Mom is in the hospital. I’m convinced that the emergency room is a much more harmful place than the bathroom.
Mom fell in the bathroom again today. I waited until five in the morning, when I figured all the bathroom problems would be sorted out, and I crashed for about four hours or so. I woke up briefly because I thought I heard something, but I’ve been waking up hearing imaginary noises for days, so I decided it was my imagination and went back to sleep.
It was probably the sound of mom falling.
When I got up and stumbled into the kitchen I heard moaning. I took a deep breath and walked into the bathroom. Mom was wedged between the toilet and the tub. I had warned her yesterday that the towel rod was not to be used to support her weight; that it would rip right out of the wall if she tried. Today the towel rod was on the floor beside her. There was no blood on the floor.
Mom finally admitted that I was unable to lift her out of there, and agreed to let me call for help. The EMTs who arrived helped her up and got her into a chair. I helped her get dressed, and the EMTs used mom’s new wheelchair to get her into my POV so I could drive her to the hospital. On the way, I asked why she didn’t call me when she fell.
“You looked so tired last night,” she said. She didn’t call me because she wanted to lie on the cold bathroom floor for hours while I slept. How can something that sounds so rational be so completely insane?
The hospital was fucking amazing. That emergency room is pathetic. One nurse was awkwardly caring for mom when a second nurse walked in and introduced herself. To the first nurse. The first nurse left the new one in charge and vanished, and the new nurse decided to access mom’s port to draw blood. She seemed quite fascinated by the port (“Wow, it’s triangular!” she said as she palpated it,) and nervously gathered together all the things she’d need. She stood with many more packages than I expected and a pre-made kit stacked up on the biohazard trash bin lid (!) and realized that she didn’t have a mask. She searched the drawers for one, then left to go get one.
She returned with one of the cheap paper masks they give coughing patients. She put the mask on, and searched the drawers for gloves. Finding none, she left to go get some, walking right past the three boxes of gloves mounted at eye level on the wall by the door.
She came back again, put on the gloves, and opened the kit. She nervously smoothed out the protective paper wrapped around the kit, and then removed from the top of the kit… yes, a mask and a pair of gloves.
“Excuse me, I’m sorry,” I said. “Have you accessed a port before?”
She looked at a point just over my right shoulder. “I’ve done this a thousand times,” she lied.
“I hate to say this, because I don’t want to be rude, but I just want to take care of my mother,” I explained. “If possible, I’m wondering if we could have someone a little more experienced access the port for her. She’s had a very difficult day, and I don’t want her to go through any more pain than is absolutely necessary.”
“I’m VERY experienced,” promised the nurse who had to introduce herself to the other nurse, who didn’t know where the gloves are.
“I understand that, but call me a helicopter daughter if you like. I’d really like to have someone else access the port if that’s possible, please.”
At that moment the doctor came in, so the new nurse left.
The whole day was pretty much like that. The other nurse came in, failed to access the port and caused mom great pain while trying, then decided to root around in her hand with a needle for several minutes to draw blood from there. The bruise she left behind is quite impressive.
If I had had half a brain, I would have stopped at the nearby oncology office to have the port accessed before going to the hospital. But I don’t know how I would have gotten her into the office.
Mom had several tests throughout the day. The emergency room was mystified by her white blood cell counts, even though I told them that she’s a chemotherapy patient and had just had Neulasta and Procrit. I didn’t think I had to explain what Neulasta is, but looking back perhaps that might have saved a whole lot of frustration and several tests for infection. They did a chest x-ray because they were convinced that she must have an infection. And the chest x-ray convinced them that she must have pneumonia. The last PA I talked to kept asking me about coughing and difficulty breathing. Finally she asked “Does your mother have a history of cancer?”
What, the woman with the completely bald head and the port in her chest, who just had Neulasta and Procrit and chemotherapy? No, nothing other than the small cell lung cancer. Why do you ask?
Did they even LOOK at her?