Tale of Two Parents

Trauma Patient Ohio

Published on April 24, 2016May 21, 2016 by mellowdee555 Comments

After hearing from my parents’ neighbor that he had called 9-1-1, I paced the floor for 30 minutes. The hospital was just a short distance from my parent’s house, so I should have already heard something. Maybe the ambulance didn’t show up. I called their house, but there was no answer. I called our friend again and he asked me for an update. I told him that I was calling him for an update. He said that she should be at the hospital.

At 7:51 P.M. I called Scott & White Emergency Department (ED) and asked for the status of Mary Locke. I was informed that they had no patient by that name. I hung up and phoned our friend again. He said that he would call a neighbor and get back to me. Evidently a couple of ambulances and a Little River-Academy fire truck had pulled up to my parents’ house, which had attracted the attention of some neighbors. The next-door neighbors saw my mother escorted out of the house, placed on a gurney, and put in the ambulance.

ohio With this new information, I called Scott & White ED again and asked about the status of my mother. Again they told me that they had no such patient. I informed her that neighbors witnessed a Scott & White ambulance drive off with my mother on board. Because my parents’ house was less than five miles from the hospital, I assumed that it was her destination. It was then that she asked me about her symptoms, and as I started to explain, she said, “We have a Jane…” I interrupted her and asked if she was saying that my mother was a Jane Doe. She said that my mother had not been able to identify herself and she was admitted as Trauma Patient Ohio.

I left the house for Temple just a couple of minutes later, but I was fuming. Somewhere between the 9-1-1 call and the hospital, identifying information about my mother was lost. What’s worse is that even though she was having a stroke, she carried her purse with her when she left the house. In it was her wallet with her Medicare card, Texas driver’s license, and Scott & White Senior Care card. The ambulance drivers and the ED staff didn’t check her purse for any identification. Had they done so, they would have been able to access her medical history and medications.I questioned a hospital administrator a few months later about this oversight and he surmised that privacy might have been the reason for not checking her purse. When I asked if they checked for IDs of unconscious victims, he shrugged.

I left home at 8:45 P.M. After about 30 minutes I decided that I should call the hospital and give them my contact information, which the clerk gratefully accepted. As I approached Chappell Hill, I received a call from the hospital. My mother was being admitted, and Drew, her nurse gave me an update on her condition and also told me where I could find her when I reached the hospital. I also received a call from the ED doctor who had treated her, and the prognosis was depressing. It seemed that my mother had suffered a stroke in the part of the brain that controls speech. You’d have to know my mother to know how devastating this news was to me. She’s one of the most articulate people I’ve ever known. Among other things, she’s been a politician, a political activist, and a lobbyist. I couldn’t believe that God would deprive her the ability to communicate. However, my mother can write. When I asked about writing, I was told that all forms of communication are controlled by the affected area. With this depressing news, I continued driving. I still had 100 miles to go.

I finally arrived at Scott & White at 11:45 P.M. After checking in with the guard, I made my way to Medical ICU in the south tower. I found my mother and the nurse in room 249. Drew asked that I not wake her. She had been very agitated and she was heavily sedated and finally sleeping. He said that I could sleep on the couch in her room if I wanted. I planned to take him up on his offer, but I thought that I should check in on my father first, who was in the north tower.

It was now midnight and I was praying that my father was asleep. How do you tell someone who just had open-heart surgery that his wife just had a stroke? As luck would have it, the light was on in his room and he was sitting up in bed. I don’t remember what we said. All I remember is that when I told him that I was going to sleep in the hospital, he told me that I needed to go to his house to ensure that the house was secure.

Technically, it was now Saturday, May 16, both of my parents were in the hospital, and I was 160 miles from my husband. It was one of the few times in my life that I wished I wasn’t an only child.

The procedure went well

Published on April 17, 2016May 4, 2016 by mellowdee557 Comments

On May 6, 2015, we arrived at the hospital before 6:00 A.M. and found our way to Day Surgery. Another patient—a woman who appeared to be in her 70s—was also being admitted for the same procedure. The surgery preparation was typical and my father was wheeled away to the OR around 7:30 A.M. My mother and I waited in the frigid Day Surgery Waiting Room for about six hours, the expected duration for this procedure. We kept in touch with family and friends via social media and email, and we kept tabs on my father’s progress by watching the status bars on the large screen in the waiting room. My family and friends are spread across the country like buckshot from a sawed-off shotgun. Until this surgery, I underestimated the importance that Facebook would have on our ability to communicate with loved ones.

statusVideo

We anxiously waited for the periodic calls from the OR, telling us that the surgery was progressing well and that my father was doing fine. We were relieved when the surgeon, Dr. Sai, finally met us and told us that the procedure went well but that the next 24 hours were critical for strokes and blood clots. We went to my father’s room and were thankful that he was able to respond to simple commands from the nurse. His nurse, Ursula, was an interesting personality. She hailed from Transylvania and didn’t want to grow old. At the time I wasn’t thrilled to hear about how she didn’t want to become like the people in her care, but I grew to really like her and chalked up her comments to cultural differences.

Early the next morning I stopped by the hospital to check on him and say hello, and then drove back home to Houston, believing that all was well. Later that day, my mother called to tell me that my father was very disoriented; among other things, he saw bugs everywhere. Evidently, the woman we had met prior to his surgery was in the room next to his and she also experienced a couple of days of delirium after surgery. It was a small comfort to know that another patient was also struggling with delirium, although a heads-up about post-anesthesia delirium would have been nice. The passage of a couple of days and a couple doses of Haldol, and he was back to his normal self.

Mother’s Day was May 10 and my husband and I spent the weekend in Temple visiting with my parents. My father was still in the ICU but was moved to “the floor” soon after my husband and I went home. My mother called me on Monday to tell me that while she was away from the hospital for lunch, my father fell when he got out of bed to fetch the urinal. The nurse had neglected to return it to his bedside after repositioning him. We were concerned that the fall would extend his 7 to 10-day stay by a couple of days. Although I was annoyed with him for getting out of bed, I now wish that I had a dollar for every time a nurse or other professional left objects out of his reach–including call buttons. Although my mother and I admonished him for doing it, we’d have probably gotten out of bed, too.

On May 13, my mother told me that he’d been walking the halls with a front-wheeled walker and that therapists were stopping by each day. He seemed to be improving, and she and my father thought that he’d be discharged by now. As my father’s discharge date seemed to approach, the physical therapists, PAs and other hospital personnel recommended outpatient physical therapy, a notion that my parents quickly rejected. Based on these conversations, his length of stay in the hospital, and comments from the doctors and hospital staff, my parents surmised that my father’s discharge was imminent.

On Friday, May 15, my mother was under a lot of self-imposed pressure to prepare the house for my father’s homecoming. She had no idea that in a matter of hours two separate events would occur that would rock their world (and mine).

A seemingly simple decision

Published on April 10, 2016May 1, 2016 by mellowdee553 Comments

My Dad. Most people used to think that he was a decade younger than his chronological age. Following his retirement, he and my mother bought 15 acres in Grand Junction, Colorado, raised sheep and alfalfa, and enjoyed both cross-country and downhill skiing. They were card-carrying members of the OFOS (Old Farts on Skis) club and enjoyed camping and other outdoor activities. In 2004 they moved back to Texas and settled in Temple, roughly 35 miles south of Waco.

He and my mother loved gardening and tending to their acre-sized lot and the house that they had designed.

However, at 86 he was beginning to feel winded, which interfered with his ability to lead the active life he enjoyed. His cardiologist recommended an aortic valve replacement. At first my father thought that he would have Transcatheter Aortic Valve Replacement (TAVR), which replaces the valve without open-heart surgery. (According to Baylor College of Medicine, “Most people who have this [TAVR] procedure are older, usually in their 70s or 80s, and often have other medical conditions that make them a better candidate for this type of surgery.”) However, after a 15-minute visit with the surgeon, my father was sold on the open-heart route. His surgeon thought that the open-heart route was best, ran a battery of tests, and recommended that my father take the more invasive route. According to their test results, this surgery posed only a 3% chance of mortality for my father.

With odds like that, how could he say “no.” After all, they’re professionals; they know what they’re doing. He’d be fully recovered before he and my mother started harvesting melons and cucumbers from their garden in July.