no cookies for you, smug bastard
Mar. 1st, 2011 12:52 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
impyToday (well, yesterday since it's six after midnight making it Tuesday), I lost my temper in public. This rarely happens until I am pushed beyond my limits.
Went to visit Dad this morning. This was after Mom tried to call and find out how he was doing. Dad was assigned a new nurse and he wouldn't give Mums any information since she didn't have the code number they never issued her when he was readmitted to that floor. (Yes.) This is also after she was told repeatedly the first go round that she wouldn't need the number they gave her then, usually after she tried to give it to someone who would shoot her down with an, "oh, honey, you're fine. We don't need that" response.
Mums and I walk in and Dad is making odd sounds and repeatedly saying "ow" but not in a voice I would have ever recognized as his own. Mom freaks because this is not how we left him on Saturday, and the call she made on Sunday assured us that he was improving. This would never be classified as an improvement. It is what I would describe as serious deterioration, okay? Truthfully, at this point I was scared as hell, but it wasn't until my brother made his way up to the room and gave me his "What. The. Fuck. Is. This?" face that I went from mild panic to full blown oh fuck. But you can't have one massive flip out and a mild one as well as someone else losing their shit, so... I bit my lip and tried to figure out if Dad was actually in pain or if he was just saying ow (in between sort of howling like a dog) to say something.
Yeah. That didn't work out so well. If you basically led him to an answer, he could answer. Otherwise your odds were pretty slim at getting an answer. Which is something I would not have been surprised at right after he was admitted since hello, a stroke. But this is going on three weeks and is a new effing development. After awhile, Sean and I leave after Dad's pain meds are administered and they shift him in the bed. Turns out Mums is having a sit down with... people. The boy and I figure it would be best not to interrupt. I gather the woman in navy scrubs with short hair is the nurse in charge of either the floor or All The Nurses (all!) and she seemed okay to me. Not so much to Mums. After she emerged from the room she and I talked for a minute or three. (The boy ditched me, saying he'd be back in "twenty minutes" and that he was walking down the street to get a smoothie or something. Yes. He said this.) I asked about his unusual behavior and she said that it was probably due to a combination of the morphine and dialysis. When I started to ask if he would improve, she assured me that he would.
Keep that in mind, kids.
I wait around a little while longer and then decide that I'll see if I can go visit Dad because someone should and I'm getting tired of the good old boys who followed us out into the hall and never fucking left. I'm told to wait five minutes and then call back. I don't have a watch or a phone and there isn't a clock that I can see, so I decide I'll read a few pages of my book and then we'll see what we can see. I go back, and less than two minutes later the Chaplan appears and says Mums wants to talk to me.
She's upset and I can't really get anything out of her, so I don't pry. She leaves to go back and be with Dad. I gather while she was there, she and someone got into it when she asked if the nurse or whomever would kindly give her a few minutes with Dad *alone*. Somehow this ends in the other woman shrieking "Don't threaten me!"
I miss all the fun stuff. Mums returns even more upset and she says that he's had another stroke and no one freakin' bothered to tell us about it. Not long after that, the hospitalist (heyo, doc) appears and the boy returns and things go from bad to What The Fuck Is This Shit. The doc is best described as a smarmy bastard, but I'll go with smug because it's less weird to say. And not in a way where you can tell yourself that at least he knows what he's doing, because he keeps saying "kidneys" and while I understand that for him it's properly more natural to pluralize the word... Dad only has the one. It's part of the problem, dude. But I tell myself not to be bogged down by the little things. Which works until I realize he has nothing more than the little stuff.
He goes on to say that the stroke was caused by Dad's heart condition and Mom stops him there. The boy and I intervene and things continue eventually. Mom tries to find out who is responsible for not letting us know that Dad's condition took such a serious nose dive, and the doc says that he'll take the blame and appologizes in a way that is no way sincere. Mom asks how she finds out what has been done for Dad over the course of the month and no one can tell her this. She tries, repeatedly, to find this out. Mmhmm. That doesn't happen and she gets more frustrated and the boy snaps a few times because the more the doc talks, the less he's actually saying. It's like each time his speech is interrupted, he goes back and begins again.
Having someone repeatedly say I wish I could be the hero and tell you things will work out and that I can fix this, but I can't, in the same tone of voice vets use to tell you to put your pet down is maddening. So I ask, calmly, about this second stroke thing. And he says that it appeared on whatever scan Friday night.
Um, not news. They'd actually mentioned this before... okay. A bit more is revealed, like the probability that it was caused by taking Dad off the blood thinners so that they could put him on dialysis. This is news worthy so I'm no longer ready to throttle someone. Until doc is blank when asked why it wouldn't have presented on Saturday. Or Sunday. And isn't it possible something else happened if Dad was okay Sunday afternoon but by Monday at noon he's no longer recognizing his own wife?
By this time the doc I think has realized he's not escaping this completely unscathed, so he says that the family should have been contacted. Fair enough. Who was supposed to do that? He was.
So why didn't you?
I apologize.
You didn't answer my question.
What question?
You say you were responsible for contacting us. You didn't. Why not?
I apologize.
I don't think that's as effective as you believe it is She's asking why you didn't call. It's an easy question. Were you too busy? Did you forget? What? About this point is where I've chimed in again and it's where he stands up and stalks off. Amazing that it's the part where he admits he fucked up but could have gotten me to shush if he'd simply copped to being too swamped, or thinking that someone else would do it. I wasn't trying for something big, just for an actual fucking reason.
I spent a lot of that meeting seriously debating doing awful things with the cane Mums was using.
Other highlights: The fact that dad hasn't been eating was brought up. Mums has mentioned this to any nurse/tech/doc she's seen. They've all told her not to worry. Doc Smarmy Smug Bastard-Pants? Yeah. He seemed to relish the telling of feeding tubes and the likelyhood of restraints being needed.
Despite doctors telling her to ask the nurses how Dad was, and that the nurse could give her the information she needed, nope. Nurses can't. And any information she needs must come from each individual doc. That'll be fun.
Other things cropped up, too, but mostly this and the meeting with the patient rep didn't really make today go well. I think Mums got more from rehashing this with my aunt. At least, I hope she did.
Basically it seemed to be "you know half the stuff you've been told is wrong. The other half probably is, but any time you ask me, I'll tell you it wasn't on my watch and that the past is past and what's the use in discussing it."
It takes a lot to piss me off enough for me to call someone I'm not closely related to or close friends with, but damn if it didn't happen.
Went to visit Dad this morning. This was after Mom tried to call and find out how he was doing. Dad was assigned a new nurse and he wouldn't give Mums any information since she didn't have the code number they never issued her when he was readmitted to that floor. (Yes.) This is also after she was told repeatedly the first go round that she wouldn't need the number they gave her then, usually after she tried to give it to someone who would shoot her down with an, "oh, honey, you're fine. We don't need that" response.
Mums and I walk in and Dad is making odd sounds and repeatedly saying "ow" but not in a voice I would have ever recognized as his own. Mom freaks because this is not how we left him on Saturday, and the call she made on Sunday assured us that he was improving. This would never be classified as an improvement. It is what I would describe as serious deterioration, okay? Truthfully, at this point I was scared as hell, but it wasn't until my brother made his way up to the room and gave me his "What. The. Fuck. Is. This?" face that I went from mild panic to full blown oh fuck. But you can't have one massive flip out and a mild one as well as someone else losing their shit, so... I bit my lip and tried to figure out if Dad was actually in pain or if he was just saying ow (in between sort of howling like a dog) to say something.
Yeah. That didn't work out so well. If you basically led him to an answer, he could answer. Otherwise your odds were pretty slim at getting an answer. Which is something I would not have been surprised at right after he was admitted since hello, a stroke. But this is going on three weeks and is a new effing development. After awhile, Sean and I leave after Dad's pain meds are administered and they shift him in the bed. Turns out Mums is having a sit down with... people. The boy and I figure it would be best not to interrupt. I gather the woman in navy scrubs with short hair is the nurse in charge of either the floor or All The Nurses (all!) and she seemed okay to me. Not so much to Mums. After she emerged from the room she and I talked for a minute or three. (The boy ditched me, saying he'd be back in "twenty minutes" and that he was walking down the street to get a smoothie or something. Yes. He said this.) I asked about his unusual behavior and she said that it was probably due to a combination of the morphine and dialysis. When I started to ask if he would improve, she assured me that he would.
Keep that in mind, kids.
I wait around a little while longer and then decide that I'll see if I can go visit Dad because someone should and I'm getting tired of the good old boys who followed us out into the hall and never fucking left. I'm told to wait five minutes and then call back. I don't have a watch or a phone and there isn't a clock that I can see, so I decide I'll read a few pages of my book and then we'll see what we can see. I go back, and less than two minutes later the Chaplan appears and says Mums wants to talk to me.
She's upset and I can't really get anything out of her, so I don't pry. She leaves to go back and be with Dad. I gather while she was there, she and someone got into it when she asked if the nurse or whomever would kindly give her a few minutes with Dad *alone*. Somehow this ends in the other woman shrieking "Don't threaten me!"
I miss all the fun stuff. Mums returns even more upset and she says that he's had another stroke and no one freakin' bothered to tell us about it. Not long after that, the hospitalist (heyo, doc) appears and the boy returns and things go from bad to What The Fuck Is This Shit. The doc is best described as a smarmy bastard, but I'll go with smug because it's less weird to say. And not in a way where you can tell yourself that at least he knows what he's doing, because he keeps saying "kidneys" and while I understand that for him it's properly more natural to pluralize the word... Dad only has the one. It's part of the problem, dude. But I tell myself not to be bogged down by the little things. Which works until I realize he has nothing more than the little stuff.
He goes on to say that the stroke was caused by Dad's heart condition and Mom stops him there. The boy and I intervene and things continue eventually. Mom tries to find out who is responsible for not letting us know that Dad's condition took such a serious nose dive, and the doc says that he'll take the blame and appologizes in a way that is no way sincere. Mom asks how she finds out what has been done for Dad over the course of the month and no one can tell her this. She tries, repeatedly, to find this out. Mmhmm. That doesn't happen and she gets more frustrated and the boy snaps a few times because the more the doc talks, the less he's actually saying. It's like each time his speech is interrupted, he goes back and begins again.
Having someone repeatedly say I wish I could be the hero and tell you things will work out and that I can fix this, but I can't, in the same tone of voice vets use to tell you to put your pet down is maddening. So I ask, calmly, about this second stroke thing. And he says that it appeared on whatever scan Friday night.
Um, not news. They'd actually mentioned this before... okay. A bit more is revealed, like the probability that it was caused by taking Dad off the blood thinners so that they could put him on dialysis. This is news worthy so I'm no longer ready to throttle someone. Until doc is blank when asked why it wouldn't have presented on Saturday. Or Sunday. And isn't it possible something else happened if Dad was okay Sunday afternoon but by Monday at noon he's no longer recognizing his own wife?
By this time the doc I think has realized he's not escaping this completely unscathed, so he says that the family should have been contacted. Fair enough. Who was supposed to do that? He was.
So why didn't you?
I apologize.
You didn't answer my question.
What question?
You say you were responsible for contacting us. You didn't. Why not?
I apologize.
I spent a lot of that meeting seriously debating doing awful things with the cane Mums was using.
Other highlights: The fact that dad hasn't been eating was brought up. Mums has mentioned this to any nurse/tech/doc she's seen. They've all told her not to worry. Doc Smarmy Smug Bastard-Pants? Yeah. He seemed to relish the telling of feeding tubes and the likelyhood of restraints being needed.
Despite doctors telling her to ask the nurses how Dad was, and that the nurse could give her the information she needed, nope. Nurses can't. And any information she needs must come from each individual doc. That'll be fun.
Other things cropped up, too, but mostly this and the meeting with the patient rep didn't really make today go well. I think Mums got more from rehashing this with my aunt. At least, I hope she did.
Basically it seemed to be "you know half the stuff you've been told is wrong. The other half probably is, but any time you ask me, I'll tell you it wasn't on my watch and that the past is past and what's the use in discussing it."
It takes a lot to piss me off enough for me to call someone I'm not closely related to or close friends with, but damn if it didn't happen.
