Nightmare at Davis (Part 2)

The mystery of the dirty underpants remained unsolved as day turned to night.   I didn’t get much sleep, but I didn’t expect to. My night nurse was kind.  With all the fluids I was getting through the IV plus what I was drinking to combat a dry mouth, she spent a lot of time helping me to the bathroom.

The next shift change brought my next nightmare: Lupe, my nurse. She was terrible.  I try to keep these blog posts to 500 words, so I can’t go into detail.  It would be kind to just say she was lazy.  She was incompetent.  Trust me when I say the example I’m citing is just the straw that broke the camel’s back.  

It was time for me to take a shower but I still had my IV in my hand, so it needed to be capped. Lupe disconnected the tubing, but rather than put a cap on it, she covered the end with the wrapper from an alcohol wipe and said I was good to go.  I told her I wasn’t comfortable with that - showers are dirty places and there was a straight line into my blood vein.  I told her I wanted a cap.  She got in my face and asked if I’d ever heard of alcohol and its sterilizing qualities.  I told her I wanted a cap.  She left to get one, but when she came back she told me to not be surprised if she “accidentally” pulled out my IV while putting the cap on.

At this point I had had enough.  I told her to leave my room and send in her supervisor.  I got a new and competent nurse who put a cap on my IV and also had a cheery disposition.  Yay for ShaNae! The supervisor came and she apologized for Lupe and said she needed some re-educating.  She had heard about the mystery underpants but had no answers.

I came home from the hospital that afternoon.  I’ve chatted with the patient advocate, Michael Paul, three times since then.  He called on Friday with the underpants mystery solved.  It seems that while I was on the operating table my hospital bed was in the hall waiting for me.  Meanwhile, a man was taken to the operating room next door.  When he went to surgery it was discovered that he hadn’t taken off his underpants.  Someone removed them, and rather than following hospital policy and placing them in a plastic bag labeled with the patient’s name, he or she threw them on the hospital bed in the hall - my bed. Michael Paul said they would be re-educating the staff on proper procedure.

He also said Lupe had received a written reprimand in her file for the IV fiasco.  He said she would be re-educated on the proper procedure.  It seems like the proper procedure is the best kept secret at Davis Hospital. 

Nightmare at Davis (Part 1)

I had back surgery last week.  Now there’s a sentence I could have lived my whole life without ever wanting to write.  After my hysterectomy two years ago I promised myself I would never have surgery again, but with the doctor telling me I was risking paralysis and loss of bladder and bowel control, I thought it would be prudent to reconsider.  I hope it was the right decision.  

The surgery seemed to go okay.  I didn’t get an infection and I can move all my extremities and control my bodily functions - so hey, who am I to complain.  My left leg isn’t working quite up to snuff, but I can walk without a limp and I’m hoping that soon I will be back to mostly normal.  I may never jump on the trampoline again, or ride a horse, which are two things I enjoy, but life goes on.  

I had my surgery at Davis Hospital, which is a smaller local hospital.  It wasn’t my first choice, but that is where my surgeon has rights.  I would have preferred McKay-Dee, and I even tried to get an appointment with a surgeon who does work there, but he had a waiting list of over a month for a consultation and it seemed like time was of the essence.  I had two grandsons born and Davis, and both deliveries went well, so I figured it would be fine.  

I had done all the pre-op stuff the day before, so check-in at the hospital went well.  In no time at all I was in the paper gown with my IV running.  There was some confusion over whose turn it was to go next, and my anesthesiologist told me he’d been called back on his way home to do my surgery, but he was pleasant about it.  Soon I was wheeling down the hall to the last surgery suite.  An OR nurse put a mask over my face and I remember wondering what the flow rate was because I couldn’t feel it at all.  Meanwhile the anesthesiologist put two things into my IV that stung on their way in. I resisted the urge to ask him what size ETT tube he was going to use and how many ml/kg he would ventilate me at.  I thought I showed amazing restraint.

Next thing I knew I was awake and wishing I weren’t.  I hurt pretty bad and my wonderful nurse, Nadine, was hurrying to offer chemical relief.  My mother was also there.  Dave had left to switch cars with my daughter.  As my mom and Nadine arranged the bed covers for me they both were startled, and no doubt horrified, to discover that I had a pair of DIRTY men’s underpants in the bed with me.  Not what a woman wants to find in her bed when she’s been unconscious for 2 hours.

Nadine vowed to get to the bottom of it (ha ha),and she and my mother changed my sheets.  I was quickly distracted by the need to avoid vomiting in the supine position.  I hate surgery.