. Ask about the shoulder! She would come in the room and talk about nothing to do with anything and say alrighty then and leave. None of the dr.s like me, saying I but in on them asking questions, but I have recorded at least 3 different conversations with staff in white lab coats, Hospitalist and heads of departments, and asked direct questions about the possibility that the Narcan would have caused this and they all 3 answered with a yes it could be the contributing factor. But then they are treating her like an outpatient surgery patient that had a stress attack. Still even today 7 days later her Dr. is saying it wasn't really a heart attack just a stress thing. Yes, we know a stress thing. I have spent 7 days studying this stress thing and it has left my mother a different mother than when we walked in for her shoulder to improve her quality of life. She has been sponge bathed one time upon my demand in 7 days, they have her in a freaking diaper and still on oxygen. When I asked her dr today about the o2 he said " you know oxygen goes up and down up and down" That was his answer.
I was weary by this time as we had been there now for 5 days and
Catscan and ultrasound performed to check for clots due to extreme pain in the legs.
She has yet to sit up
Still on O2
On-call Cardiologist won’t stay in the room long enough to get an answer or time to ask a question
Her heart rate is 59 right now on the monitor and I still fear she is not out of the woods. We should be out of here soon and I will call in the morning to let Medical Records know to get the process going as we are waiting to see what they actually reported. I just hope this fresh set of eyes on her will shed new light on the neglect and most of all set her on the road to recovery. She deserves that after living through this past week of hell.
She had several episodes with her breathing and heart rate over the weekend prompting Drs to think she had developed a blood clot. They had her wait until the next day to take the blood test D-Dimer and then when results returned positive she had just received breakfast and I forced her to try to eat because she has not eaten hardly a bite in 7 days and was 5 without iv nutrition. They come in and cant do CATSCAN because she ate and they forgot to make her NPO so we had to wait another 4 hours for results. Everything has happened like that here. They are negligent at best. I am not sure what it is. Understaffed? Not sure but I personally believe they should have transferred her from ICU to St Joseph's in Bryan this past week instead of hiding her on the outpatient floor. Also when the lady came to do ultrasound on her legs to look for clots I was in the hall when she approached and she went to a different room looked in and looked at her chart then asked th nurses why her patient wasn't in the bed and they said something and she looked at me and then came to my room. What room do they have her marked as? I can not wait to have her out of here and we are counting down the minuted as my mom is lying here in her own urine knowing they don't want to change her or clean her up and agreeing that this place has not been treating her very well. She only lived because she was stronger than they anticipated. She came here to improve her quality of life with a new shoulder and now we have new heart Drs and medicines that her insurance won't cover and therapies as well as having to care for my elderly father who she was still caring for. They live off of SS each month and this is now going to be an added hardship on this that we are all wondering how we can make it work. We promised them we would never put them in a nursing home and were on a track to make that happen and I am not willing to accept that because the hospital screwed up that we have to pay. This is an unreal mess and we need someone to help us. This entire weekend after 10pm until about 7 they would shut her door and not come in to check vitals or anything night after night. I feel like I am in the Twilight Zone
I told him to tell the staff to stop asking my mom if she was ready to go home. He said he would. She has been suffering arrhythmias throughout the week.
She had her surgery on Tuesday at 12 pm and prior to this shot had no history of heart disease. I bet 15 different staff members have asked me if she had prior.
I want the details from anesthesiology and made a specific note on that when my father and I went down to medical records to receive her records and were turned away.
I wrote out a timeline of events that I personally witnessed like when the nurses knew my mother had C.diff but chose to spray the room with M9 spray to neutralize the smell. They left the fecal matter in plain sight in my mothers' trash cans. I had to request the clean them out. I also caught the two young nurses laughing at my mom and her stomach issues as they passed her room and I was coming down the hall. When they saw me they straightened up because they were in the wrong
Ice chips! Please. Is that so hard? When you ask for ice to put in my mothers' ice chest for her shoulder and get told they are busy discharging her, you get mad and say something about it. That is one of her only sources of relief so when I see it is not even running and all melted I went to the station. A few minutes later a young nurse comes in and sets a cup of ice on the bedside table says "Here is your ice" and leaves the room
EMS Transfer I am trying to get the notes
Leeah the nurse in the hall by the supply closet.
We discharged last night and The Med did not spare our feelings about how they felt about that. The Med had a form prepared for the EMS transfer that the woman doing the transport asked her partner if it was this specific for and he said yes and she said "I have never seen one of these". Well, the form was a sign-off from all the employees and then once they sign and have it taken to the administration they then use the form that is a "handover and get her out" type of form that when given to EMS there were no signatures required.
They waited so long to with her meds for departure that when EMS demanded something to be given to her for the transfer the new nurse of the night wanted to order morphine through her iv. 7 days after surgery morphine was still an option. Just saying. I refused this saying she only needed her Tramadol like we had been asking for over the last 2 hours so we could prepare for the moment we were in. HE needed a good blood pressure and took it 4 times in a row to get the reading he needed for Morphine. He got the number he needed barely and I then told EMS that I would not want her to have morphine and the new nurse of the night said to the EMS "If she crashes you have Narcan on board, right?"
I lost it and kind of begged EMS to get us out of there not sparing too many words and by looking at her pee-soaked DIAPER and the actual fear and anxiety were in! She is not incontinent btw and the information I was sharing they agreed that loading her up and getting her out was past time. They were so nice to my mother and she has felt comfortable since that point.
She is hopefully going to live and doesn't rebound from all the different meds they have been injecting to keep her stable. She is a 76-year-old woman with skeletal issues and no diseases or major health problems other than the pain from Osteo taking over her bones and being a pain patient that has its own issues but not these.
Her mind is becoming clearer now as she is starting to recover and gain strength and she and I have talked over what the hell happened there. She is confused why they didn't want to care for her properly but I am not. They wanted as little documentation as possible that might show a continued proof that they did a bad thing and are covering their ass. I am afraid my mother is not the only person to experience this level of negligence on the floor. Too many things to do for each nurse and can never get around to what they know they need to be doing but are in all of the other rooms trying to do for them too.
I do believe she is alive by her own accord. Even as we wheeled out of the outpatient ward that we sat in for a week and made the turn towards E.R. which is about 300 or more feet down a hall full of patients, when I turn to look back the Dr. on the computer was still standing there looking at us, transfixed. I nodded dramatically as we disappeared to what felt like safety.
We went in for outpatient shoulder surgery to improve her quality of life
I have one question mostly looking at my mom and it is to the anesthesiologist, I would like to know what part of her made her feel like this woman looked like a candidate for a risky procedure used to wake her and then not monitor? I am stunned.
We are still not out of the woods by far but, we got away from the wolves.