Thursday, June 02, 2016

Hospital Beds

I am at this place again.

Nowhere.

Not really true. If all goes to plan, my mother will be discharged from the hospital today. This is good news. However, it's taken a lot of my time - even during work (sssssh!  don't tell).

Dealing with Case Workers and Home Health agencies is pain the the ass. I truly feel sorry for anyone who isn't in healthcare who has to navigate its system. It is so cumbersome, that if you don't know the right people or right questions to ask, I can only seeing the outcome being a negative one.

Though, maybe not knowing enough is a good thing.

Let's just say I've had some choice words for a nurse, the case worker and the home health agency - regarding any number of things they did or didn't do - - though mostly didn't.

Tuesday evening I just about lost it. Honestly, I kept it in check, but they had to see how mad I was.

So, I come in and they FINALLY have my mother up and in a chair. Six days in, they finally got her out of bed. And they were ok with sending her home the next day because she's now ambulatory.

While this didn't thrill me, as there is no way she can be independent as of yet, it wasn't the reason for my ire.

No, as I brought my mother dinner (all those stand-up comics about hospital food are correct, btw), I could not help notice her sheets and the 4-5 drops of dried blood on them.  Yeah - you're probably going 'ewwww', but I can top that. They were the same stains that had been there since the second day of her stay. .....and this was day seven.

The RN made the mistake of coming into the room to introduce herself to me, as she had already been somewhat berated by me via a telephone call. That is when I asked her why my mother's bed had not been changed in a full week.

I could see her start to get defensive - and granted, I put her on the defensive - but I shut that down immediately. I reminded her my mother had been in a chair for a few hours and had been on a walk the last two days. There was zero reason to not have had someone change the crappy linens.

I'll give her this, she didn't outsource to an aide or housekeeping, she stripped the bed herself.

My mother has decided, in the event of further hospitalization, that she shant be returning to this hospital. For this I'm glad. She can come to one of mine - which I tried to get her to do in the first place.



Song by: Florence + the Machine

2 comments:

anne marie in philly said...

my spouse is in the healthcare field; your statement about "I truly feel sorry for anyone who isn't in healthcare who has to navigate its system. It is so cumbersome, that if you don't know the right people or right questions to ask" is correct and disgusting for our country.

and the health insurance industry doesn't care one iota.

good for your mom to be released, but she def needs to be looked after at home.

Bob said...

Glad your Mom is headed home; that alone will be a good thing.