Tag Archives: hospital

Why We Were in the ER This Time

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G is having Rituxan (Rituximab) treatments as a preventative measure, which we are hopeful will prevent him from needing plasmapheresis. His first treatment was last Monday, and it went as smoothly as we could have hoped for. Smooth enough that despite, or perhaps because of the cocktail of drugs he gets during treatments, G decided to walk home. Thankfully, Scott & I were able to pull a U-ey on Liberty Avenue and pick him up across from West Penn at the gas station convenience store, a place where choosing chips while really really high goes largely unnoticed.

He reacts to Rituxan during treatment like many patients, and the other drugs are to treat those reactions. This is followed by soreness, especially in the joints, which will last at least a few days. After a few days of recovery he is able to move around normally, but every once in a while he’ll start to feel worse toward the end of the week, just before the next treatment: pain accompanied by a fever.

Unfortunately, with treatments early in the week, this has traditionally left us checking into the hospital during the weekends, which is usually when the regular doctors are off. The weekend doctors are usually replicants, and treat your symptoms without a proper understanding of the human condition. Some nurses are replicants, and you can tell because they won’t laugh at “I got a fever, and the only prescription…is more call bell”.

Labor Day
X-ray Courtesy of Emergency Radiology

I gave G acetaminophen for his headache, which is what they give him in the hospital, but since he hates pills and went against my advice to get a prescription, he had nothing stronger for the pain. The nausea was something new, and quite frankly I didn’t appreciate him launching a new symptom during a new episode of Mad Men, but he has never been a fan of the show. At 102° F, his vomitous defiling of the trash can had muffled enough dialogue that we had to go to the ER, where they have two televisions and they will leave you alone for hours.

Now being the weekend, I expected the ER doctors to be replicants, but everyone was very cool. Dr. Martin and nurse David who is fine with being called Dave had some of the best bedside manners I’ve seen. By the time we got there, the Tylenol had taken care of his fever, but he was extremely dehydrated due to not being able to drink water without interrupting Mad Men. The doctor understood this and gave G narcotics, nausea medication and saline so that he would finally let me watch the new episode, which AMC repeats at 1 AM. A few hours later, to play it safe, the doctors decided to admit G.

The problem came around 8 AM when G called me to tell me that he was on floor E8, and wasn’t getting his medications. Apparently his nurse was supposed to bring them and never returned, and was not responding to the call bell despite him being able to hear her talking loudly outside his room. If this sounds like a horror movie, you’re having the same reaction I did, except you’re probably awake. The best course of action I could determine was to be really rich and call my many powerful lawyers and private doctors. Plan B was to tell G to call his doctor, but when he called me back to tell me they were closed for Labor Day, I wasn’t awake enough to tell him to stay on the phone to reach the attending on call.

G also told me he was going to check out, and I appreciated the advance notice, because in the past he hasn’t let me in on his plans to escape. This was my cue to head back to the hospital, so I got up and called his doctor while picking out a nice pair of socks. I dressed business casual because replicants will treat you with more respect if you look good, and G looked pretty bad.

Shift change happens at 7 AM, so neither Dr. Martin nor Dave were still in the ER. By the time I got to his room, the new nurse and a doctor were there giving him drugs. Of course, the doctor asked him the same questions every other doctor had already asked him, which I’m pretty sure is their way of proving that we aren’t replicants. I assumed it was my phone call that got G his meds, because they were already there before anyone noticed my shoes.

I spoke to G a few hours ago, and he actually did get to speak with his doctor, Dr. K, whom we love. She explained that there were no available beds on the usual floor, which is why she had to put him on the “snail floor”. I felt better knowing that they were slow with everyone and weren’t treating him worse because he was wearing pajama bottoms, and even better that Dr. K was able to light a fire under the snails. Which were now escargot.

Dr. K also thinks G’s soreness is caused by the steroid they usually give him during Rituxan treatment. She had ordered them not to do so this time, so somebody got yelled at. I’m anxious to see what happens tomorrow without the steroid, and hopeful that G can come home on Wednesday, because I really hate cooking for myself.

I’m heading back to the hospital soon. I’ll probably dress casual for Labor Day.

Optimistic Discharged Composition

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Since his fever and headache are gone, and his blood cultures show no signs of infection, G was discharged from the hospital today. The nurses were sad to see him go, but this isn’t our first return home from a hospital stay, and may not be our last.

That may have read as pessimism, but we’re both feeling very optimistic today, for several reasons — a few seconds ago, Twitter erupted with the news that Barack Obama swept the 2008 Presidential Election. I’m hopeful for Obama’s presidency, but I’m never optimistic about politicians.

My real friends give me real hope.

DJ Lunchbox messaged me yesterday, asking if it would be cool if he were to visit G in the hospital today. Well, since we were discharged before Lunchbox got out of work, he came to our house instead. And since we were all hungry, the fridge was empty and my car battery is dead, he drove us to two supermarkets to do what will be the bulk of our grocery shopping for the month.

Lunchbox has actually done this once before, and then even cooked us dinner with the groceries. Today being Tuesday, he had to run to make the 8:00 live taping of the Wrestling Mayhem Show, so all he got was a ham sandwich on the go. Sure the guy is appropriately named to contain ham sandwiches, but his kind of friendship deserves something more substantial. He’ll take a rain check on the meal, but I thought it might be appropriate to end today’s post with a composition from his blog, Thoughtful Riot:

Good morning Captain
Glad to see your still with us
Stay on your feet sir

TV Party

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G is feeling much better today, after his headache that lasted over two days finally ended with this morning’s plasmapheresis. Tonight, Norman Jeanne visited us in the hospital to watch Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, a Monday-night tradition of ours. In fact, we’ve had the television on a lot today, although G normally doesn’t like to watch TV in the hospital. At home, he likes to relax to television after work, fall asleep to it at night, and keeps it on in the background more often than not.

But not in the hospital. I would think it would be the perfect distraction, a comfort to make his stay feel more like home, but he feels very differently. I’ve asked him about it a few times, and he’s explained that watching TV in here reminds him of home and the outside world, and the freedoms that he normally enjoys. Rather than being a distraction from his situation, the very time-constrained nature of television promotes awareness of time passing in 30-minute increments.

I try to understand, but I’m not sure if I would feel the same way in his situation. What I am sure of is that if I was the patient, I’d still be laying here in this hospital, typing on this MacBook, and probably bitching on this blog.

Waiting

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I just finished up some work and managed my inbox down to 0, and I’m feeling a little low on energy. I went down to the hospital cafeteria to get a green tea, since I don’t like to drink coffee while G is in the hospital, but picked up the more expensive Odwalla Superfood™ instead. Why? Because I’m not sure that even the small amount of caffeine in green tea is what I need right now, but I can use some antioxidants, vitamin C and other nutrients. Can’t we all?

I also grabbed the Superfood because I’ve had one before, and I can’t remember when. There may have been a story involved, and I’m waiting to recall it. If I can’t, this post may go nowhere. I can’t think in this waiting room anyway; I’m going to go for a walk to get away from the crying, germy baby…

…I remember. I had a bottle of this stuff when I was recovering from food poisoning, and I didn’t feel like eating. I was working from the Lawrenceville Crazy Mocha with Justin Kownacki, and there is no story involved.

My walk took me to the chapel, where I’ve gone before at times like this.

It’s very quiet, and always empty. This is a solemn place from which to blog. I prayed, I read, I listened, and I waited; these are the things to do here. I prayed for G, who has been having a difficult time today, physically and emotionally. I prayed that he does the same, because I don’t have the answers that he’s waiting for.

Part of me thinks I should go to Church, and another part of me doesn’t agree with formal religion. I think both parts are waiting for each other…

Readmitted

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I’m writing my first NaBloPoMo post from The Western Pennsylvania Hospital, where G has been readmitted with a slight fever, a common sign of infection. Central line infections are common and he’s had several before, so we assumed that was the case when his temperature went up to 100.5 on Thursday night.

Doctors never assume; they test. To test for a line infection, blood cultures are taken from both the catheter and from a vein elsewhere in the body. If he does have an infection, he’ll get treated with the super-antibiotic vancomycin.

Since he would be in the hospital as an outpatient on Friday morning anyway, we spent the better part of Thursday night taking his temperature. Every 15 minutes or so, I would hover over him and silently watch the digital digits change, praying that they stop before a certain number and thinking how important numbers are in life.

We did end up paging the doctor on call, but luckily his temperature went down before we had to go to the emergency room.

The Emergency Room sucks, but readmission isn’t much better.

Being readmitted is a lot like being admitted for the first time, except you already have a bracelet. He was admitted over a month ago, discharged almost a week later, and he’s been an outpatient since. He was here yesterday, and he’s scheduled to be here on Monday morning. He’s here a lot. He knows a lot of nurses, and they know him.

But when he’s readmitted, nobody knows who he is. He’s in the system, he has a bracelet and has even memorized his medical file number, but none of the nurses or doctors know anything about him — especially on a Saturday night. Many of the residents don’t even know what TTP is, so G has to explain it to them.

And reexplain it. He has to answer the same questions again and again; questions I assume wouldn’t need to be asked had they read his charts. Tonight, they can’t even find his charts. I don’t want to complain about West Penn Hospital, because our experiences here have been far better than what I’ve heard about other hospitals, but I wonder every time why such an advanced institution doesn’t use their technology better.