A LONG JOURNEY BACK PART 3

We never made it to the follow up appointment because in less than a week he had a fever again. He was admitted once again for an infection in his kidney. He was in the hospital for 4 days and in my opinion not ready to be released but another unfamiliar hospitalist came in to his room before lunch and said he could go home.I had an uneasy feeling as I can tell when my husband is well and his confusion told me that he was not ready to go home. I ask the hospitalist if he was serious and he said "sure, why not, we are just waiting for his creatine to drop more and he can do that at home".
I was shocked and speechless but we got the discharged papers and went home.

Within 12 hours we were back at Bay Area Emergency Room with a dangerously low blood pressure, high heart rate and septic shock. They had trouble getting his blood pressure to come up and gave him a strong dose of a drug IV that had possible serious side effects that could stop his heart so now they are asking me if he has a DNR or an Advance Directive. They had to put him in the Intensive Care Unit so they could keep a close eye on him.

What is a hospitalist? Well I ask that question when I reported this doctor that had discharged my husband too early.

hospitalist

noun

hos·​pi·​tal·​ist | \ ˈhä-(ˌ)spi-tə-list \

Definition of hospitalist

: a physician who specializes in treating hospitalized patients of other physicians in order to minimize the number of hospital visits by other physicians

In my opinion this is a bad thing. In all the times we were at the any of the hospitals we had a different hospitalist everyday! How can one learn to know the patient with just a 10 minute visit once?!

While he was in the ICU I spent the night even though it was local. I was very concerned about his condition. The next day his blood pressure came down but his creatinine levels were going up a bit but he was starting to feel better however, he was still very confused. . His doctor told him if the creatinine got to 5 it was time for dialysis. They were 4.2 at this time.  They said he had another infection in that kidney that has the nephrostomy tube . The goal was to keep him on antibiotics IV and watch his progress over a few days. I went home the next night and when I returned found that he had crawled over the bed rail to go to the bathroom and got the tube caught on the edge of a table and pulled it out! Now how in the world did that happen in ICU? His nephrologist at Riverbend Hospital ask the nephrologist here to please try to put the tube back in and curl it inside the kidney so it would stay more stable. He tried but was unsuccessful.