A Trip to the Hospital

Mountain City Mercantile

Originally uploaded by Praiz777

Weekend before last we spent at the hospital with my mother-in-law. On that Thursday she was walking her dog, Sadie got away from her so she stepped on the leash to stop her. Well, it didn’t stop her, she just pulled my MIL off her feet! She landed on her right hip, they said it almost split in two. That was Thursday morning, she was not able to have surgery until Saturday morning because they had to regulate her Coumadin (blood thinner) first. Then the morning of the surgery, they woke her up at 5:30am to start prepping her. They had to give her some plasma to further thicken her blood. Well, they didn’t actually start giving it to her until 8:00am, which is when the surgery was scheduled. So then the nurses are being pressured to get the plasma going. Well, my MIL has had some bad experiences when it comes to surgery, she almost died from a colonoscopy because they punctured her intestine, which is really bad when you are on a blood thinner. The nurse was really nice, but she was not thinking. They were thinking out loud, something that you really shouldn’t do when you are rushing around a nervous patient about to go into surgery. One comment she made was, “I wonder how fast we can shove this in.” Not exactly a comforting thing to hear. There is nothing wrong with what she said, she just shouldn’t have done it in front of my MIL. So then my MIL is getting more nervous and starts having chest pains. The nurse seemed more occupied with getting the plasma in than the chest pains. They ended up doing a couple of EKG’s and they were fine, she was having a panic attack. It was such a mess. They finally got all the plasma “shoved” into her and took her back for surgery. Everything went great. They had her up out of bed on Sunday, started physical therapy on Tuesday, and she was home this past Monday. The dat they were going to let her go, I thought she was going to walk out of that hospital without being released. They said she would probably be released before Noon, because they would have to charge her for another day if not. Well, she didn’t get home until 8pm. Her doctor was having a really rough day and couldn’t get up to check her before officially releasing her. Boy was she mad!!! All is well now, she is home and doing well. Don’t get me wrong, I think doctors and nurses and the such have very difficult jobs. Like the nurse before surgery, she seemed really nice, I just don’t think she was thinking about how her words would affect her patient. People in the medical field definitely have my respect.