Would you be able to find somebody to go to surgery at 7am with you?

In My Humble Opinion
21

I could definitely find someone. My wife, for one, and there are some of her family members in town. I could also easily impose on my employee.

After those folks… I do have some friends that I would only ask if I was out of other options. I’m sure they’d be willing to help, but I’m not sure if they’d have that kind of availability. (Which partly translates to that kind of willingness to drop everything else in their schedule.)

As a last resort, a couple of my clients offer services to elderly folks in their home, ranging from skilled nursing to just someone to help and remind them about their prescriptions. I’m sure they would want to be paid, but this kind of thing is all in a day’s work for them and their contractors.

22

Nope. It’s one of the reasons I’m putting off that colonoscopy.

23

I probably have about 5 friends plus Fierra who I could count on to be there if I asked them. Just as I would be for them.

24

I have 3-4 people who probably would be able to do it (my girlfriend, 2 close friends, gf’s sister) and if that failed there are probably a good number of folks I’m close to from church who would be willing to do so if needed.

25

I had a similar situation a couple of weeks ago with an overnight stay in hospital after surgery that required I be ‘picked up’ the following morning, but nobody really available to do so. My daughter could have done the job, but her car had broken down, and my car’s air-con is sometimes temperamental: given that the day was going to be 40C (and with two little kids in the back), I wasn’t happy for her to take the risk.

All of my other friends who would have volunteered happily were either working (and don’t get paid if they take a day off) or sans cars.

As it turned out, the hospital was happy to arrange a taxi for me to get home, and at no cost! Totally cool (as was the air-con). :slight_smile:

26

A very good question. If no friends they could try neighbors. But most important part of my post is that I would like to think you for your kind deed. I think it would really suck to have surgery for any reason and not have the support of someone there to make the thing as bearable as possible.

27

If you are a member of a place of worship you could ask for their assistance with this. I feel many people would do this favor for someone if they knew them and they were available to do so.

28

Nope, I’ve switched doctors because they wouldn’t stop nagging about stuff that wasn’t possible to get done under their stupid rules.

29

This has happened to me several times, since I moved way out in the boonies away from friends and family. First time was a colonoscopy and I paid a work acquaintances wife, actually I drive myself so they only pick me up and take me to my vehicle. I was completely ok to drive. I asked if I could get a cab and go to a motel, I was only 25 miles from home and they said no. I had to have a name to give them. Since then I have become friends wit the same person who picked me up the first time and have had knee surgery, now I give her money for gas and buy her lunch. The other was a dental procedure. Its kind of embarrassing, when you have surgery and everyone looks at you like wheres your family, it made me feel sad also.

30

A friend was undergoing knee surgery and arranged to have his brother drop him off at the hospital around 6am. The hospital did not require him to have someone wait for him as the procedure was done. Game plan was that his brother would be back after work (around 4pm) to pick him up.

I stopped by to see how he was doing in recovery around 1pm. As I drove into the hospital parking lot I saw my friend outside sitting on a curb. He had left without telling anyone and was trying to figure out how to get home sans car and crutches.

31

I have nobody, since my Dad died. My mother doesn’t drive, and all other family is at least 100 miles away. I wound up in the ER a little over a year ago, but fortunately, they didn’t require anybody to be there for me. I wound up in the hospital for four days, but my sister was able to come down to stay with my mother, since Mother is virtually blind and deaf.

32

They get real nervous because…what you you ogforbid got into a car accident? What are they going to do with her then, if you don’t/can’t come back?

They’re for disabled people who need a ride to and from. They don’t wait for them, and they don’t go inside their house and stay with them during the recovery period. They’re just a taxi service with vehicles that can accommodate a wheelchair, and sometimes oxygen.

Do you have a link to anyone who does this? My company has been trying to see if there’s an actual market for this, but we’re bumping up into big insurance issues, particularly with the transportation angle. I could meet one of my patients there, but I cannot let them into my vehicle. I’d love to see how other people are handling this.

Nope. This is what I do, and no, we don’t do that. Again, I’d love to see a business that does, but it is not standard in the current home health care industry, to my knowledge. I feel like there’s a real gap of care here that could be well exploited by the right company. I’m not sure we’re it, but someone is, if we can mollify the lawyers…

Stop that. You’re still in Chicago, yes? You’re not my patient, so I can drive you. PM me. Wednesdays, Fridays and weekends work best for me. I’m totally serious.

33

Health care delivery has to include some mechanism for, y’know, getting patients & providers & facilities all together at the same space-time coordinates. Failing to provide transportation for those who can’t provide it themselves results in denial of medical services, just as much as failure to provide film for the X-ray machine would. How y’all like to spend a day at the hospital, only to be sent home without the medical care you need because nobody took responsibility to bring the film for the X-ray machine?

If all the lawyers and insurance companies can cope with doctors and hospitals and all the risks inherent in modern complex medical care, why can’t they just define transportation to and from, to be part of that medical care? Then the insurers could, perhaps, cover it, and the lawyers wouldn’t have to cover their companies’ asses about it. If transportation to and from were defined as part of the medical service, then even providers like WhyNot could do it for their patients (with perhaps some rules about using a company car and not your own private car).

34

I would ask my SO do this. But even before that I would always schedule that type of procedure to be done in the afternoon or the evening for this reason.

If worse came to worst I would call a cab or find a motel nearby and stay overnight (especially if it was something that required me traveling out of town)

35

After my colonoscopy a few months ago, when I had a hard time with transportation, I did a bit of local research about it.

Being a citizen of a certain age group, I went to our local senior citizen center and asked around. They didn’t deal with that (turns out, our local senior citizen center is not a social service organization, but simply a social and recreation center run by the local Parks & Recreation district). But they referred me to an agency that deals with social services for seniors. (Don’t remember exactly who they are now; but I came home with a stack of brochures.)

They, in turn, had a brochure from a charitable group that has something to do with transportation for seniors who need it.

This appears to be a program run by the Catholic Church, or some local outfit connected with it. They don’t seem to do what is really needed: They DON’T provide you with a volunteer driver from a local congregation or anything like that. Apparently, they will check your financial needs, and then YOU find your OWN driver, and they will then pay the driver some stipend.

That doesn’t seem really to get at the problem. If I could find my own driver, that would almost certainly be a volunteer who isn’t expecting any payment. Heck, my brother drove 3 hours to get here, and didn’t ask to be reimbursed. The problem is finding someone to do the driving and waiting, when I don’t know anyone to ask. The brochure didn’t seem to offer any help with that little detail. Seems like they kinda missed the point.

So what’s left? Hire that day laborer from the Office Depot parking lot (as suggested above), and then apply for him to get paid through that church program?

36

Now let me regale you all with a story that DID work: It doesn’t entail transportation to a medical procedure, but perhaps it well could have.

Once upon a time, I was so sick that I was more-or-less housebound for several weeks. Not entirely, but just a little too sick to get out beyond the end of my driveway. I did manage to make it in to work for a few days when I though I was feeling half-way better, but that didn’t last. I lived in a semi-rural area at the time, and drove in to work each day.

I whined to my supervisor that I felt so lousy, I thought I was going to go home, crawl into bed, and starve because I was too sick to go shopping. (As it was, I had been subsisting largely on Ensure and V-8 Juice, being too weak to actually chew solid food much.) And, after being in bed for a week or two, I ran out of clean clothes to wear (not to mention the linens on the bed), and was starting to wear really stinky stuff.

Supervisor mentioned this to receptionist (they both belong to the same congregation). Receptionist mentioned it to a retired couple in their congregation who were said to be in the habit of doing good deeds. That turned out to be true. So then the receptionist and her husband and the retired good-deed couple came out to my house out in the sticks and took all my stinky laundry and linens. The next they, they brought it all back, all nicely washed and folded. Over the next few weeks, they drove all the way out there to pick me up and ferry me to some doctor’s appointments in town. And the Big Boss (my supervisor’s big brother, actually) went shopping and brought me a bag of stuff to eat.

So if I still had any connections like that, it’s quite plausible that they might have driven me to a longer medical procedure if needed.

But that’s the whole point of this thread: You need some connections. My story suggests that you could get lucky with some indirect connections, or people that you barely know, BUT… You gotta have some connections. This whole thread, in contrast, is about people who simply don’t have any connections, or don’t have the right connections. These are the people who, if they’re too sick to hie themselves to the supermarket once in a while, might really starve.

37

I know it’s annoying, but really you should be grateful that they care so much. I had a flatmate who went in for something (I can’t remember what it was, something seemingly minor I think?), they pumped her full of meds and sent her on her way! She looked at the pretty cars for what may have been 15 minutes (or, y’know, longer), she got lost, she walked into traffic, she didn’t know how to call someone. She came home hours later! How terrifying is that?! We lived very near the hospital, just a 15 minute walk, and I’m sure the doctors & nurses thought she could walk home, but she clearly couldn’t. She hadn’t said anything or I would’ve gone with her of course.

My grandmother also sometimes won’t say anything and has her gardner take her rather than bother me. Also very naughty, I’d much rather do it. I think it’s an independence thing.

I would gladly take someone and would have no problem sitting around. If I can bring my laptop I can write a paper, so no problem there. Dopers, if you need someone around Manchester, UK or in the Netherlands, lemme know I’ll get you there and back safely. I’d much rather that than the situation of my high-and-wandering flatmate.

Oh, and regarding the service: a very good eye hospital is near the hotel where I used to work. We’d sometimes get a call from the hospital asking if we were ok getting the people out of the taxi etc. Now, we were pretty pissed off at having to deal with this (people who get eye-things done throw up and bleed on the pillows!), but what can you do? We ended up doing that quite a lot. We did explain very thoroughly to guests that we are not a nursing service, we can only walk them from the taxi and bring them tea in their room. But it’s something, I suppose.

38

I did in November–one of my co-workers. Four different co-workers offered to drive when they knew I had to go in for surgery and wouldn’t be able to drive myself home.

Where we work isn’t that far from the hospital, so he dropped me off that morning and came back around noon when I was ready to go home. I knew it was an enormous favor and bought my driver a present for it.

39

Just did this for a reclusive friend. After making several offers to escort him to his scheduled day surgery, see him home, put him up overnight, etc-(all rejected!), his surgeon informed him he HAD to have someone with him to be discharged and couldn’t be alone for 24hrs. (Which is what I was expecting!) He is shocked by this.

But I went with, waited for him on site, brought him back to my place in a cab, kept him two nights. Walked him home with home made food for a couple of days. He did quite well considering how socially withdrawn he is.

I am lucky to have several people in my life who I’m certain would do so for me!

40

If my gf/friends/neighbors were all tied up, I’d be tempted to approach someone at the bar drinking his way through his change. Offer to pay his outstanding tab, or put $40 toward his future drinking.

Hey Ms Headnurse, you said I needed someone. You never specified that someone be respectable!