Tonight's picture was taken in March of 2007. This was along one of our adventures in Key West. We stopped at a place for lunch and outside the restaurant was this big blue car with a crawfish on top of it. You can see Mattie smiling and he thought this was absolutely hysterical! Mattie was fascinated by anything with wheels from an early age, and this car was truly over the top.
Quote of the day: Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars. ~ Khalil Gibran
I can try to describe my day but it was so over the top that it is truly hard to believe what I am reporting is real. On Sunday, I wrote to the director of the inpatient rehabilitation facility at my dad's hospital (because after pacemaker insertion, my dad is too debilitated to return home right away). I only got this contact because I wrote to one of the administrators I met during our trip to the ER on Thursday afternoon. This woman is incredible and since my dad has been admitted I practically write to her daily. Without her I would be LOST, and therefore so would my dad.
Any case, the director of the rehab unit responded to me on Sunday and we met with her at 9:30am. I made it clear that my dad wasn't going to a nursing home and that he needed to be reassessed to qualify for an acute rehab stay at the hospital. She listened to me and told me she would send physical and occupational therapists back for a consult. She also mentioned that a bed was opening up tomorrow in her acute rehab unit, so in my mind I had to find a way to keep my dad in the hospital one more night until they could wheel him from one floor of the hospital to the other. Makes sense, no?
The problem was the doctors in my dad's unit wanted to discharge him today and push him out. They sent in a case manager to find a place to transition my dad to in the community. I disliked the case manager intensely and I told her she is supposed to advocate for us and help me. She did not care for that. All she kept saying is my dad is leaving the hospital today and there is NO available beds in their rehab for him. She did not know that I spoke to the director of the rehab earlier and that I KNEW a bed would be available tomorrow. So I informed her. I also told her I thought it was in the healthcare team's best interest to think creatively to find a medical reason to keep my dad one more night. Mind you my dad has a HOST OF reasons why medically he needs to stay. You just have to think beyond what your monitors are telling you. Honestly they agitated me to NO END today.
In the process of all of this, I wrote to the chief of nursing today. I wrote because I wanted to provide commendations for the person in the ER who has been helping me since Thursday. While writing about this, I mentioned some of the issues I have been having with getting my dad placed into her rehab facility. She asked how she could help. So I told her and she then began looping people into our emails.
One person, who is the head of case management had the audacity of accusing me of suggesting that the hospital commit Medicare fraud! Honestly? I pushed right back at him and said I never implied such a thing and you don't have to look very hard to see that my dad has many MEDICAL reasons for continued admission. I never heard back from him. I am telling you I made NO FRIENDS today at the hospital.
I was so frustrated that I called the director of the rehab back again. I learned from her that she was working with all the players I was emailing throughout the day. That she has the ability to make this all happen and she is the one who CAN medically justify his stay. Thank GOD someone with a brain and with some compassion. Because the two alternatives presented today was either to take my dad home or get him transferred by ambulance to a facility about 50 minutes from my home. Neither were options in my book! My dad has a great deal of pain in his spine and moving him is close to impossible, which is why I can't take him home and I also can't imagine him surviving an ambulance ride.
As if I wasn't balancing enough, my dad has major issues with a rash all over his body. He is reacting negatively to all the pressure sore pads they have put on his body. He must be allergic to the adhesive. But no one cares, they won't remove these pads, which are being used prophetically, thankfully he has no bed sores currently. All day I have been lathering him with cortisone creams to help with the intense itching.
I can tell the unit is fed up with me and my dad's nurse today was incompetent. At one point my dad completely soaked the bed with urine, and I felt they really did not want to help me. They did, but again it wasn't pleasant. Is this what the best possible healthcare is like?
I feel for any patient who doesn't have a Vicki fighting for them. Patients may have a family member with them, but not everyone understands the system like I do. I think even working as a professional healthcare provider in the system doesn't qualify you for surviving the system as a patient. It takes special skills to understand how the system works and it takes great diligence and persistence to get things done. As I learned with Mattie, the advocate with the loudest voice in healthcare, gets the care that is needed. Sad, but the reality!
No comments:
Post a Comment