More stupid questions - hospitalization after car crash

Factual Questions
21

Speaking as a husband, I would call “BS” on any story where a husband checks his wife into the hospital and then goes off to work. I’m a contractor, and if I don’t work, I don’t get paid. However, if my wife is in an accident and is unconscious, I am absolutely not going in to work that day. I wouldn’t care if my project slips or not … I’m not leaving the hospital until I know what’s going on, and if she is unconscious, then I certainly don’t know what’s going on.

Also, I had a friend who was in a serious car accident. Shattered his pelvis, his right femur, and both lower bones in both legs, and mangled his foot. He was in the hospital for over a week.

22

As a person who’s been hospitalized several times, my experience, and the advice given nowadays, is that the sooner you get up and get moving, the better off you are.

My husband was out of the hospital FOUR DAYS after open-heart surgery for an emergency bypass. That was with the doctor’s advice.

23

Cool. OK, although unconscious, she is clutching a She-Ra action figure to her as a kind of talisman, and when the Evil Controlling Nurse tries to pry it out of her hands because it is against hospital regulations, she turns into a [DEL] giant [/DEL] huge [DEL] green [/DEL] purple [DEL] rage monster [/DEL] anger beast and, like, smashes the shit out of the hospital. Only she is totally not the Hulk because she has little poiny kitty ears and a fluffy purple tail. Let’s call her the Hurp. {tm}

Man, writing is hard.

24

No. This is a small part of the story. It’s just that, like I said, I haven’t been in a hospital for anything beyond stitches since I was a kid. I know there are things the nurses check for all the time, but I can’t remember what they are, and I can’t find the references for them.

And the only person I can think of that I know who has recently been in the hospital, I don’t talk to.

Well, her husband is odd. One, he’s very ‘easy-going’. Two, they’ve got an unfair advantage that the same thing that heals them allows them to keep tabs on each other mentally. But I’ll change it.

25

Don’t underestimate the “boring.” I once was went to the ED with a serious case of food poisoning – really bad. I was in absolute agony when I got there with extreme nausea, diarrhea, dehydration, etc. After being examined by a doctor who was on his cell phone talking to his wife the whole time, they gave me some medicine (I don’t know what) that made the nausea go away but also made me EXTREMELY ALERT.
I didn’t feel high or anything like that, just not sick. But I suddenly was very, very awake and aware of my surroundings. The problem was my surroundings were a small white room with nothing on the walls and almost no furnishings. (This was before everyone carried a smart phone, too.)
I lay there for about three hours waiting for the doctor to tell me I could go home. With every passing minute, I became more agitated and anxious just staring at the white ceiling and walls and with no stimulation whatsoever. “Boring” doesn’t even explain it. It truly went from uncomfortable to nearly unbearable.
I was away from most of the foot traffic, but every time a nurse walked by I would call out in desperation, pleading to just have someone sign the paperwork and let me go. They kept putting me off.
After a while I couldn’t bear it anymore and pulled out my IV. I put my clothes back on and walked out of the hospital at 3 am, caught a cab, and went home. I’d been home about 10 minutes when a nurse called to ask where I went.
It was a weird experience. It’s hard to describe how unpleasant that extreme state of alertness, paired with no stimulation whatsoever, can be.

26

I’ve been in the hospital so I can answer this.

Staff: On a scale from 1 to 10, how severe is the pain?
Patient: 8
Staff: On a scale from 1 to 10, how severe is the pain?
Patient: 7
Staff: On a scale from 1 to 10, how severe is the pain?
Patient: 8 again
Staff: On a scale from 1 to 10, how severe is the pain?
Patient: 6.5

Repeat ad infinitum.

27

Aren’t there a couple of other equally boring questions they ask at the same time?

28

Indeed.

A few years back, I wasn’t feeling well, so I went to see a doctor. After a brief consultation, he determined that I might be suffering from a cardiac issue, and sent me to the hospital immediately. When you’re a 40-year-old man who shows up in the E/R, complaining of chest pains, they get really active, and things moved very quickly for about a half-hour.

However, once they slapped an EKG on me, ran some bloodwork, and determined that I was not having a heart attack, they then let me sit there in an E/R bay for five hours, before a doctor finally came by to tell me they were going to admit me for overnight observation.

In short: if you’re not showing signs of needing immediate attention, you won’t get it. :slight_smile:

29

I was recently hospitalized for three weeks after an emergency surgery. Recuperating at home now for two weeks.

What was like it like stuck in the hospital room? The worst thing was the inability to get any decent sleep. I’m sure it’s different depending on each person’s situation (this was the first time I’ve ever been admitted to a hospital) but I got five IVs, one injection, and one round of pills every day. Four or five times a day someone would come by to check vital signs, as late as 2 AM. The last IV would be administered at midnight, so it’d be at least 20 minutes or maybe an hour before that would be removed from my arm. At 6 AM each morning a couple of doctors would come by on rounds to check out my wound.

I think the longest period of time I was ever left alone during the three week stay was four and a half hours. What I was most looking forward to coming home was the being able to get a full night of sleep.

30

In no particular order of importance:

In trauma case, I’m going to push, not too hard, on your shoulders, sternum, belly, pelvis and legs to check for pain and skeletal instability. I always push the pelvic bones inward at the same time so as not to risk worsening any bleeding in that area.

Car crashes are abbreviated MVC for ‘collision’ not accident.

Neuro checks include orientation x4: who are you, where are you, when is it, and why are you here. If you would have to check your watch to know whether it’s tues or weds, or 19th/20th, don’t worry, so do I.

Friends and family should not, repeat not, attempt to help you with this, they only way to fail such a test is to confuse us.

You do not want to be the most important person in the ER.

Variations on the mental status questions include, what’s the next/last holiday, who’s the POTUS (during the Bush/Gore event I had a lot of fun with that), and one of my favorites, how many quarters in a dollar.

Years ago I had a stroke pt with a major speech impairment, everything was garbled, and yet his eyes seemed focused, and his speech had a normal cadence and emphasis. More so as he kept trying to speak. He had all the appearance of someone who knew what he wanted to say, could hear the garbage coming out of his mouth and was frustrated by it. I asked him about the quarters and he held up his hand with 4 fingers out. This is an important distinction between having a neurological impairment of your motor control, and having a cognitive or demetia impairtment.

Dingbang, did you have a feeling that you couldn’t sit still and wanted to crawl out of your skin? If so, you might have been having a distonic reaction to a medication. Phenergan and compazine are nausea meds that are known to do that. Shame no one noticed, because a little Benadryl works wonders.

A MVC involving loss of conciousness will buy you a trip on a backboard and neck collar. Once it’s on I can’t take it off untill the doc sees you, on a busy day you may be on it for awhile. Sucks, but not nearly as bad a being paralized, which is what I will tell you if you whine about it.

Other questions? Hit me.

31

Yes, that definitely was part of it. I’ve always thought of it as being super alert but I also felt I just could not lie there for another minute or I’d go crazy. I just wanted desperately to GO or DO SOMETHING.

Maybe I should remember to mention that if I ever need nausea meds again.

32

It isn’t a dystonic reaction per se. It is akathisia. Among anti-emetics, commonly seen with compazine and phenergan as outlierrn mentions, but also Reglan.

33

It may not be accurate, but I heard those 2 terms used interchangeably for years. When I was in PICU, we used Reglan all the time and I’d never even heard of a hmmm reaction let alone seen one, then I went to general ER and they’re like ‘OMG, Reglan! We never give that because of the reaction.’ Good times.

Dingbang, in the future you should mention it, and ask for Zofran if avaiable.

34

That’s very helpful and probably covers everything I need, in excess. Thanks. If I’ve got any more specific questions, I might send you a PM.

Thanks everybody, I seem to have everything I need for this chapter.

35

re leaving at will: if one leaves before doctor’s advice the insurance won’t pay for it.