Okay why does this always happen on a weekend or holiday?
My husband had a hernia repair on Tuesday and by Friday had to be taken by ambulance to the ER because it was the Christmas weekend and no doctors were in. He was having some confusion and I worried he may have had a stroke. He was seen right away since he was brought in by ambulance and diagnosed with an accident overdose of Oxy that he was taking for pain. Wait, What?
He was taking the prescribed amount every 4 hours as prescribed. How can you overdose following the doctors orders?! Well apparently he did. They did blood work and urinalysis and everything looked okay so they sent him home.
Saturday he was doing somewhat better but it still bothered me that he was sleeping ALL the time and still had "Altered Mental Status". He had these symptoms a year ago when he had encephalitis and was in a coma for 10 days! I wanted answers. I tried to call the surgeon Saturday evening but got his answering service. I thought okay I would wait until after Christmas. Thinking the doctors office would be open.
Monday after Christmas My husband woke up with swelling and redness in the incision site so I called his surgeon and was told he was on vacation until Jan 4th so I ask what I was supposed to do in case of emergency and she said go to the ER. I ask if there was an on call doctor filling in for the surgeon and she said yes, here is his number. I called the number at 9Am and got no answer after leaving a frantic message about my husbands condition but got no return call so by 12:30 I tried to call our regular family doctor and got the same information. She was on vacation until Jan 4th! What?! This is ridiculous!!
This is not an actual photo of our ER. I found it on the internet but all the rooms in our ER were full
I put him in the car and drove to the ER. By this time I was fuming!
We walked into the ER and all the waiting rooms were full of sick people with masks on due to the flu outbreak. Great now we get to get exposed to the flu!
We tried to understand under the circumstances, if these poor sick people tried to see their doctors the day AFTER Christmas and they were all on vacation. This caused the poor Emergency room doctors and nurses to be way over worked. The very kind nurse that took care of was a traveling nurse and works all over the state and he said the average wait time in an ER is 24 hours! What?! When I told him and the ER doctor what had happened and that both of our doctors were on vacation they shook their heads and said "so that's why we are so bombarded with patients today." They said they were busier on Christmas day.
We were finally called to the ER 7 1/2 hours after our arrival.
I think this is uncalled for and should be reported to someone. I will be voicing my anger to both of our doctors and especially the on call doctor who was supposed to be covering surgery patients for our surgeon.
Hope those doctors had a wonderful Christmas because ours was hell. A sick husband that had Altered Mental Status and swelling in his incision and me who was totally stressed out about the whole thing. We had no Christmas, thanks doctors!!!
Thanks to the friendly staff at Bay Area Hospital my husband is much better today.
Cat Scan was clear, no stroke, no encephalitis, blood work was good, urinalysis was clear, vitals were perfect. They said he may be starting an infection at the incision site and gave him antibiotics. They also told me that sometimes the stress from surgery can cause confusion and things can seem foggy for awhile.
Has anyone ever experienced this sort of situation?
Ugh!
