Several of you have written or told me they enjoyed the funny anecdotes interspersed in my writings. I have a story to be told of my surgery but it’s not funny, even to my warped sense of humor. This is for my brother Don, who dislikes funerals and thinks the open casket variety is especially primitive. Turns out to be good for something in an unexpected way.
So the hospital named after the mother of Jesus did a great job in surgical care with my fantastic urologist Paul Hatcher, M.D. Nursing care seemed to be either fabulous or not-so-fabulous. The care received pre-op and in recovery was excellent, one of the nurses knew me from a mutual friend and had another good news story about prostate cancer survival in her family. Here’s the bad news. Someone (volunteer, nurse, coordinator, wasn’t clear) told my family I’d been moved to the Oncology floor and wrote down a room number and to go up and see me. As my wife Judy said it was a good thing she wrote it down so the family couldn’t be accused of misunderstanding her. So Judy is walking into that room with Jeremy and Hayley literally on her heels (and her friend Evans behind them) when they are confronted with an obviously dead person in a bed. Judy put her arm out to stop them but it was too late. She said later the person looked quite jaundiced and they couldn’t really tell if it was a woman or man but didn’t stick around long enough to figure this out. Judy went straight to the nurse’s station, asked (demanded) to speak with the nursing supervisor. She told her what happened, showed her the piece of paper and issued her demands: a different and larger room, across from the nurse’s station and an investigation into their procedures so this wouldn’t happen again. These 4 people decided to withhold this info from me until after I got home; they worried I’d see it as an omen. When the secret emerged, I expressed my concerns to them about how bad that must have been when Hayley said, “Oh I’ve seen dead people before when they open the caskets at funerals.” So her great aunt and grandmother (once again) helped even in death. The law of unintended consequences, or in this case – benefit. Jeremy laughed it off but correctly pointing out, “At least it wasn’t you in that bed!”
The evening agency (temp) nurse promised me I had Demerol or hydrocodone pill ordered for pain. Still trying to shake off the anesthesia and morphine haze, I didn’t want Demerol/phenergan and asked for hydrocodone. Thirty minutes later I called them and they said it wasn’t ordered but they’d called my doctor for an order, which I got ten minutes later. Despite having recited my medication list at least five times, I was never offered my stomach med Protonix (not a real big deal) nor my maintenance asthma inhaler Advair which would have resulted in almost a guaranteed asthma attack. Fortunately I followed the rules I recommend to anyone going to a hospital – be prepared and take your own meds with you. I managed to sneak two Tylenol tabs and my Advair inhaler and managed just fine. God help you if you go into a hospital on a psychiatric medication – they will typically omit it, reduce the dose, tell you that you don’t need it or shame you. Take those with you, too. The night nurse apologized for giving me a suppository, rather than saying something like “this is going to help you.” The day nurses were fabulous and one was another LMU instructor who knew Lisa Pullen who works with me. I think that got me better care, Lisa!
