Recluse
03-19-2013, 09:58 PM
At 0930 this morning, I was put on a gurney and wheeled into the radiology unit where all kinds of IVs were stuck into me, plus oxygen and monitors and the whole kabish.
What they were doing was to use the CT scan machine as a "virtual" radar or vision center to guide a needle, drain and pump into my abdominal cavity, locate the abscess, perforate it, drain it, then evacuate it. If that doesn't sound like much fun, then you're right. But it beats what I've been going through for almost the past week with the spiking fever, sudden shakes and skyrocketing pain.
Within a half-hour of getting back to my room, I noticed immediate whole scale improvement--the pain caused by the abscess was gone. The pain that remains is from the original surgery of just a couple of weeks ago, plus some new pain from this procedure but which I can tell will dissipate rather quickly--or so I'm hoping.
Temperature/fever has broke and remained stable at 98.1 (my normal temp) and my overall pain-scale rating has fallen from the once 8.5 (extremely severe) without the dilaudid or morphine down to an easily manageable 2.5 and subsiding. Again, the pain that remains is associated with the surgical and radiology procedures, both of which will heal.
Yesterday, my temper broke and I do mean BROKE and I blew the roof off of the place. I'd texted Lois what was going on and she dropped everything and rushed to get here but she was too late to stop it. The nurses and medical staff here are superb. The administrators and peripheral pissants aren't worth ****. They are the proverbial REMFs who when a sergeant puts in a request for air support or for artillery think that THEY need to determine whether the sergeant actually needs that air support or artillery.
And yesterday, I ripped them enough new ***-holes that they can now stand shoulder to shoulder and whistle Zippity-Do-Da through their orifices with more combined voice than the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. I started with the VP of Operations, who came to my room "insulted by my insinuations" and I literally peeled the paint off the walls while reading him the riot act in three different languages.
The problem was in zero communications. I would be told I'm having a procedure at say, 0830 in the morning and therefore it was necessary to starve me for the preceding eight hours. 0830 would come and go and it would be 1100 and still no word. My nurses would call, and the pissants would literally ignore them or promise to "get back with them." I never knew WHEN or even IF any of the things the doctors had ordered would happen.
As it turns out, at this hospital, everything has to go through these "manager/administrators" first, and the staffs of these "manager/administrators" feel overly smug with their power.
I was on NPO four out of the six nights I've been here. NPO is a Latin sid code that stands for "Nothing By Mouth" and translates into, "starve and dehydrate the patient because we're going to invade one or more of his or her cavities in the next six hours and we don't want anything foul coming back up at us."
Today, I couldn't hardly get any rest what from all the nurses coming around and sneaking into my room and thanking me for standing up for them and taking on the "hospital management machine." It seems the guy who I cussed up one side and down the other and literally at the top of my voice here in the room is about as popular among the staff as Michelle & Barack Obama are in our family.
In addition to the nurses, I also had several doctors who make their rounds here stop by my room and quietly thank me for putting the alpha hotel in his place. Two of the docs promised that they are going to follow up with their respective medical groups in order to put pressure on the hospital board to remove this worthless bureaucrat so that the nurses can once again return to being real nurses rather than errand girls.
It's looking like I'll be discharged tomorrow (Wednesday) after lunch. I'm just ready to come home.
:coffee:
What they were doing was to use the CT scan machine as a "virtual" radar or vision center to guide a needle, drain and pump into my abdominal cavity, locate the abscess, perforate it, drain it, then evacuate it. If that doesn't sound like much fun, then you're right. But it beats what I've been going through for almost the past week with the spiking fever, sudden shakes and skyrocketing pain.
Within a half-hour of getting back to my room, I noticed immediate whole scale improvement--the pain caused by the abscess was gone. The pain that remains is from the original surgery of just a couple of weeks ago, plus some new pain from this procedure but which I can tell will dissipate rather quickly--or so I'm hoping.
Temperature/fever has broke and remained stable at 98.1 (my normal temp) and my overall pain-scale rating has fallen from the once 8.5 (extremely severe) without the dilaudid or morphine down to an easily manageable 2.5 and subsiding. Again, the pain that remains is associated with the surgical and radiology procedures, both of which will heal.
Yesterday, my temper broke and I do mean BROKE and I blew the roof off of the place. I'd texted Lois what was going on and she dropped everything and rushed to get here but she was too late to stop it. The nurses and medical staff here are superb. The administrators and peripheral pissants aren't worth ****. They are the proverbial REMFs who when a sergeant puts in a request for air support or for artillery think that THEY need to determine whether the sergeant actually needs that air support or artillery.
And yesterday, I ripped them enough new ***-holes that they can now stand shoulder to shoulder and whistle Zippity-Do-Da through their orifices with more combined voice than the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. I started with the VP of Operations, who came to my room "insulted by my insinuations" and I literally peeled the paint off the walls while reading him the riot act in three different languages.
The problem was in zero communications. I would be told I'm having a procedure at say, 0830 in the morning and therefore it was necessary to starve me for the preceding eight hours. 0830 would come and go and it would be 1100 and still no word. My nurses would call, and the pissants would literally ignore them or promise to "get back with them." I never knew WHEN or even IF any of the things the doctors had ordered would happen.
As it turns out, at this hospital, everything has to go through these "manager/administrators" first, and the staffs of these "manager/administrators" feel overly smug with their power.
I was on NPO four out of the six nights I've been here. NPO is a Latin sid code that stands for "Nothing By Mouth" and translates into, "starve and dehydrate the patient because we're going to invade one or more of his or her cavities in the next six hours and we don't want anything foul coming back up at us."
Today, I couldn't hardly get any rest what from all the nurses coming around and sneaking into my room and thanking me for standing up for them and taking on the "hospital management machine." It seems the guy who I cussed up one side and down the other and literally at the top of my voice here in the room is about as popular among the staff as Michelle & Barack Obama are in our family.
In addition to the nurses, I also had several doctors who make their rounds here stop by my room and quietly thank me for putting the alpha hotel in his place. Two of the docs promised that they are going to follow up with their respective medical groups in order to put pressure on the hospital board to remove this worthless bureaucrat so that the nurses can once again return to being real nurses rather than errand girls.
It's looking like I'll be discharged tomorrow (Wednesday) after lunch. I'm just ready to come home.
:coffee: