Yesterday morning, my dad suddenly vomited a not-insignificant amount of coffee-ground blood, and then fainted. My mother called 911, and when the paramedics arrived, my dad said, “Get me off the floor and go on your way.” Mother said, “They’ll get you off the floor and take you to the hospital” which is what they did. Last night, she was semi-coherent because of exhaustion and having to call everyone and tell them, but today, I got a little more of the story.
He had an upper-GI scope and it revealed a gastric ulcer, something he’s had before and it’s the type that can be treated with antibiotics. Like I said in the subject header, he is indeed in an ICU bay, but not because he’s that sick. It’s because the hospital was otherwise full and that was the only place where they had empty beds.
:eek:
Most likely, he will go home after his bowel function straightens out and he’s eating solid food again - probably a couple of days.
(It could be worse. The hospital I used to work at used OB as their med/surg overflow. Hey, you do what you have to.)
A couple of years ago I had fairly minor outpatient surgery, got home early afternoon. Early that evening I had post-op complications that led me to the ER. (Long story short- Bleeding where there shouldn’t have been any.) Things were under control after an hour or two, but my surgeon ordered me to play it safe by staying overnight under observation. Fine with me, I did not want to leave and risk having to come back again thru ER.
There were no beds were available anywhere else in the hospital, so I got to spend the 18 hours as the only 67 year old man in the newly refurbished Maternity Ward. I assume there were no births taking place, and no recent births in the ward, because it was the most quiet, peaceful experience I’ve ever had in a hospital.
When this happened before (about 15 years ago), he didn’t get sick until they were in the ER, and my mom wondered how a little glass of prune juice he’d drunk several hours earlier turned into that. They all said, “That’s not prune juice” and ushered her out of the room to proceed further.
This time, like I said, it happened at home, and she’s wondering how to get the stain out of the carpet. :eek: I told her to call a professional carpet cleaner, because they would know how to clean it up and have probably dealt with worse things (and yes, they do exist).
I posted this story on another board, and a pediatric nurse said that department was HER hospital’s overflow.
My dad once fell off a fifteen foot ladder onto a concrete floor, knocking himself out. My mom called an ambulance, then started packing a bag for him, because he was likely to be in the hospital a couple days. Which is typical of her ability to remain calm in crises.
While she’s doing that, my dad wakes up, hears the ambulance show up, and staggers outside to tell them they’re not needed. Which was typical of his ability to make the stupidest possible decision in any health-care related emergency.
When he finally passed, decades later, my mom was some what conflicted. On the one hand, she was terribly sad he was gone. On the other, she was kind of pissed that he spent his entire life doing shit like that, and still managed to live to be 80.
New update: Dad’s out of the ICU and in a regular room now, which sure makes him feel better for a lot of reasons. He’s also on a soft diet, which is also good news.
I hadn’t heard from Mother, so I called her this evening, and I think I woke her up because she wasn’t making a lot of sense, but one thing she did tell me was that a palliative-care nurse wanted to meet with her before Dad is discharged. :eek: That really scared me, so I called my brother and he said it sounded like they just want to get a home-health agency on board before Dad goes home.