Hospital Horror

Editorial note: Today is 11/19/07. I started this story weeks ago as a follow up to the Sunday Scribblings post at the end of October. I have had neither the time nor the inspiration to finish it yet. But I really did want to link to to my initial post on Hospitals.



"That was really fun!" Jill commented as the 3 of them piled into the car at the end of the evening. "I knew we'd enjoy line dancing, but for a grown-up church social, it was better than I'd expected."

"I don't share quite your enthusiasm," Jim said, as he helped Jill's friend Suzanne into the back seat. "But I did have a better time than I expected to."

"Suze, it was a great suggestion. Thanks for including us. Hey, guys," Jill pursued, " since we have been grazing on that great food spread all evening, we don' t need to feed ourselves before we head home. Does anyone mind if we run past the hospital and see Gram? I saw her this afternoon and I told her what we had planned for this evening. But since the hospital is actually between here and home, I told her we might come by and run in for a few minutes on our way home."

"Of course, Jill, no problem," Jim replied. "Suzanne, any reason you need to get right back to your place?"

"No, none at all. In fact, I would enjoy seeing Jill's grandmother; it's been several weeks since I saw her last. What did you say she is in the hospital for this time?"

"It's even hard for me to keep up," Jill responded. "She just keeps having the same problems over and over. I think it is a bladder infection that hasn't cleared up and they are worried about pneumonia too. The nursing home was concerned enough to send her over to the emergency room and she was in a room down there for a bit over 24 hours while they tried to find her a room. They are trying to put her in a private room. I keep having that problem. As soon as they find out how good her insurance coverage is they go for the private room. I told them specifically I wanted her in semi-private---she enjoys the company and I feel better when I know there is someone else who might push the call button if she were in distress. She hates to impose or to bother anyone and I don't believe she would actually push the call button for herself."

In less than 5 minutes Jim pulled the car into the parking garage, and the 3 of them got out of the car.

"Here, there's someone smoking outside this door," Jill said, "we can go in here instead of going all the way around to the night entrance. I can hardly believe how well I have learned my way around this place in the last couple of years."

Once they reached the floor, they lowered their voices slightly, but were still laughing and chattering about what a nice evening they'd had. "Gram's room is down on this corner. If she's already asleep I'll just give her a kiss and we can go on and get you home, Suze," Jill said as she hurried ahead to the open door.

The next thing Jim and Suzanne heard sent them forward at a dead run, followed closely by at least 2 nurses. Jill had let out a long and piercing scream. The first thing she saw as she entered the room was her little, 87 year old grandmother flat on her face on the floor, unconscious, in a pool of blood from a sizable gash on her forehead. The fact that the blood had begun to coagulate indicated she had been lying there awhile. Her feet were tangled in the tubing from her catheter which had been clipped to her bed sheets. Probably, unaware of the severity of her weakness, possibly unaware of her being in the hospital, she had attempted to go to the bathroom. The nurse who was supposed to be responsible for that room was not even on the floor, and apparently had not bothered to pull up the restraining rail on the bed.

Jim hurried over to wrap his arms around his trembling wife; and Suzanne, along with the nurses, hurried to see to the crumpled, unconscious figure on the floor. Fear and unimaginable fury were Jill's strongest emotions and she continued to shake with both. The nurse giving the best of her attention to Jill as she made excuses, instead of seeing to Gram, was the most infuriating of all.

Gram was breathing and the opening in her head had staunched itself and was no longer bleeding. Suddenly the corner "private" room was an absolute flurry of activity as they got a stretcher and attendants to pick up her frail little body and put it back on the hospital bed. Of course, they were now going to have to take her down emergency to do a CT scan to assess what damage the fall had done and to stitch up the head wound.

Thus the pleasant Saturday evening was catapulted into the horror of 5 hours sitting in the emergency room waiting to see the results of a new battery of MRI and other tests which should never have been needed. The gash on Gram's head required 14 stitches on the outside, in addition to a set of Jill-was-never-told-how-many on the inside.

As I said in the initally posted part of the blog, this is absolutely a true incident and I am not quite sure how to end it in the story form I have begun. The only fiction is that this was my mother, not my grandmother. She pretty much recovered, altho I will never know how much less she was after it happened than if it never had. I began investigating omsbudsman aid and legislation and other elder abuse/ malpractice options I might have had, but before I could get very far with that (doing it as and addendum to my already busy life and at end of the year holiday time), my dad had a masssive stroke and nine days later died. By the time I finished taking care of his funeral, insurance, etc. and being exectuor of his will, I no longer had the energy or the fight left in me to pursue righting the wrongs that had been done to Mother. By the time I might have restarted those engines, details had been forgotten, witnesses lost track of, and documentation misplaced. Ah, so it goes. But you may see why hospitals do not hold a very bright spot in my memories.

Hospital --- prewrite

I have spent enough time in hospitals to tell some stories.

My most recent 2 experiences have been fairly positive. A friend, a retired nurse, went into the hospital short of breath and 4 days later, after a simple but unlikely set of test results she had open heart surgery and a double bypass. Everyone knew and loved her and she got excellent care, everything went very well, and she was out to rehab in 4 days and out of rehab to go home in 5 more. My other most recent experience in a hospital was even more positive: one of my two "extra" daughters went into the hospital a week earlier than her scheduled C-section date and had a beautiful, healthy, perfect baby boy. Because it all happened so quickly, I wasn't present when she delivered, but got to hold the baby before he was 24 hours old.

I also have numerous horror stories of experiences with my mother and dad, who were much older than my retired friend, were not known or important to the hospital staff, and who, through ill health in Mother's case and dementia in Daddy's, were not able to speak for themselves or stand up for themselves.

These stories would be easier to do as fiction probably because they are so personal to me and quite painful to remember. But now that I have said that they are really true, I am not sure what the sense would be, or even that I can do that. Perhaps I will try later.

But let me say as a caution to all: if you have a loved one hospitalized who is not able to speak up for him or her self, to ask needed questions and understand not only the answers but the ramifications of those answers, and to insist on receiving the help he/she needs, be sure someone who can and will act as that person's advocate is present with them in the hospital as much of the time as possible. Most nurses and hospital attendants are good people with caring hearts, but they are---almost to a person---desperately overworked and over extended. And altho they care generally, they do not love that possibly crabby, uncooperative, or just helpless person as you do.

My Primary Edict SS# 81

If I were suddenly made the supreme ruler of this world and could really expect that all people would follow the policy or policies I set down, I cannot think of a better first edict than one saying that all people, the world over, should follow the "Golden Rule." If we all gave that idea: "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you" some serious and contemplative thought, then made our very very best effort to do exactly that, what a truly improved world this would be.

Each person: "This is what I want or wish. But wait, how would I feel if someone else imposed this condition on me."


Reactions or response choices:

"I can live with that. I think anyone could and we'd all be happier or at least just as happy." -OK

or

"What the.....? Whose lame-brained notion was this mess??" --No!

That is pretty much my response to this prompt; and I see my answer is not what I would consider "light." But it is really quite a thoughtful and heavy question. There are lots of changes I would like to see made----no more abuse of any kind or crime or murder or prejudice; freedom of religion for everyone, with no imposing one's views on others; no more hatred or war. Then there are lighter changes I'd also like to see---no more reality TV or stupidity and ignorance used to entertain; eliminate exploitation of sex in ways that cheapen and devalue it---oops, I am back into serious, aren't I?? Even though I have now given it quite a bit of thought and have read a lot of other people's responses, I don't think I would change my initial response. I think the Golden Rule, respected and followed by all people, would go a long way to solving most of the world's problems.

JOBS SS# 80

First job, Worst job, Dream job.....now here is a prompt I think I can get into.

My very first job lasted only about 3 to 5 days, through no fault of mine. I was a junior in high school, just turned 16, and I got a job at JC Penney's in the small town I grew up in, wrapping Christmas presents. We lived far enough out in the country that I had to have a driver's license to be able to take a job, because it just was not feasible for someone to have to drive me in to work and pick me up afterwards. As it was, Mom would be without her car however long I was at work. I loved the job!! I love Christmas time anyway; and in a small town, Christmas wrapping in one of the town's 2 major department stores put me right in the middle of the music and color and bustle and smiles. I will never forget that. It was the only time I ever held a real job during high school and as I look back now as a retiree, those were my first social security hours.



My next real job was about three and a half years later. I was lucky. To my parents, who both had college degrees (Dad had a PhD), it was a given that my brother and I would both go to college. In order that we do the best we could, we would not have to work our way through, as they both had. So my next job was in the summer, between my sophomore and junior years at the university. This one was supposed to be the "dream job," I believe, but it certainly did not turn out that way.



The parents of the girl who was my best friend through all of junior and senior high school owned and ran a motel. Thus they had a number of friends with a like occupation. One of those couples, who also had a son Hank that was in Candy's and my graduating class, had moved the the east coast of Florida and was managing a motel right on the beach. They said she and I could come and live in one of their kitchenette units rent free for the summer and get jobs there to earn spending money and some for the next year in college. We made big plans during Christmas vacation. Since we were attending different colleges, it was an even more exciting prospect that we might spend the kind of "together time" that we had during high school. Well, you know what they say about "the best laid plans..." In April that year I came home one weekend to be her maid-of-honor in a very hasty wedding; and to all intents and purposes, our big plans were history.

However, come summer, everyone involved wanted me to go ahead with the plans. I had no car, nor were there any plans for me to have one until I completed my degree, had a job, and could afford to get one for myself. Also it meant that although I would be near a family who were friends of Candy's parents and also near a guy my age who was sort of a friend---we had been in several classes together, I would be essentially living alone, finding work, then getting myself back and forth to work on whatever public transportation was available--not a lot, let me tell you, at the end of the 60's in a Florida beach town. I was nervous but willing to give it a try. It would be stupid to give up the dream opportunity of living at the beach alone all summer long and working, my first real opportunity to be an adult.

I learned a lot that summer. I never really thought of applying the label "coming of age" to it, but in a literary sense, that is surely what it was. I was sooo small town and naive and so innocent. Ah, but I stray from the job.

There was NO work on the beach side. I borrowed a car (stick shift, which I couldn't drive---but God bless those old Volkswagon Beetles, I drove all day without serious problems but never found first gear til evening when I was returning the car) from a newly wed cousin who happened to be living in the general area, so that I could go make inquiries and put in applications. The only place that offered any hope at all was a huge new Montgomery Ward store that had not yet opened. They weren't quite ready to open yet, which gave me some extra beach days. They did plan to train us all and the training days would be paid. But it was nearly 9 miles to work and I could not keeping using my cousin's car, as she worked too. As it turned out, Hank found the new Wards to be his best option as well, and he had a car. But he was hired to work at their warehouse which was 2 miles away from the store and his work hours were different, much more regular than mine, usually 8:30 to 5:30. The way we finally worked it out was he would drop me at the store on his way to the warehouse and I would spend my first 2 hours in the store coffee shop reading and drinking coffee. I'd start work at 10 am and often work til 2 or 3 pm then be taken off the clock and be expected to be back at 6 pm to work the 6 to closing (9pm) hours. Having no transportation, I would eat some lunch back in their coffee shop then go to the ladies restroom, where there was a couch, and read. On the up side, I read all of Gone With the Wind that summer, with the great comprehension one can achieve by going back and rereading anything forgotten or confusing. When my work day finally ended, Hank would drive back over and pick me up. Obviously, I was no longer getting any beach time and it cut into Hank's evening on a regular basis too. Fortunately neither of us was of the "party animal" mold. But still I felt guilty for being this sister entity he had neither asked for or counted on. Eventually one of the men at work took pity on me and asked if I would like to come and live with his family. I was crazy about his wife, who was only 6 or 7 years older than I, and their 2 adorable children, so it seemed perfect. I did some free babysitting in exchange for bed and breakfast and a ride back and forth to work which didn't put anybody out.

I had a lot of weird life experiences that summer, including my first marriage proposal by a guy I really didn't even know or like that well; he was an unbelievable control freak and decided that was his best chance to tell me what I could and couldn't do. I think getting away from him altogether (by leaving the beach area) was another reason I so quickly accepted the offer to move in with the Johnson family.
Anyway, that job surely was not the dream job; but it wasn't the worst job either.

My "worst job" was not really what most people would consider a terrible job, but I hated it. It also was a "summer job" (tho it did not start out to be) and that was how I was rescued from it. As soon as the time came close for schools to open in the fall, I told my boss that I really missed teaching and needed to keep my hand in at it since it was what I expected to go back to when my husband returned from Vietnam. So what was the problem with this job??? Mostly I was just bored to tears. I got to read a lot on this job too, on the clock; but I felt tied to the 8 by 10 office and my desk. I was the only secretary in a very tiny office in either the days before standard answering machines; or maybe it was just that he wanted all his clients to receive the personal touch. But to tell the truth, there were just not that many people calling. The boss was gorgeous, well known, and wealthy but thought he was "God's gift to women." Mind you, he was married; his wife and children, and he, when he bothered, went to my parents' church, and were active and well liked. But he thought his young secretary needed some "extra nurturing" while her husband was serving so far away. Because of the church connection, as well as who his family was, I did not want to make an ugly scene out of the whole thing. But I must admit, I was NEVER so happy to leave a job and "shake the dust off my feet."

Fortunately, the teaching---yes I did go back to it--- was fulfilling and made me happy. It is hard to call most teaching positions "a dream job." But if satisfaction is what it is all about, and I believe that is the ultimate goal, then I spent 35 years lucky.