A LONG JOURNEY BACK PART 9

His chest XRay showed massive amounts of pneumonia. The nurse took a photo on her cell phone and showed me. It was thick in the lower part of his right lung and scattered throughout . His blood work showed very low red blood count so again is was anemic. They admitted him to the hospital for a regiment of IV antibiotics a blood transfusion of two bags of blood and breathing treatments. He was in the hospital for four days.

Since he had just had a dialysis session that day (Monday) and is on a three day a week schedule he needed another session on Wednesday. In the past if you were admitted to Bay Area Hospital and were a dialysis patient, they would transport you to Eugene because even though there was a dialysis center just across the street, it was not affiliated with the hospital. Recently another dialysis center opened just across the street and this center contracts with the Hospital to do sessions for the patients that need dialysis. So he was scheduled to have a session in his hospital room on Wednesday.

The machine that does the dialysis was brought over to the hospital along with a experienced dialysis nurse. She got an emergency call just after she started to set Alan up on the machine. There was a critical patient in the ER that needed dialysis right away so she had to stop the session for Alan and go to the ER. She came back during the night and finished his session which takes 5 hours. Next session would have to be done on Friday.

I have always been surprised at the neglect of personal care Alan has received while in Bay Area Hospital. He wears a Depends in case his urostomy bag leaks and I had just put a new bag and Depends on him Monday morning. Tuesday morning when I arrived to see him I smelled a foul order but I thought maybe it was just because he had been in bed for a day now. Around lunch time he got up to go to the bathroom and noticed that his gown was wet. I checked it and his bag had leaked and the Depends was soaking wet. I ask for a dry gown and changed his depends. There was a folder on his table with information on how important it is to brush your teeth and rinse your mouth especially if you are a pneumonia patient. There was no emesis basin, tooth brush or mouth wash anywhere in the room. In the past there has always been emesis basin, basin for a bed bath,a tooth brush, mouth wash, soap, shampoo, lotion and powder in the room when you are admitted. I brought this to the nurses attention and she brought them to him. As I left that evening I ask the nurse to remind Alan to brush and rinse before he went to bed. He called me when he was ready to settle down for the night and I ask him if the nurse reminded him to brush and rinse and he said no. I told him to go ahead and do it and call the nurse if  he  needed help.

Thursday night I asked the nurse what time Alan was scheduled for dialysis on Friday and he said the thought they were going to discharge Alan so he could just go back to his regular dialysis center.
I told the nurse that Alan's scheduled dialysis session was at 1pm each day so he were in a rush to get Alan discharged so he could get to his regular appointment.

Once we got home that evening I was getting ready to cut the ID bracelet off of Alan's wrist and when I pulled up his shirt sleeve there were still 2 IV's in his arm! I couldn't believe that in the hast and hurry to get Alan discharged so they wouldn't have to do dialysis there at the hospital they forgot to take out his IV's. I took them out and then called the nurse at the hospital. He apologized and explained to me how to remove them. I told him that I had already removed them.

The next morning Alan said his butt was sore so after his bath I changed his urostomy bag and checked the area that he said was sore. It was obvious that he had a very angry rash caused by the time spent in that wet Depends. I was furious! There is NO excuse for this. I was a nursing assistant for over 15 years and I know how to take care of a patient. These days all that is important is entering information in the computer and someone needs to change this. I never saw a nursing assistant (CNA) while I was there in the hospital with Alan. When I was a nursing assistant I made sure the first thing I did in the morning was to help the patient bath . Be it a shower or a bed bath I made sure they were taken care of and then I changed their bed and tided up their room after breakfast. If I worked on the evening shift I made sure they all got a back rub with lotion which helps relax the patient and also good for patients that are not able to turn on their own to help prevent bedsores.

Alan has been home now for three weeks. He is doing great. No fever or low O2 and his blood pressure is holding at the rate his neuphrologist wants it. On his follow up appt last week the doctor said he still has a lot of crackling in his lungs which means the pneumonia is not all clear yet. He still does his breathing treatments here at home twice a day and has dialysis three times a week. Some days they really wipe him out but he keeps fighting and is planning to set up at another gun show in two weeks. I thank God everyday for giving me strength to go through all of this with Alan and for giving me patients and understanding of his situation.

He is such a strong man in body and mind. Even though he has been very near death and he has beat the odds many many times he is still standing. Our children say he has nine lives.

I am writing a book on his days of long recovery after he had shingles. which went to his brain and caused encephalitis and the near fatal car accident and coma he was in for 10 days.
That is another story.....