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When the dead cockroaches are the best part
I went to LTUE, which was fun, and woke up on the flying-home day to a missed call from my mom's fall-alert device, which I'd just set up the morning before I left. Fast-forward a few hours to me standing in the Salt Lake City airport boarding lounge, yelling over a bad cell connection to try to get the urology doctor to talk to the spine doctor mom was shipped halfway across the state to see before he wheeled her in to a surgery that no one had even told her what it was for, and you can just barely begin to guess what kind of post-con week I've been having.
McLaren Flint is a hellhole that almost makes Sparrow Lansing look good, which is something I never thought I'd say about anything. The dead cockroaches in the emergency room were clearly a sign, but at this point they seem almost a homey welcome by comparison to the "care" she's gotten here. Nurses who take two hours and six requests to deliver pain meds to a woman with a broken back, the "good" department that issued her a broken call light and blamed us for thinking that pushing the button should have summoned someone, doctors so busy talking to each other about internal paperwork that they don't notice the patient they're actively working on is asking them a question, nurses who refuse to tell the patient their names, what they're there for, or even the name of the medication they're pushing into her vein....
The doctor nominally overseeing her case didn't know a damn thing about what was going on but had the unmitigated gall to stand in her room and try to make out like it's her fault for being in pain, and said to her face that she's too sick, has too many things wrong with her, and is just going to be in this amount of pain, apparently forever. Less than 24 hours later, her heart gave out. Coincidence? Nobody who knows anything about the effect of mental state on physical recovery would think so. They brought her back, but now she's in the CCU where I'm not allowed to stay with her, and I'm just supposed to trust that no one's going to give her the wrong medicine (which they have before) or try to take her for surgery she doesn't want or need (which they have before) or bully her into signing something she can't read (which they have before), or put what little food & water we finally managed to get them to give her out of her reach (which they have before), or ghod knows what.
Oh yeah, and that surgery I mentioned above? Could have killed or paralyzed her, because they don't talk to each other any better than they do to us.
When morning comes, I'm going to continue demanding that she have a different doctor assigned to "oversee" (i.e., ignore) her case, and then I'm going to start trying to get her transferred to another hospital as soon as she's remotely stable enough. The patient experience person at McLaren Flint told me that's impossible, but during a desperation late-night call to the Medicare complaint line, they assured me I absolutely can. We'll see who's lying or incompetent tomorrow, I guess. Given recent experience, I'm betting on all of them.
McLaren Flint is a hellhole that almost makes Sparrow Lansing look good, which is something I never thought I'd say about anything. The dead cockroaches in the emergency room were clearly a sign, but at this point they seem almost a homey welcome by comparison to the "care" she's gotten here. Nurses who take two hours and six requests to deliver pain meds to a woman with a broken back, the "good" department that issued her a broken call light and blamed us for thinking that pushing the button should have summoned someone, doctors so busy talking to each other about internal paperwork that they don't notice the patient they're actively working on is asking them a question, nurses who refuse to tell the patient their names, what they're there for, or even the name of the medication they're pushing into her vein....
The doctor nominally overseeing her case didn't know a damn thing about what was going on but had the unmitigated gall to stand in her room and try to make out like it's her fault for being in pain, and said to her face that she's too sick, has too many things wrong with her, and is just going to be in this amount of pain, apparently forever. Less than 24 hours later, her heart gave out. Coincidence? Nobody who knows anything about the effect of mental state on physical recovery would think so. They brought her back, but now she's in the CCU where I'm not allowed to stay with her, and I'm just supposed to trust that no one's going to give her the wrong medicine (which they have before) or try to take her for surgery she doesn't want or need (which they have before) or bully her into signing something she can't read (which they have before), or put what little food & water we finally managed to get them to give her out of her reach (which they have before), or ghod knows what.
Oh yeah, and that surgery I mentioned above? Could have killed or paralyzed her, because they don't talk to each other any better than they do to us.
When morning comes, I'm going to continue demanding that she have a different doctor assigned to "oversee" (i.e., ignore) her case, and then I'm going to start trying to get her transferred to another hospital as soon as she's remotely stable enough. The patient experience person at McLaren Flint told me that's impossible, but during a desperation late-night call to the Medicare complaint line, they assured me I absolutely can. We'll see who's lying or incompetent tomorrow, I guess. Given recent experience, I'm betting on all of them.