Mom had an appointment with Dr. Schwartz yesterday(Aug 03.)
Mom was not a happy camper this morning, was a little better with coffee. Still Ms. Grumpy. She was better once we got to the docs office, but I heard her give the paramedics a hard time.
Before leaving for the doc, I usually have paperwork to pick up. Today I was supposed to get her Xrays. Hillcrest was clueless about this, so were the Xray folks. I thought maybe it was my fault and I forgot to tell someone but it wasn’t. YAY!
Well. Once we get to the docs office, they put you in this little room. Winds up with me, mom, a nurse, the doctor, and a student. Dr. Schwartz was not amused to discover that there were no Xrays. I confirmed with him that he did order them.
He got further po’d went he got a look at moms splint. *It was the wrong splint!* She’s been wearing this sucker for a week! She was supposed to have a wrist control splint – ordered by Dr. Schwartz, and was given a resting hand (pan? not sure what the nurse said) splint.
Quoting Dr. Schwartz: “I’m livid over this.” Ya. I can tell.
They also had the wrong dressing on her – what they were using will rip her skin. (Sidenote: on getting back to Hillcrest I asked a nurse *not* to bandage mom at all unless she’s spurting blood. Just give her a piece of gauze to stop any blood. Honestly, they drew blood earlier, put gauze and paper tape on the crook of her arm. She asked me to take it off and let me tell you, I thought I was going to faint taking that tape off, because of her skin. And there wasn’t a drop of blood on the gauze.)
They took the splint and bandage off, put the splint aside. I got a glimpse of the area where they operated, and it looked good. They proceed to take out the sutures.
A smell started wafting through the room. I thought, OMG! My feet are stinking up the place! I wanted to crawl under the building. Come to find out – it wasn’t my feet – I checked. It was the splint they had on moms arm. Is it customary not to change it? It really stank. It smelled just like my shoes can smell.
Dr. Schwartz said is was going to call Hillcrest and talk to the director.
Meanwhile, we leave. We were outside waiting for the van and Dr. Schwartz came outside and told us he spoke to the assistant director.
When we got back to Hillcrest, the assistant director was at the nurses station and they were talking about mom, and was going to talk to the therapists. I don’t know what happened after that – noone came to talk to me. I do know they were working on getting the Xrays delivered (I had offered to take them to the doctors office if needed)to the doctors office.
Mom ate a good part of her lunch, I washed her hair, then left. She was waiting for therapy to come get her and resplint her.
-Mom did not go get her hair done. No idea why.
-Not doing therapy on her arm. She refuses to do the exercises.
-Mom has some kind of bacterial infection, which is causing diarrhea. She’s on antibiotics for that.
-Spoke to nurse practitioner – forgot her name. Discussed mom going on a tranquilizer, and is sending a shrink for assessment. While the nurse was talking to mom, mom said one thing and 2 seconds later said the complete opposite. I forget what it was though.
-Pain medicine has been upped, because mom is complaining that the Percocet isn’t working. But also found out this afternoon, she hasn’t asked for pain medicine since July 30. I told the nurse that she’s not going to ask for it – she won’t remember to – she would be better off if they gave it to her automatically till she gets thru this. No wonder she’s a bear.
-I’ve come to the conclusion that noone knows what the other is doing.
-Apparently the new roomie has taken to yelling. She’ll never beat mom at the yell game though.