Boy, do I have a story to tell you guys!
Names changed to protect the culpable.
My elderly MIL fell before Christmas while maneuvering her walker and hurt her arm. She felt little pain and could move her fingers, so we assumed she just badly bruised it. Two days later it began to change colors, swell, and do an S curve that arms shouldn’t be doing, so we took her to emergency. Thus began our wonderful adventure into the maze of United States Health Care.
First, bring something to do every time you even get near the door to a doctor’s office, hospital, or any waiting room. They’re serious about waiting. This lets things ferment properly.
My MIL lives on a hill. With a steep driveway. And lots of stairs. So to get her into a wheelchair takes two or three family members and/or care-givers. (Go backwards through doorways, btw.) Ok, so MIL, diapered and scrubbed, into wheelchair, blankets, pillows, wheeling her out the door and down the slope and into car equals about twenty minutes. Left wheelchair at house knowing hospital will have one.
Drove to local hospital about one in the afternoon with kindly caregiver in her car. Got MIL out of car into hospital wheelchair into ER admitting room.
My MIL has the Multi-County Stupendous Coverage Card. We brought this card and her Advanced Directive which allows the health care givers to figure out how hard they have to work to save her should she attempt to kick the bucket while under their care. They are very interested in the Advanced Directive and really don’t want to talk to you unless you have filled one out. (Available on the net.)
Anyway, we also had her Social Security number and her last driver’s license card even though she ceased driving many years ago. But no Medicare card. She’s been getting health care and regular doctor appointments all along on her Multi-County Stupendous Coverage Card. Multi-County Stupendous Coverage Company moved everyone into Medicare Program D months ago.
She’s admitted. Changed clothes to gown, trying not to move arm. X-rays in one room, blood and urine in another, then given a curtained spot in between a shrieking child vomiting on the half hour and an obese man with a large family. We sat or stood while she sat in wheelchair. And we waited. Forms came to fill out. People came and took temperature and blood pressure. More forms. Food came, sandwiches for all three of us. Questions about how she fell. They verified the arm was broken near the wrist. Very broken. Great, thanks. By the way, how did she break it? After several times, I realized they are checking for senior abuse. I didn’t discover it until later but I was giving the wrong date, not having been there when she fell. Luckily MIL was coherent and competent to answer most questions. Did her sweet old lady act extremely well. Finally they got someone to give us a doctor appointment for the morning.
Did I tell you it is now 10 pm?
They told me to take her home and see Dr. Something Surgeon in the morning. The care-giver who so graciously assisted me down the hill had to leave about 9pm, and I was alone. No one else was available to help. I must have shown my panic as I pleaded to leave her at the hospital overnight. I explained the lack of help, the lack of overnight care, and the house on the hill with stairs. They said they would talk to the floor manager supervisor person to see if there was a bed. We waited. Someone came by to dismiss her and I told them the story of the extremely large hill with hundreds of stairs again. We waited. They finally came to admit her to a supervised room. I arranged the time to pick her up for her 11 am appointment with Dr. Something Surgeon.
My husband came by to pick me up at 10:30 pm and we picked up my car at MIL’s house and I went home. We arranged for BIL to help me with the 11 am appointment as husband was working.
End of Part One... oh, yes! You betcha there is more!
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four
Part Five
Part Six
Part Seven
Part Eight
2 comments:
I don't even want to tell you about my mother with advanced breast cancer, lying on a guerney in an ER for 8 hours, until someone told my father to take her home. "Take her home?", he said, "Look at her!"
The next day after a breast biopsy, the dr accused us of killing her, then put her on tamoxifen, after which she lived another 4 years.
Or 7 years later when my father had already had surgery and chemotherapy for esophageal cancer, but no one in the medical profession was decent enough to tell us that the cancer had recurred and he was dying. And the he was in a "rehab hospital" where he couldn't eat or drink for a full week because the cancer was back and nobody told us. (And we won't talk about the aid who grabbed his prick undr the blankets either.) Or how my father, who had been at the Battle of the Bulge and was a strong capable man all his life was scared to death of pissing off the help in the hospital because he was helpless against them...
The American medical system -- pfthtt!!!!
Dear god! This system just saps the humanity out of everyone, doesn't it?
I am so sorry for your horrible experiences.
Post a Comment