We keep hearing things about the greatness of the US medical care system.
It's "great" allright, in the senses that it's large. But "great" in the sense of "good" it isn't.
I've been going through hell this past week. Why?
Because an obsessive/compulsive/Napoleonic Complexed physician nearly succeeded in causing the loss of my diabetic stepfather's foot.
For two years, I've been doing daily wound care nursing, rain or shine, well or ill, for my "Dad", who unfortunately, has become diabetic. The wounds on his feet have not been properly diagnosed or treated since day one. They come from restless leg syndrome, wherein he "doggy paddles" his feet in his sleep and from a bad habit he has of propping his legs into a "v" by leaning them on his heels. These developed in my absence while he was under the care of a delusional person who first called herself a homemaker, then a home health aide, then thought she was a nurse and finally thought she was a doctor. She was anything but an actual caregiver, the position she was hired for. My stepbrpther, his own son, is not the most observant or astute person when it comes to well-care. Between their shennanigans, they almost killed my Dad.
In the hospital, his already severe diaper area wounds became so severe his buttocks were bleeding. No attention was given to the wounds on his feet. The docotr was pumping him full of blood thinners and Vancomycin, which did nothing for his wounds. He was moved to a nursing home where I took control and demanded they allow me to take him to Wound Care Center at St. Peter's. They were reluctant; I was adamant. I got my way. Coming in to the nursing home to do the wound care daily as prescribed, they finally got on the ball and seeing me come in with my little pink medical bag, they finally got panicky and started doing the wound care as prescribed. (I had complained to the attending physician that they were failing to do so.)
That was 2009. I healed 9 wounds on the man in this time frame. On October 17, we celebrated that under my supervision, he had not been hospitalized in 2 years. Prior to this, he was in and out of the hospital like it had a revolving door set up for repeat patients. I couldn't get my brother to see. After October 17, 2009, I changed all the locks on the house and basically kicked all but my Dad, myself and a real Home Health Aide out. It took us 3 days to get his body temperature back up to normal; 2 weeks for him to be able to get himself out of his wheelchair and into his chair and bed. He was unable to do so when I "sprung" him from the "nursing home". This country has few true "Nursing homes"; they have "sick & elderly storage" facilities, where they put you and wait for you to die.
The first encounter I had with a "Socail Worker" at one place my dad was erroneously sent left me stunned. Her first question was "What are your wishes in regard to your father?" I said "We'd like him to come home as soon as feasible." She said that wasn't what she meant. What were our final wishes for my father. I told her we didn't have any "final wishes" at this point, we wanted him well. If he was going to die, the hospital would have kept him. I learned that isn't so anymore necessarily. They ship them off to nursing home. Which accounts for a lower mortality rate at any given hospital. Who knew?
After they refused to let me take him to the hospital when he was obviously having a stroke, as soon as he made it clear he was planning to escape on his ow, I was going to take him out on visitation and get him t a medical facility. They called 3 days before and wanted to know if we had gotten him a caregiver as they were going to release him on that day. They released him, saying, he'll be back or he'll be dead. Well, with 20 medications, some he should never have been on, keeping his blood sugar at 90 or below to keep him quiet, no wonder they thought so.
Within 5 days, my Dad was clearly not himself. I called my contacts who advised we bring him to a facility which was both medical and mental health. We did. His heart rate had dropped to 32 beats per minute and that was why he was acting as though in dementia, in conjunction with being heavily overmedicated. He was in for a week, out for 2 days, and back in again. This time for so many weeks I lost count. Epinephrine shots directly into his heart. The only person he recognized was me. He thought he still lived in a home he hadn't lived in since he went into the army at age 18. He was going to go out to the corner and take a bus there. He got confused and hallucinated a toilet next to a sink in the hospital hallway where there was none. The bathroom in his room looked like part of the wall, even I couldn't figure out where it was.
He finally got out and I got the psychiatrist to take him off the Depakote Sprinkles. She switched him to Abilify. I fired his Home Health Aide for refusing to take his blood pressure when I knew there was a problem. Her comment to me "I took it at lunch yesterday." I asked her, "Do you know what a nitroglycerin tablet is?" "NO.". That did it.
My dad was improving, recovering from the stroke when Miss I Am Everything decided to push her way in, and in the process first get my best friend not only to leave her caregiver position, but never speak to me again. Then she succeeded in forcing me out. And proceeded down the path of nearly killing my Dad.
My Dad and I have a very close paranormal connection. I always know when something isn't right. if not for that, he would have died in 2007. I'd had a bad couple of weeks with my own illnesses and trusted his son to watch him. I spoke to both of them, daily to my dad. They told me everything was fine. I had that awful feeling and dragged myself to his house. There he sat in his shorts with all these holes in his legs which were filled with decaying matter. I talked him into going to hospital. He stood up an colapsed. I told him not to move. I called the emergency squad.
The emergency room left him sitting in a wheelchair for multiple hours before I finally wrangled a guenry from them. That was the last time he was conscious for 5 days. He had MRSA. sepsis, pneumonia, subdural hematoma and internal bleeding from collapsing on to his walker. He had been afraid to go to the hospital because he thought they would cut his legs off. That was before the first nursing home where he had his first stroke. He already had a heart attack years before and a quadruple bypass, but was still a normal, functional human being.
Everyone refused to allow his usual doctors to attend him. Everyone refused to transfer him. Along came this nice little man who asked to be put in charge of the case. He gave me his assessment and it made sense. Initially, in my experience, there was no physician who was more attentive to his patient.
But my Dad had been put on Abilify. One night I missed a dose and my Dad seemed normal the next morning.
I gave him the prescribed dose and he was whacked out again the next day. I researched it, told the doctor. He had to put him in the hospital to observe this himself before he took him off the medicine. It escalated. More and more hospital emergency room admissions, and my dad getting sicker and sicker. When I took over, I fully researched everything. If the medicicne was stopped, I told he docotr at next scheduled visit. He'd get mad. Under my care, my Dad didn't need him much, just the right medicine. Which it turns out he wasn't getting. He was given medicine for high blood pressure when his BP and heart rate were low. He was given Lipitor when his strength and muscles began wasting away. He was given blood thinners contrary tohis cardiologists' orders. He was kept in hospital despite all other docotrs having cleared him to go back to home care.This one refused to discharge him, telling "Your father is in really bad shape." I asked what was wrong. In reality, there had not been any reason for him to be in the hospital, I was met with a barrage of lies and excuses. I took my Dad out of there after speaking to everyone who had cleared him to go home two days after admission. When I took him out, he was barely able to stand on his own. I learned that they had been giving him shots of Heparin in his belly, taken him off all diabetes medicine, and given an IV drip of Vancomycin. On admission to the hospital, his foot wound was examined, x-rayed, MRI's, scanned, re-examined. The foot doctor was beside himself with praise for the condition I had his wound in. By the time I took him out of the hospital, no one had done anything but run a 4oz syringe of saline and putting a gauze square, unsecured, on it. the wound had expanded and begun to be infected.
Under home care, he began to improve, but I wanted to be sure I was moving in the right direction. I took him to a foot docotr whose group had previously healed a serious wound on my Dad's foot, wherein the flesh had detached from the foot itself. The doctor opted for slaine threapy and heperbaric treatments. In process of getting the tests needed for hyperbaric treatment, the wound had begun oozing exudate mixed with blood, with slight infection. I use jeweler's headgear to examine the wounds. It seemed to have cleared enough for my Dad to have a shower. I left the dressing in place and let the shower water soak it off so I wouldn't cause it to bleed.
When he came out of the shower, the wound was puddling blood. He was somewhat "out of it" and I had to holler at him to put his foot up, it was bleeding a lot. I stopped the bleeding, checked for infection, cleaned it with saline and dressed it. I put protective quilt batting and the booties on him to protect the wound. When I changed the dressing on Sunday, the wound had collapsed from the inside out and his bone was clearly (to me)visible. I got him to the docotr Monday and told him I didn't think this could wait for Bariatric; he agreed-the toes and heel were cold, but the instep and above were pink and very warm. He said to go to the emergency room, he needed immediate IV therapy.
The ER was a nightmare. They didn't triage, they just took names. Despite the docotrs having called ahead to have my Dad admitted, we had to wait with a bunch of people who were there simply because they hadn't gone to a regular doctor and felt it convenient to go to the ER now. After 3 hours,, due to muscle wasting from the Lipitor, my dad couldn't stand any more. We had to leave.
I called the doctors the next day. They said go back tothe same ER. We got there at 4PM. Finally at 11PM someone attended my Dad-despite having given the admissions people all the information, that he had a severe infection with an exposed bone and emaceration and was oozing blood and exudate from his foot.
Thursday AM I got a call from a surgeon whom I had never heard of telling me they were ready to go into surgery to "debride" the wound. I told him I wanted to call someone else. He told me there wasn't time. I asked him, are you telling me this infection is moving so fast you can't wait?" He said "Basically". I asked him a couple more questions, like "You are only going to debride the wound, nothing further? etc." He said he really wouldn't know for sure til he got in there and saw it, he only had 10 minutes to get into the o.r. and I had to talk to the anesthesiologist, who wasn't in such a hurry and listened carefully to what I said. My Dad came through fine, and seemed to be recovering by 2PM when I got to the hospital (his Home Health Aide had been bedside the whole time). That is until we saw what this debridement consisted of. Like someone had taken an ice cream scoop and chopped out a piece of my Dad's foot. The surgean had taken 1/3 of the metacarpal bone, but the tendons were intact and said it was difficult because the infection had gone into the joint.
The discussed the whole thing with the cardiologist the other night. I gave him the whole history. I don't remember the medical name, but the heparin injection which had been ordered by my dad's "Primary" while in RWJUH had somehow disrupted the oxygen supply and the infection began from the inside out.
It's a good thing I have a lot of self control. I am very careful around my Dad not to cause any cardiac issues or stress him into a stroke. When I saw the flesh gone from around the tendons and the bone that Sunday night, I wanted to scream with all my might. I couldn't believe what I was looking at. With and without my jewler's workbench glasses.I packed it with saline as the last pack of alginate composite had disappeared. I told my Da, "It's really bad. I don't know what happened to it, but it is beyond anything I can take care of.
We left the ER, I changed the dressings with saline. Before leaving for the E.R. the next day, I found the Fibracol Plus I had left. The wound nearly swallowed up a four-folded piece 2"x2" Fibracol. By the time the E.R. took us, it was satuarated, as were his bandages. They never removed the Fibracol and left the wound open. Finally they wrapped some gauze around it. While he was in a hallway with all kinds of people going back and forth, a wound down to the bone exposed. Why? Maybe because he said he wasn't in pain. He has diabetic neuropathy and no feeling in his feet. He had no idea what was going on down there. The doctor asked him why he was ther and he said "Because my doctor said I had to be." They wouldn't have cared even if he was in pain. They didn't care about the lady who was in severe pain. I told her she did not have to stay there, she could go to another hsopital, which was what was going to happen if we were not seen within the hour. I was on the phone to another ER when they called us in.
I'm sick over it. And that's not even the end......
more mistakes and overstepping report tomorrow-like why is the infectious disease doctor prescribing cardiovascular drugs when ON THE RECORD the patient's cardiologist's partner was in attendance....
Prinzessin Hohenzoller
It's "great" allright, in the senses that it's large. But "great" in the sense of "good" it isn't.
I've been going through hell this past week. Why?
Because an obsessive/compulsive/Napoleonic Complexed physician nearly succeeded in causing the loss of my diabetic stepfather's foot.
For two years, I've been doing daily wound care nursing, rain or shine, well or ill, for my "Dad", who unfortunately, has become diabetic. The wounds on his feet have not been properly diagnosed or treated since day one. They come from restless leg syndrome, wherein he "doggy paddles" his feet in his sleep and from a bad habit he has of propping his legs into a "v" by leaning them on his heels. These developed in my absence while he was under the care of a delusional person who first called herself a homemaker, then a home health aide, then thought she was a nurse and finally thought she was a doctor. She was anything but an actual caregiver, the position she was hired for. My stepbrpther, his own son, is not the most observant or astute person when it comes to well-care. Between their shennanigans, they almost killed my Dad.
In the hospital, his already severe diaper area wounds became so severe his buttocks were bleeding. No attention was given to the wounds on his feet. The docotr was pumping him full of blood thinners and Vancomycin, which did nothing for his wounds. He was moved to a nursing home where I took control and demanded they allow me to take him to Wound Care Center at St. Peter's. They were reluctant; I was adamant. I got my way. Coming in to the nursing home to do the wound care daily as prescribed, they finally got on the ball and seeing me come in with my little pink medical bag, they finally got panicky and started doing the wound care as prescribed. (I had complained to the attending physician that they were failing to do so.)
That was 2009. I healed 9 wounds on the man in this time frame. On October 17, we celebrated that under my supervision, he had not been hospitalized in 2 years. Prior to this, he was in and out of the hospital like it had a revolving door set up for repeat patients. I couldn't get my brother to see. After October 17, 2009, I changed all the locks on the house and basically kicked all but my Dad, myself and a real Home Health Aide out. It took us 3 days to get his body temperature back up to normal; 2 weeks for him to be able to get himself out of his wheelchair and into his chair and bed. He was unable to do so when I "sprung" him from the "nursing home". This country has few true "Nursing homes"; they have "sick & elderly storage" facilities, where they put you and wait for you to die.
The first encounter I had with a "Socail Worker" at one place my dad was erroneously sent left me stunned. Her first question was "What are your wishes in regard to your father?" I said "We'd like him to come home as soon as feasible." She said that wasn't what she meant. What were our final wishes for my father. I told her we didn't have any "final wishes" at this point, we wanted him well. If he was going to die, the hospital would have kept him. I learned that isn't so anymore necessarily. They ship them off to nursing home. Which accounts for a lower mortality rate at any given hospital. Who knew?
After they refused to let me take him to the hospital when he was obviously having a stroke, as soon as he made it clear he was planning to escape on his ow, I was going to take him out on visitation and get him t a medical facility. They called 3 days before and wanted to know if we had gotten him a caregiver as they were going to release him on that day. They released him, saying, he'll be back or he'll be dead. Well, with 20 medications, some he should never have been on, keeping his blood sugar at 90 or below to keep him quiet, no wonder they thought so.
Within 5 days, my Dad was clearly not himself. I called my contacts who advised we bring him to a facility which was both medical and mental health. We did. His heart rate had dropped to 32 beats per minute and that was why he was acting as though in dementia, in conjunction with being heavily overmedicated. He was in for a week, out for 2 days, and back in again. This time for so many weeks I lost count. Epinephrine shots directly into his heart. The only person he recognized was me. He thought he still lived in a home he hadn't lived in since he went into the army at age 18. He was going to go out to the corner and take a bus there. He got confused and hallucinated a toilet next to a sink in the hospital hallway where there was none. The bathroom in his room looked like part of the wall, even I couldn't figure out where it was.
He finally got out and I got the psychiatrist to take him off the Depakote Sprinkles. She switched him to Abilify. I fired his Home Health Aide for refusing to take his blood pressure when I knew there was a problem. Her comment to me "I took it at lunch yesterday." I asked her, "Do you know what a nitroglycerin tablet is?" "NO.". That did it.
My dad was improving, recovering from the stroke when Miss I Am Everything decided to push her way in, and in the process first get my best friend not only to leave her caregiver position, but never speak to me again. Then she succeeded in forcing me out. And proceeded down the path of nearly killing my Dad.
My Dad and I have a very close paranormal connection. I always know when something isn't right. if not for that, he would have died in 2007. I'd had a bad couple of weeks with my own illnesses and trusted his son to watch him. I spoke to both of them, daily to my dad. They told me everything was fine. I had that awful feeling and dragged myself to his house. There he sat in his shorts with all these holes in his legs which were filled with decaying matter. I talked him into going to hospital. He stood up an colapsed. I told him not to move. I called the emergency squad.
The emergency room left him sitting in a wheelchair for multiple hours before I finally wrangled a guenry from them. That was the last time he was conscious for 5 days. He had MRSA. sepsis, pneumonia, subdural hematoma and internal bleeding from collapsing on to his walker. He had been afraid to go to the hospital because he thought they would cut his legs off. That was before the first nursing home where he had his first stroke. He already had a heart attack years before and a quadruple bypass, but was still a normal, functional human being.
Everyone refused to allow his usual doctors to attend him. Everyone refused to transfer him. Along came this nice little man who asked to be put in charge of the case. He gave me his assessment and it made sense. Initially, in my experience, there was no physician who was more attentive to his patient.
But my Dad had been put on Abilify. One night I missed a dose and my Dad seemed normal the next morning.
I gave him the prescribed dose and he was whacked out again the next day. I researched it, told the doctor. He had to put him in the hospital to observe this himself before he took him off the medicine. It escalated. More and more hospital emergency room admissions, and my dad getting sicker and sicker. When I took over, I fully researched everything. If the medicicne was stopped, I told he docotr at next scheduled visit. He'd get mad. Under my care, my Dad didn't need him much, just the right medicine. Which it turns out he wasn't getting. He was given medicine for high blood pressure when his BP and heart rate were low. He was given Lipitor when his strength and muscles began wasting away. He was given blood thinners contrary tohis cardiologists' orders. He was kept in hospital despite all other docotrs having cleared him to go back to home care.This one refused to discharge him, telling "Your father is in really bad shape." I asked what was wrong. In reality, there had not been any reason for him to be in the hospital, I was met with a barrage of lies and excuses. I took my Dad out of there after speaking to everyone who had cleared him to go home two days after admission. When I took him out, he was barely able to stand on his own. I learned that they had been giving him shots of Heparin in his belly, taken him off all diabetes medicine, and given an IV drip of Vancomycin. On admission to the hospital, his foot wound was examined, x-rayed, MRI's, scanned, re-examined. The foot doctor was beside himself with praise for the condition I had his wound in. By the time I took him out of the hospital, no one had done anything but run a 4oz syringe of saline and putting a gauze square, unsecured, on it. the wound had expanded and begun to be infected.
Under home care, he began to improve, but I wanted to be sure I was moving in the right direction. I took him to a foot docotr whose group had previously healed a serious wound on my Dad's foot, wherein the flesh had detached from the foot itself. The doctor opted for slaine threapy and heperbaric treatments. In process of getting the tests needed for hyperbaric treatment, the wound had begun oozing exudate mixed with blood, with slight infection. I use jeweler's headgear to examine the wounds. It seemed to have cleared enough for my Dad to have a shower. I left the dressing in place and let the shower water soak it off so I wouldn't cause it to bleed.
When he came out of the shower, the wound was puddling blood. He was somewhat "out of it" and I had to holler at him to put his foot up, it was bleeding a lot. I stopped the bleeding, checked for infection, cleaned it with saline and dressed it. I put protective quilt batting and the booties on him to protect the wound. When I changed the dressing on Sunday, the wound had collapsed from the inside out and his bone was clearly (to me)visible. I got him to the docotr Monday and told him I didn't think this could wait for Bariatric; he agreed-the toes and heel were cold, but the instep and above were pink and very warm. He said to go to the emergency room, he needed immediate IV therapy.
The ER was a nightmare. They didn't triage, they just took names. Despite the docotrs having called ahead to have my Dad admitted, we had to wait with a bunch of people who were there simply because they hadn't gone to a regular doctor and felt it convenient to go to the ER now. After 3 hours,, due to muscle wasting from the Lipitor, my dad couldn't stand any more. We had to leave.
I called the doctors the next day. They said go back tothe same ER. We got there at 4PM. Finally at 11PM someone attended my Dad-despite having given the admissions people all the information, that he had a severe infection with an exposed bone and emaceration and was oozing blood and exudate from his foot.
Thursday AM I got a call from a surgeon whom I had never heard of telling me they were ready to go into surgery to "debride" the wound. I told him I wanted to call someone else. He told me there wasn't time. I asked him, are you telling me this infection is moving so fast you can't wait?" He said "Basically". I asked him a couple more questions, like "You are only going to debride the wound, nothing further? etc." He said he really wouldn't know for sure til he got in there and saw it, he only had 10 minutes to get into the o.r. and I had to talk to the anesthesiologist, who wasn't in such a hurry and listened carefully to what I said. My Dad came through fine, and seemed to be recovering by 2PM when I got to the hospital (his Home Health Aide had been bedside the whole time). That is until we saw what this debridement consisted of. Like someone had taken an ice cream scoop and chopped out a piece of my Dad's foot. The surgean had taken 1/3 of the metacarpal bone, but the tendons were intact and said it was difficult because the infection had gone into the joint.
The discussed the whole thing with the cardiologist the other night. I gave him the whole history. I don't remember the medical name, but the heparin injection which had been ordered by my dad's "Primary" while in RWJUH had somehow disrupted the oxygen supply and the infection began from the inside out.
It's a good thing I have a lot of self control. I am very careful around my Dad not to cause any cardiac issues or stress him into a stroke. When I saw the flesh gone from around the tendons and the bone that Sunday night, I wanted to scream with all my might. I couldn't believe what I was looking at. With and without my jewler's workbench glasses.I packed it with saline as the last pack of alginate composite had disappeared. I told my Da, "It's really bad. I don't know what happened to it, but it is beyond anything I can take care of.
We left the ER, I changed the dressings with saline. Before leaving for the E.R. the next day, I found the Fibracol Plus I had left. The wound nearly swallowed up a four-folded piece 2"x2" Fibracol. By the time the E.R. took us, it was satuarated, as were his bandages. They never removed the Fibracol and left the wound open. Finally they wrapped some gauze around it. While he was in a hallway with all kinds of people going back and forth, a wound down to the bone exposed. Why? Maybe because he said he wasn't in pain. He has diabetic neuropathy and no feeling in his feet. He had no idea what was going on down there. The doctor asked him why he was ther and he said "Because my doctor said I had to be." They wouldn't have cared even if he was in pain. They didn't care about the lady who was in severe pain. I told her she did not have to stay there, she could go to another hsopital, which was what was going to happen if we were not seen within the hour. I was on the phone to another ER when they called us in.
I'm sick over it. And that's not even the end......
more mistakes and overstepping report tomorrow-like why is the infectious disease doctor prescribing cardiovascular drugs when ON THE RECORD the patient's cardiologist's partner was in attendance....
Prinzessin Hohenzoller
