naked and in front of everyone of course…
k im done… for now lol
We are, each of us angels with only one wing;
and we can only fly by
embracing one another
I’d like to save relevant and useful threads pertaining to “mental illness” – whether pro-psychiatric or anti-psychiatric in tone–from the pruning-room floor.
::bump::
One of my most horrific hospital moments was at a military hospital. I was pregnant again for the 6th time (I have had 5 miscarriages prior to this incident). I began feeling extreme cramping and pain, and immediately knew what was about to happen. I called my husband, and we went to the emergency room (on the way I began to bleed heavily). After about a half hour, they decided to take me back to a room. As they wheeled me back, some dumbass said “I think uhhhh…I think uhhhh…I think she might be having a miscarriage”. What a damn genius. Anyhow, I began having contractions and after I ‘delivered’ the fetus, they put it in a clear cup and put it up on the shelf, in my direct eyesight!! They left it there for a few hours-refusing to move it. They were waiting for someone from the lab to come pick it up. While the attendants were waiting for someone to pick up the ‘specimen’, they felt a great urge to show it to everyone there that was training for something (I wouldn’t be surprised if they had showed it to the janitors in training). To finish the story quickly, they ended up losing the ‘specimen’.
Having a miscarriage is an extremely difficult thing for some, as it was for me. I could not believe the insensitivity of the medical staff during this traumatic time for me. Who in their right mind would place a mothers dead fetus (or baby depending on your views) directly in front of her???
My 7th pregnancy, by the grace of god, gave me a truly wonderful daughter. The pregnancy was really rough (bed rest from 3 months on), and I had many complications. I had also become eclamptic while having her, and almost died in labor. My obstetricians were in the same military hospital, where I had my 6th miscarriage. I’m not going to go into what all happened, but I will say that I have a huge malpractice lawsuit in the works.
Gee-I just found this thread and my story does not compare to yours but anyway…
I was in college, slipped and felt my ankle go “snap”. Passersby asked if I was OK and I said “No-I think I broke my ankle, call an ambulance”. Instead they called security who took me to the infirmary where a very nice nurse cleaned me off and insisted I stay there that night and see a doctor in the morning.
The next day the doctor came by and looked at me. He said “I hope you’re not staying in the infirmary just because you sprained your ankle”. Not wanting to appear like a malingerer I said “the nurse made me stay-but shouldn’t it be X-rayed?” He said “well if you absolutely insist, I will send you into town for X-rays but they won’t do anything until the swelling goes down, even if it is a hairline fracture. Why don’t you see the orthopedists when they come on Tuesday?” (it was Friday).
Anyway, the orthopedists saw me on Tuesday and told me it was a bad break and needed emergency surgery the next morning. I said “Fine-I’ll just go back to my dorm room and pack for the hospital”. The Doctor said “Absolutely not, with that bad break you have to stay in the infirmary” (this after I had been sent back to my dorm room for 4 days with no pain meds and crutches that I eventually figured out were different lengths-which is why I kept falling to the left).
Anyway, the coda comes when I am finishing my medical training. Among the job offers is a letter that begins “Have you ever considered working in a college infirmary?” and is signed by the incompetent quack who humiliated me and sent me home.
P.S. Anybody who comes into my office with an ankle injury gets an x-ray and lots of sympathy!
I am pretty aggressive about my hospital care while a patient, so i rarely get browbeaten or bullied. So, i’ll post one of my horrifying experiences. To set it up, i have a chronic respiratory illness, the result being i occasionally have to go into the hospital for i.v. antibiotic treaments for infection and inflamation.
Some time back, while a patient for one of these “tune-ups”
i was on the exercise bike in my room (private room!),
after all, sitting or lying around all day for 10 to 14 days, which is a usual stay for me, gets horribly boring, and you lose a lot of endurance and muscle tone, so exercise is a must… so while i was on the bike one day, i feel a faint pop below my right clavicle. i don’t stop pedalling, and i feel a cough coming up. One result of my disease is i cough up a lot of mucus, so coughing is nothing new. I keep a cup around to spit into, as i can sometimes bring up quite a bit. I spit, but notice it’s streaked with blood. This, again is nothing new, sometimes things get moved around in the lungs, and a capillary might burst.
I cough some more, and now i’m not bringing up phlem, i’m bringing up pure blood. Red, frothy arterial blood. I can feel the blood drain from my face, literally. I don’t panic.
I slowly get up off the bike, as i’m coughing up more blood, and now i can feel it rattling around in my right lung. I walk out into the hall, holding a clear plastic cup about 1/2 full of blood , and say to a nurse standing there (not my nurse) “i think i need some help”. This is a respiratory floor, so they are ready to deal with these kinds of problems. They pounce. I’m given cough suppressants so i don’t inflame the situation further. in short order, the bleeding does stop. i’d coughed up about a full cup of blood at that point. They call my personal physician, and he orders what’s called an embolization. They quickly put me on a gurney, and wheel me down to radiology. i’m stripped, shaved (whoa!) and prepped for the procedure. I’m given a bit of morphine (whoa…) to smooth things out, but not to dope me up, cause they need me conscious. the radiologist took a catheter and strung it up my right femoral artery and into the vessels of my right lung. There he used contrast dye to actually spot the offending vessels and cauterize them shut so they don’t burst and bleed again. It seems with folks who have my disease process that it’s always certain vessels which cause problems for hemoptysis. The whole thing took about two hours, and he wound up pumping about two liters of contrast into my system. after it was done, i had to pee so bad, i was shaking. But, i couldn’t move. There was a 1/2 inch gash in my artery, so i had to pee in a bucket. (ugh) but i tell you what, it was the best piss i’d ever taken! Anyway. No stitches. They basically just pressed on the wound for half an hour, then bandaged. After that i had to lie with my leg bound to the bed for 8 hours. I wound up with a bruise that went all over my groin. It was pretty burley. I’d have to say, while i was being wheeled down to radiology, looking at the lights in the ceiling pass by, it was pretty horrifying. I knew i wasn’t going to die, but the gravity of everything was pretty intense. Feeling him prodding around my chest cavity was pretty nasty too. The embolization was HOT. I was warned, but when you feel like you’re having a match head put out inside your chest, it’s quite a feeling. There was a dull sensation at that point for a couple weeks afterward.
I’d made it 30 years without a hemoptysis. I haven’t had once since. They’re just “one of those things”. some folks have them somewhat regularly, some are like me, they’re just a freak occurance.
Anyway. I’ve racked up a lot of hospital time over the years. I’ve racked up some intense non-hospital stories as well. The future holds even more. (yay!) I’m listed for lung transplant, so i’m sure it’ll be the keystone cops once i get the call.
Wow.
I have been truly blessed with a few good random people. The trauma surgeon after my car accident who was very careful to take care of me. (I got him because the ambulace had colled in my rollover accident. Big scary sounding title. Real injuries added up to a broken finger. He probably could have walked out and left me to a nurse, going on to take care of someone who was actually traumatized.) now, I’m not a hospital person. I am, in fact a Christian Scientist. I wouldn’t have been in the hospital if I wasn’t a minor and had to go. I was, bluntly, scared shitless. And he took the time to explain what had happened, all of the options he was considring for treatment, and get my opinions. He was fine with using the most non intrusive methods he could think of. Total respect for my personal position.
But this is balanced by the ER jackass who diagnosed my last emergency surgery. I’m at college. six hours away from my family or anyone who has known me for more than six months. I’m in pain so bad that my friends physically dragged me to the hospital. (well, they called the ambulance and I was too far gone to say no.) I get to the ER. The spiffy nurse drugs me good, I start screaming and pass out after it hits my heart and spreads out. (It hurt!) when I wake up she finds me a medical book so Ican read all about what knocked me out so nicely.
Finally a doctor shows up. He pokes me a it, asks where it would hurt if I cared. (Great drug. You still ‘feel’ pain. You just really don’t give a damn about it.) He then decided he wants to diagnose me when I’m actually in pain. So he stops teh drugs. Without telling me. A nurse informs me when I ask for more , as I’m beginning to hurt. I’m informed that not only do I not get more now, but I don’t get more until I’m in a lot of pain and he has come back to look at me. Being the idiot that I am I wait until 4 am. I’m alone in the dark crying, so I ask the nurse if I can please, please, please see the doc now so I can get drugged up and sleep. She says sure and goes to call him. Doctor went home.
Both the nurse and I were pissed. She had him removed from my case. And drugged me happily senseless. (I liked her too.)
{slight hijack}
I’ve seen several references to “drive-by deliveries” in the past tense – are HMOs actually paying for more than a 24-hour hospital stay now?
{end slight hijack}
And I must join the choir saying, “Get somebody to speak up for you if you can’t do it yoursef.” Specifically, get my mother. She is VERY GOOD at dealing with this stuff. Doesn’t take BS from anybody. My Mom is cool. 
While in the hospital having my beloved Baby Boy the most terrible thing a woman can imagine happened to me not once but twice. I was not looking my best to say the least and who should I run into during one of my trips to see my baby in the nursery but a former lover. Does he pretend not to notice me so I can slink off? No he insists on talking to me even though my breath at this point could knock a buzzard out of the sky. I get away with all my pride laying on a heap in the hall and rush back to my room to brush my teeth and comb my hair. Feeling somewhat better I go back to get Baby Boy for feeding. Who should I run into but the gorgeous ex-stripper lover who I still think of late at night! Not a shred of make-up on my face, wearing a dorky flowered robe and pink slippers. Still hunched over from the c-section and there’s the hottest guy I have ever seen naked. Does my appearance bother him? No, he asks if I want to go out some time! I silently point towards the nursery where Baby Boy is about to scream the hospital down. Stripper hotty says not a problem, bring the baby. I make a few noises and manage to only drool on my self and he walks off smiling. Yes, later he did call me but I just couldn’t see him, I only thought of him as an object. You just don’t have worse experiences in a hospital. Pain goes away, humiliation stays with you.
I’ve had some horrendous hospital experiences, and some funny ones.
When I went in for knee surgery (planned) the doctor forgot to write a prespription for pain meds for after I woke up. So I’m in the recovery room, hyperventilating and vomiting from pain and the aftereffects of aneasthesia, and they’re trying to get my doctor to answer his pager. For nearly an hour. My mother called up to see if I was ready for visitors, and I can still remember the nurse saying “We’re still having trouble with her pain managment.” i.e. they hadn’t been managing my pain AT ALL.
Same hospital, same surgery: in the room they put me in, the nurse call buttons didn’t work. Which they didn’t know because the other tenant spoke only Spanish AND THEY HAD NEVER BOTHERED TO FIND A TRANSLATOR AT ANY TIME. (And they were sending this poor woman off to a hospice without telling her where she was going or how to contact her family because, in the middle of Spanish Harlem, they couldn’t be bothered to find someone who speaks her language.) So I was on a saline drip, completely immobile, and I can’t call a nurse when I need a bedpan. So finally, after screaming my already-sore throat raw to get a nurse, I figure out that the call button is not working. Her response? “Oh, maintainance won’t fix that until morning because it’s not an emergecy” Excuse me? Having a trapped, bedridden, pain-ridden patient who can’t call for help no matter what happens is not an emergency? And, lady, I work in this same hospital complex. I know the maintainance people. If you call and TELL them it’s an emergency, they’ll beleive you. They don’t do patient care, they just take your word for it.
Different hospital: I had an ovary decide to twist on itself, cutting off it’s own nervous and blood supply. Some of the most intense pain imaginable. So after getting into the ER and getting plenty of morphine I’m still vomiting from pain every time I try to stand up. And they put me through every kind of test imaginable. And after 16 hours of testing, vomiting, morphine, and mind-blowing pain, some dipshit decides my pain medication sould be changed. To asprin. Huh? (That didn’t last long, once I started screaming.)
I will confirm that having someone with you is key to surviving in a hospital. You are in too much pain, too confused, and often too doped up to respond properly. It needs to be the role of your loved ones to raise bloody hell when you are not being treated properly. I will always remember my lover, prince that he is, telling the doctors off during my THIRD pelvic exam in 6 hours time, when they decided they shouldn’t use lube.
Okay, I guess it is time for me to step forward and share my recent hospital experience. I came home from work May first, ate dinner, visited with my wife and family and then at about 8 I went in for a shower. As I stepped from the shower I felt very sick, my chest was very tight and painful and I felt sick to my stomach, I passed it off as indigestion.
My wife took one look at me and said she was taking me to the hospital, I refused, it was just indigestion. A few minutes later I felt worse, my wife now demanded to take me to the hospital.
I began to feel even worse on the way to the hospital and thinking it wasn’t indigestion. We arrived at the hospital and went into the emergency room, it was full of people. I could only think “Oh crap, I am going to have to wait hours.”
The emergency room receptionist sent me back to a room immediately with about eight people running to the room. I was hooked up to an EKG, given some nitroglycerin and had some IV’s started in less than two minutes. They told me I was having a heart attack. The nurses kept by me, giving me nitro and aspirins and IV fluids, a cardiologist came in and told me they were going to do an angioplasty and explained what it was to me.
At ten I was in surgery and they were running tubing up my femoral artery to my heart. I could watch the procedure on a screen and saw the arteries that were in my heart. The passed a little balloon through and “roto rootered” the arteries, they then put in two stints to hold the arteries open. The procedure was finished at one thirty in the morning, and my family greeted me as they wheeled me out and took me to a room.
The entire hospital staff were wonderful, caring and professional. I stayed in the hospital for three days and have nothing but praise for the entire team. I hope I don’t have another heart attack but if I do, I know I will be well cared for.
I had always thought I was too young for a heart attack, but, I guess 50 isn’t too young.
Catrandom really hit the nail on the head: it’s annoying when they assume a patient is arguing or angry. After being at the hospital for 12 hours without seeing the resident, I asked if maybe I could have him look in and give us an idea of how labor was going. I didn’t ask to be checked, I didn’t insist he drop everything to see me, I didn’t try to suggest treatment, pitocin, anything. I just wanted to hear him say “doing great, mama” Or whatever. I just needed to know he was on top of what was going on and get a little guidance.
Well. He stomped into my room and proceeded to yell at me about how I’d demanded to be checked and why that was an awful idea and how they never should have admitted me in the first place… He was such a prick. Entirely negative, he didn’t have one positive thing to say about me or to me at all. I listened to it all, calmly tried to tell him he had it all wrong, and then when he left the room I burst into sobbing hysterics and couldn’t calm down even after the nurse dragged him back in to apologize to me. Horrible! I needed all my resources to deal with labor pain and progress, not dealing with some crabby resident’s power trip! God, I just needed some encouragement! And if he’d ASKED why I wanted to see him, instead of assuming I had some treatment agenda, he’d have known better. Jerk.
Okay, that said, nearly everything else that happened was marvelous. Until it came time to go home.
I had the most wonderful, competent, compassionate, skilled, bring-tears-to-your-eyes nurses on the planet during my time there. But on the last day, they were supposed to help me figure out how to do a portable catheter bag (I went home with a catheter in because I had a bladder tear during my c-section and subsequent repair surgery). The two nurses who came in to help me with that–I’d never seen them before–had apparently never clapped eyes on a portable catheter bag. I was hormonal, bloated, exhausted (it’s not peaceful sleeping in a hospital, EVER), and sensitive, and uncertain about the logistics of wearing a bag of bloody pee strapped to my leg for the next week.
These two morons were like the keystone cops. They were ripping plastic open and studying diagrams and handing things to me backwards and scratching their heads…I quickly realized that I could figure it all out sooner than they could, and tried to get them out of my room. They wouldn’t leave, just kept fumbling around with my bag. I got so frustrated I started to cry (typical Cranky reaction). I was so close to strangling them with my catheter that I couldn’t explain, other than to just keep asking them to give me some space, please go, give me some time. So they started doing this stupid guessing game (“Oh, what’s wrong, you’re crying because your baby is sick? Wait, did your husband say something mean to you? Husbands never understand, do you want us to ask him to leave so you can tell us about it? Did he DO something to you?”) This last bit was infuriating. My husband was a freaking rock of stability through the whole hospital experience, so for them to impugn him when they were the cause of all this… ARGH ARGH ARGH ARGH!
But kill that resident (I hope he leaves obstetrics) and fire those two nurses, and I’d say it was the kind of hospital care you’d dream about getting. Mamahen’s right–the pain goes away. Feeling humiliated sticks with ya.
And yes, I’ve heard 24-hour stays are no longer so common. I got to stay at least three nights after Cranky Jr was born, but I had the bladder/catheter thing going for me.
And by the way, having a labor complication like mine is absolutely no big deal if you’ve got great people who communicate well and make you feel like you’re taken great care of. I’ll bet that’s true for most things. Communicate! Show compassion! Even if you have to fake it! I’ll bet the majority of lawsuits have a healthy element of “That member of the hospital staff was a prick and s/he should pay for that” in it. I’m not saying their claims aren’t legitimate; I’m just guessing that what turns a negative medical experience from “Stuff does happen” to “Call a lawyer and nail these guys!” is how the hospital staff communicate with the patient/family.
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I’m not a human pin cushion. Don’t put the blood pressure cuff on right after, and in the same place, blood was drawn.
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Don’t send a member of the clergy into my room when I have already indicated on my admissions paperwork that I did not need religious counsel.
My bad experience was more annyoing than anything else. I was admitted to the hospital with a heart attack. The next morning, at about 5, a resident comes in my room, wakes me, and tells me he has to get a family history from me. Now, we have to remember that I was in the hospital for 24 hours already.
I told him to get the hell out of my room. In those exact words.
OK, I just got out of the hospital June 8, I had surgery June 6 for ** warning TMI** a peri-rectal abscess. I learned way more about invasive infections than I ever wanted to know. However, the thing that pissed me off about my stay was the intern(resident?). After the surgery, I asked him about some things that I thought happened durring the surgery. He told me that I probably just had a very vivid halucination. Well, last Thursday (June 14) I saw my surgeon as part of my follow up treatment and I asked him if he remembered my surgery. He did. (I Guess anyone would remmeber cutting a three inch incision along a person’s ass!)
I said to him, “My feet were in stirrups?”
Him, “Yes”
Me: “I tried to kick, I don’t know if I did or not, but I heard someone say, ‘She didn’t like that’”
Him: (smiling) “I said 'she didn’t like that’after you kicked and I let the anesthesiologist know that you were not under. We had just started the surgery…”
He then went on to explain how the rest of the surgery went.
I went home and freaked out.
When I was on the operating table and tried to move my leg, I kept thinking of people who had gone through whole operations not being able to let the doctor know that they were aware of what was going on. I can tell you that any amount of money they got would not be enough to make that feeling go away, utter helplessness and fear like nothing I had ever felt before. Yikes, I can still almost get physically ill when I think of what my operation would have been like if I had not managed to move my leg.
What pisses me off most is the snot nosed resident who lied to me. I knew he was lying, that’s why I asked the surgeon.
Please tell me the truth. I may not be a doctor, but I’m pretty smart and deserve at least the common decency of being told the truth.
Way long, but boy do I feel better having vented!
Thanks for listening.
…Wow
After reading these posts, I guess my story isn’t as bad as I thought it was, but I’ll share anyway.
Last August, I was rushed to the hospital with severe abdominal pains. By the time I got there, I was in so much pain I couldn’t talk.
It takes 20 minutes before they even get me into “triage” and they learn I have a fever of 103. Do they rush me to the back? Of course not, they send me back to the waiting room to wait for one of the “gyne” rooms to open up. Luckily, I had the presence of mind to call my OB, who is the Chief of Reproductive Endocrinology (sp) at the hospital (Northwestern Medical Facility). When he learned how high my temperature was, he came down himself and demanded that I be taken back and attended to.
Fast forward 3-4 hours. They’ve run blood and urine tests, and every five minutes, a different person comes in to stick their hands up my hoo-ha. Finally, I told one doctor, “The person before you already found whatever it is you’re looking for, I suggest you two compare notes before you stick your hand in my crotch”.
After all my tests came back inconclusive, they finally admitted me into the hospital. What followed was the worst five days of my life. The very first night, one of the ward nurses came into my room to try to give me an IV, with an elephant tranquilizer needle. I weigh about 112lbs, you can LOOK at me and tell that I have small veins, and I told them before they started that I had tiny veins. This bitch didn’t listen. Instead, she sticks this javelin into the back of my hand, and instantly my whole left side went numb. I’m screaming, “TAKE IT OUT, TAKE IT OUT”, and she goes, “you have to be still and be quiet”. Eventually, I guess she got tired of me screaming, because she took it out and tried to find a smaller needle, this one only the size of a LETTER OPENER, and tries it again. This time she misses the vein, but still depresses the plunger, so the whatever was in the IV goes right into my hand, which promptly swells up and starts burning. By this time I’m crying and screaming and begging them to find somebody else and get this sadistic bitch out of my room. They finally had to find a pediatrician to come up and do the IV, with the first nurse stood at the edge of the bed, smiling the whole time. I was finally able to go to sleep, but not before I warned them that the first nurse was NOT to come back into my room, for ANY reason. I couldn’t believe that she had stood there smirking after she had damn near killed me!!
So, a few hours later, in the middle of the night, I am awakened by this nurse coming into my room to check my vital signs and change my IV bag. I start screaming and generally raising hell. They finally had to call a hospital administrator up to my room.
Administrator: If something happens to you in the middle of the night, she’ll have to come in here.
Me: If she comes in here, something will happen to HER.
They finally got a nurse from another floor to come in and take care of me, and for the rest of my stay, I never saw that particular nurse again.
Also, my fever kept spiking, and I was always cold, so I kept the heat in my (private) room all the way up. And I always asked the nurses to keep the door closed, because every time they opened it, I got a burst of cold air and would start shivering. A few days after I got there, one of the nurses walked into my room, and left the door open. I calmly pointed to the sign that the doctors had put on my door “KEEP THIS DOOR CLOSED”. The nurse had the nerve to tell me, “I’m gonna leave the door open, I get hot when I come in here” - I was like, “you must think this is about YOU”… WTF???
There are other stories to accompany this particular hospital stay, but I’ll stop now, and be thankful that I haven’t had to go back since then.
Luckily, I never have a problem speaking up for myself, I bet they were glad to see me go.