My mother is home after being hospitalized for a few days. I was not even remotely happy with the level of medical care she received. Some of the more memorable events: This morning she had her blood pressure taken. When my average-sized mother told the woman that the blood pressure cuff was hurting her, the response was "Your arm is too fat". When we were waiting to be discharged, a nurse came in to discuss matters. I asked her what her name was. She rolled her eyes, reached into her pocket and took out her name tag. It indicated that she was an RN with a bachelor's of science. She stated that my mother would need weekly B12 shots. I said, "Oh, I thought it was daily". She refered to the scripts and said, "Oh, yes, you're right". She then said, "Earlier, I removed the IV she had for her antibiotics". "Antibiotics?", I ask "Why on earth was she on antibiotics?". The nurse walks over to the IV pole and shrugs. "Oh", she says, "It's magnesium, it looks like the antibiotics". At that point I ask when the neurologist would be stopping by. The nurse said, "She was here for a half an hour this morning. She gave your mother an exam and talked with her". The nurse, up to this point, had been talking only to me although my mother (her actual patient) was sitting three feet away. At this point my mother said, "The neurologist didn't come this morning". The nurse rolls her eyes and says to me, "Your mother is very forgetful". She then turns to my mother and says in a patronizing sing-song voice, "Dr. So-and-so came after breakfast. Do you remember what you had for breakfast?" My mother did indeed remember exactly what she had for breakfast and told her so. This is where I loose my temper. "Look here," I said, "My mother has a slight word-finding problem, but she could certainly remember a neuro exam and a discussion!" I went on to itemize all the errors the nurse had made since out little meeting began and told her that as far as I was concerned, I had no confidence in her and our discussion was over and I was taking my mother home. The nurse shrugged and asked if I wanted to speak to the doctor before we left. I said I did and that I'd also like the name of the person in charge of patient care. The woman shrugged again and said, "I don't know of any such person at this hospital." The moral of the story is... If you go to the hospital, take a bodyguard along with you.
In other medical news... Little Frida got spayed today. All went well. The office staff was sweet, kind and most importantly, competent. How utterly ironic.
