My uncle is in the hospital with severe diarrhea, which started about a month ago and has recently gotten worse. He’s been there for two days now, and they’ve given him an IV and done some blood work. Tomorrow, he’s scheduled for an endoscopy procedure. My aunt says he ate undercooked meat a few weeks ago, but he thinks she’s overreacting and he brushes it off whenever she tries to bring it up with the doctor.
Now, maybe I’m just paranoid because I’ve just finished a clinical microbiology course, but I find it odd that no samples have been taken for microbiological analysis. Bad meat followed by bad diarrhea… shouldn’t they at least rule out pathogenic bacteria?
Is it that your aunt isn’t aware of the sample taking and testing, and therefore says it hasn’t been done, or do you know through talking to medical personnel that it has not been done?
Asking about this might be problematic due to privacy laws, but there’s really nothing to prevent you from expressing your concerns to the doctor.
The aunt may be downplaying the undercooked meat angle because, if she was invovled in the preparation, she may have fears of being held responsible or even punished for her role in it. Or maybe she feels guilty for some reason. I don’t know, but people can get funny when things like this happen.
I got from the OP that the uncle is downplaying the undercooked meat, not the aunt. Seems to me she’s trying to alert the docs that the meat may be the cause, not trying to absolve herself from guilt (if indeed she was the preparer of the meat, which we don’t know).
Antigen- I’d definitely ask the docs if his stool has been tested. No harm in asking.
The reason I know it hasn’t been done yet is because she’s been with him pretty much the whole time, and when I asked her about it on the phone, she was beside his bed and asked him if anyone had come for a sample.
She did go talk to the nurses yesterday to ask about it, and with much prodding discovered that the doctor had requested a specimen, but nobody had done it yet. As of this morning, it’s still not done, and I just find it weird that they’re planning this invasive procedure (endoscopy) before checking a specimen in the lab.
So I told my aunt to remind them about it. Often. Until it gets done. I don’t know what else to tell her. I don’t want to make a huge stink about the way this is going if this is actually just normal procedure that I don’t know about. And maybe he has other symptoms that are pointing at something other than a bacterial infection, which is why they’re not going there. But you’d think that the doc or the nurses would be kind enough to explain to the patient why they’re sticking a camera up his bum, and what they’re planning to do with him.
Oh, and it really has nothing to do with guilt about the meat. My uncle’s a big tough guy who will eat anything, and he’s embarrassed about being taken down by a hamburger.
Yep. We had to do the same thing when my Grandpa was in the hospital. I don’t think the nurses were willfully neglectful, maybe their workload was too big. Who knows. But I’ve found it necessary to remind staff of various things.