Here we go again . . .

[Econoline]

Belated (very belated: it's almost 6 AM and I've got to get to sleep...) good, better, or best wishes--your choice. (Personally, I'd go for the best ones, they're the same price and they seem to be the most popular.)

[@meric@nwom@n]

Just saw this. I will try not to post anything too sidesplittingly hilarious.

Good luck.

[BoSoxGal]

I made it through alive, and was released from hospital last night.

I had one pretty upsetting Nurse Ratched experience; it involved a night nurse who didn't bother reading my chart, ingnored my call for a check on pain meds (when would I next be getting some?) for an hour, then showed up when I called again an hour later to admit I'd been due the pills three hours earlier. It was only my second dose of percocets after the morphine PCA was removed; I was in incredible pain (surgeon says this is quite understandable, given the technique he employed which involved cutting me in three places and stretching my abdominal muscle/fascia) plus was struggling with a cough from shortly after post-op. I spent a couple of hours in needless pain of a level I would not wish on a worst enemy. SUCKED.

Overall, the nurses at my local hospital were excellent as before, and this time one was a close acquaintance, so I felt very at ease with her caring for me on the day shift.

Bad news:

I have today developed a pain in one leg that ER nurse has suggested my surgeon may want checked first thing tomorrow as possible DVT.

I am experiencing some poofing in my upper abdomen above the new incision, and have real concern that I may have another hernia developed post-op, while coughing.

Please keep me in your prayers. I'll keep you all posted.

[Lord Jim]

I made it through alive

Well, that's a great starting point, BSG...

Infinitely preferable to the alternative....

I have today developed a pain in one leg that ER nurse has suggested my surgeon may want checked first thing tomorrow as possible DVT.

I am experiencing some poofing in my upper abdomen above the new incision, and have real concern that I may have another hernia developed post-op, while coughing.

I don't know what "DVT" means, and while I'm not a man of medicine, (or a medicine man) I can tell that "poofing in the upper abdomen" doesn't sound like a good thing...

As a layman, it sounds to me like they may have let you out too soon, or not done the stitching properly, if you can develop a new hernia simply by coughing....

But in any event, it sounds like a rough row to hoe, and I certainly will keep you in my prayers.

[loCAtek]

Uh-oh! I'll shake a rattle or two, and do the patented 'Loca Lessening Pain Levels and LOL at Laymen' Dance© for as long as I can. (No flash photography please)

[Big RR]

Jim--my guess is DVT refers to a blood clot in the leg, perhaps deep venal thrombosis?

BSG--all the best to you; hang in there. Wishing you a speedy recovery.

[oldr_n_wsr]

Here's to hoping all is going (or will go) well. Get fixed up Bigskygal.

[Gob]

Yep, DVT = "deep vein thrombosis," can be very nasty. WE had a scare with Hen having a possible one after our last flight back from the UK.

Chin up BSG, get it checked out,m and let us know the outcome.

Ps. Glad you made it out alive, other wise there would have been a ghost posting here...

[@meric@nwom@n]

I hope you told nurse Ratchet that you are a lawyer, I would like to have seen the color drain out of her face.

But seriously, I think you need to hunt her down and kick her ass when you get better.

There is nothing, and I mean NOTHING that pisses me off more than nurses who get all hinky and fail to give pain meds in a timely matter. It's always the night shift nurses who pull this crap. I will show in at 6am to find people have not slept and even are weeping because some nurse was too lazy to get of her ass or too busy going off for a smoke to get the pain meds out to people. They will often clam that a patient appears to be drug seeking. WTF? If you are post surgical OF COURSE YOU ARE DRUG SEEKING. My motto is and always will be, if it's ordered, give it. If there is a God or karma those same lazy people will one day be cut end to end and gutted like a fish then put in the care of an unfeeling shit stain like themselves.

A few years ago I was hospitalized with unremitting abdominal pain. They shot me up with various things which finally got the pain to slow down and put me up on a floor with plans to observe me a bit then do a colonoscopy among other things. I finally got to sleep in the wee hours for a bit. Sleeping on a cloud of MSO4 (morphine is the best thing ever, I have the coolest dreams on MSO4) I woke up to have the beginnings of pain starting up again. I rang for the nurse. The aide came in. I expressed my need for pain meds. I know how important it is to stay on top of pain. No one comes. The pain increases along with my anxiety. I don't want that pain to the level it was when I had SO take me to the ER. I ring again, no one comes. An hour has gone by. The pain is really starting in earnest. I jerked the IV plug out of the wall and headed out of the room and down the hall barefooted and my pale ass flashing in the breeze. I went right up to the nurses station. There were several people standing around. "Which one of you is my nurse?" I said, in what I am sure was a voice that did not bode well for whomever it was who confessed to being my nurse. One stepped forward, an older woman who had a mild tremor anyway. Confidence instilling let me tell you. She stated she was sorry she had been busy doing yadda yadda blah blah blah. I informed that that I didn't give a rat's ass what she had been busy with that I needed pain medicine NOW. I expressed all this in a tone that suggested there would be great sorrow in her future if I didn't get some attention immediately. She got the goods and came to my room lickety split. I was getting 50 mg Demerol. IV. Demerol is supposed to be given push, which means slowly. Not bolus which is fast. That ignorant witch had no idea I was a nurse at a hospital full time. She shot the Demerol into the IV port which burns let me tell you. I leaned forward and said to her, "I will be here tomorrow. If you come in, you are not to touch me, anyone in this place but you will be my nurse."

Sounds bad? Yes, it is bad when patients have to resort to that to get what they need. Unfortunately things have gotten that bad. There are a ton of caring honest nurses who will do their best but mixed in are some lazy turds. Never be afraid to speak up. Have them bring in a supervisor if necessary. Know your meds and be a good advocate for yourself. If you aren't supposed to get a blue pill speak up. Make the nurse go back and check. Mistakes are made. Speaking up for yourself is the best defense.

I once took care of a 18 year old who have a DVT from her hip to her ankle. Birth control pills. Her parents didn't know she was sexually active. That was interesting to watch.

[Crackpot]

the bad thing is due to it being one of the few growth industries right now a shitload of people are getting into it that have no business caring for another person.

[Crackpot]

Oh yeah Get better BSG!

[BoSoxGal]

I wish I had made a bigger issue of it, but I felt that telling the doctors the next day was (hopefully) going to get her some redirection by supervisors. Depending on how things go, I may revisit the situation.

The worst part was, I had struggled all that day with the post-op cough I had - I could not resist the urge to cough and could not breathe properly with the phlegm that was collecting, but it took some time for the respiratory therapist to be called in that morning and to help me figure out how to cough with minimal pain (the pain at first was indescribable - they give you a 1-10 level and in my estimation compared to prior surgery and severe migraine experiences, it was off the chart during the coughing process - it felt like I was being gutted alive with a jagged knife) - so by the time night Nurse Ratched arrived, I was feeling pretty good, had cleared a lot of phlegm, coughed, used my breathing exerciser (VOLDYNE 5000) several times, etc. I was just returning from my first walk around the ward when she came into my room.

Later I realized, she had not at that time (around 8pm) even bothered to check my chart when coming onto her shift. (I don't understand that AT ALL. She later said that when we first talked I'd said I'd just taken something - I had, Robitussin, but seriously, does she rely on post-op patients to remind HER when THEIR meds are next due? That would be malpractice! If I relied on my clients to remind ME when THEIR court dates are set, I'd be DISBARRED! I cannot believe that med times aren't electronically reminded with so much such technology easily available - she should have gotten an electronic reminder that I had my next dose due at 7pm when she first opened my chart - which she should have been required to do upon shift start.)

She immediately demanded that I begin doing breathing exercises using the Voldyne 5000, RIGHT THEN, in her presence. She condescended to me like I was a child, standing close and watching me do them. I explained I had done lots of breathing, coughing, exercising that day and had just had Robitussin and was hoping to get to sleep early, as I'd had little sleep the night before. I really wish I had INSISTED she LEAVE ME ALONE - but I didn't want to be arguing and our conversation very quickly began to feel like an argument that she was bent on winning. Instead, I did a few of the breaths for her and then said it was enough for that time. She insisted on lecturing me on how SHE had had abdominal surgery herself, SHE knew best about what would get me home, etc. The breathing she did was just enough to raise phlegm, which by the time I was entirely without pain management, began coming up through uncontrolled coughing. Nobody came when I called for the pain meds, which means nobody was there to hold a folded blanket or pillow across my incision to provide the support I needed for the coughing to be successful (i.e., phlegm raised and cleared out) with minimal pain.

I honestly can't think about those couple of hours, because they were excruciating and I really just wanted to pass out and not wake up until I was drugged up. It didn't happen that way. By the time she responded to my second call, I was crying uncontrollably and VERY angry that she got to see that, too. She was very nice at that point, but even after she called my surgeon and he agreed with me that yes, I was supposed to have morphine for breakthrough pain if I needed it, she also insisted that I should know my surgeon cared a lot about me doing those breathing exercises as she'd directed. I told her I'd just had another surgery three months before and I also knew more than anybody about MY body and MY pain and the kind of rest I needed to be able to get home & functional.

I'm pretty sure my surgeon is not going to be too happy tomorrow morning when he sees me and realizes what I have already realized in the past two days - that I have very likely developed another small hernia ventrally just above the complex layered repair he just completed. It will mean another surgery at some point in the future and an inability to function optimally in the near future while healing from this one - while that may mean another fee for him, I don't think he really cares to see a patient so compromised and would rather get the fee elsewhere, from a repair that is not directly linked to a medical procedure with his name on it.

It is apparent that I am also dealing with a combination of maybe inherently bad/weak abdominal fibrous tissue, a touch of cold at a very bad time, a need to have surgery on a schedule that accomodated our stupid US healthcare coverage limitations, etc. But Night Nurse Ratched's behavior was a totally unnecessary aggravating factor. I am very ANGRY about it, but at this point I'm not seeing how I can be recompensed for the cost to me of its occurrence.

I want to add, in case it's not clear from my above account, that we are not talking about a busy ward with multiple patient emergencies from which she wasn't able to extricate herself. I had just walked the ward as she was coming on - there were at very most 10 patients on the ward. I'm not sure how nurses are doled out, but my day nurses never left me wait more than 15 minutes for a call response, and only when it was a minor thing (and I'd told them it was). When this nurse finally responded to my pain call 1.25 hours later after I'd called a second time, she responded to my crying about coughing with a 'well nobody said anything about any coughing' - basically admitting she'd gotten my prior call at 9pm asking when my meds were coming, and had made the choice to ignore it until she finally showed up 15 minutes after my 10pm call. She couldn't even bother herself to have the lady answering the button call me back with a time, so I would know how long I would have to wait. Of course, if she had even bothered to look at the chart at 9pm at the first call, she would have known that I was already two hours overdue for pain meds at that point.

Yeah, I am more and more pissed as I sit here in pain, certain I have another hernia, and reliving the awfulness of those few hours. Nurses have an awesome amount of power over the suffering of other people. In my limited experience with major medical as a patient and friend of patient, a great many of them take that power seriously and have a lot of care and compassion. Some just don't, and they can cause incredible harm.

[@meric@nwom@n]

BSG Unfortunately part of our job is to be a drill sergeant about the breathing. It's hell, but we don't want you to survive the surgery only to croak from pneumonia. That being said it is unreasonable to expect a patient in that type of pain to do much without proper pain control.

I really hope you take her ass to the wall over this because it is inexcusable. Write scary lawyer letters to the administrator and name names. Hold them all accountable.

Above all get better soon.

[loCAtek]

*Yikes* If I ever need surgery, just shoot me and put me outta my misery!

Have you got enough flowers and balloons in your room? Can never have enough of those, where shall we send them?

[BoSoxGal]

Thanks, loCA - my honey brought me a nice gift bag with gourmet coffee & chocolate, and my new coworkers at the prosecutor's office sent me a lovely plant basket, which I'm excited to put in my new office when I get back to work next week. Most of my closest friends/family are far flung and I wouldn't care for a lot of flowers that just croak anyway - it's nice to get flowers once in a while, but I hate when they die.

I've had lots & lots of texts, calls, emails, etc. - that's what means the most to me, to be distracted by the warm thoughts of friends!

I was just thinking this morning that this experience is so different from the last one - not just because I'm in a lot more pain and recovery has been a bigger challenge, but because I am truly able to just focus on feeling better, because I know that my office is managing my caseload in my absence. It's ironic that last time when I had a reasonably easy recovery, it was still spoiled by the extreme stress of my job and the poor management of my last office, which resulted in a situation where I have to go through another surgery with a much more difficult recovery for me.

I've certainly learned to put health ahead of work this time and I'm know I'm lucky to have the luxury of job choices and to have been able to leave an adequate job (with work I loved, just not the management) for a job that is also rewarding work, but in a much better managed office environment.

[Gob]

I've certainly learned to put health ahead of work this time

A lesson we should all learn, not much point in having the latter if we do not have the former.

[loCAtek]