Saturday, October 20, 2007
Retraction from an Unhappy Customer
Don't you hate it when you publicly rant one of your occasional opinions and then find out you are completely full of hot air? That happened below and I'll fess up. It seems that the regular blood tests they were giving me were to monitor the amount of blood thinner in my blood, and that the inadvertent wake-up was them turning off the IV because I had too much and it had to be turned off for an hour. My only valid complaint was that they don't coordinate the people taking blood with the people taking vital signs, having them go together (and wasting precious human capital resources as a result.)
I had the opposite experience post-surgery. The nurses decided that I was sleeping like a baby, and didn't wake up when they spoke to me, so they skipped giving me my pain medication. Waking up an hour and a half later in pain had me really PO'd that they'd not woken me up. The best part about being at home is knowing I can wake up in a stupor from a sound sleep from the alarm I set myself, and take my pain killers.
Let's face it. A hospital has unhappy customers just about by definition, and an unhappy customer complains no matter which way it goes.
Don't you hate it when you publicly rant one of your occasional opinions and then find out you are completely full of hot air? That happened below and I'll fess up. It seems that the regular blood tests they were giving me were to monitor the amount of blood thinner in my blood, and that the inadvertent wake-up was them turning off the IV because I had too much and it had to be turned off for an hour. My only valid complaint was that they don't coordinate the people taking blood with the people taking vital signs, having them go together (and wasting precious human capital resources as a result.)
I had the opposite experience post-surgery. The nurses decided that I was sleeping like a baby, and didn't wake up when they spoke to me, so they skipped giving me my pain medication. Waking up an hour and a half later in pain had me really PO'd that they'd not woken me up. The best part about being at home is knowing I can wake up in a stupor from a sound sleep from the alarm I set myself, and take my pain killers.
Let's face it. A hospital has unhappy customers just about by definition, and an unhappy customer complains no matter which way it goes.
Sunday, October 14, 2007
American Interventionist Medicine
Call me weird or old fashioned, but I firmly believe that healthy people need a good amount of sleep. Go too long getting inadequate rest and you'll eventually get good and sick. Based on my experience in life, I know this to be true. (Or, if I'm wrong, I mistakenly believe it to be true to the core of my being.)
Call me weird or old fashioned, but I believe this continues to hold true for sick people, and even more so. So what is it about hospitals in the United States that makes them attempt the very opposite?
I am in the hospital, hoping to stay alive and healthy until surgery tomorrow. But what do they do? I'll tell you exactly what they do. (Of course I will. It's a blog.)
I went to bed a little before 11pm, after deciding the Red Sox game was too stressful for my heart. (It was tied 6-6 when I retired.) I had trouble falling asleep, and probably fell asleep around 11:30. One hour later, at 12:30am, I was woken to take my vital signs: temperature, blood oxygen level, and blood pressure. I fell back to sleep pretty quickly and was awoken at 2am to draw blood. I had major problem falling back to sleep, so I was still awake at 3:30am when they came to take my vitals again. Somewhere in between someone came in to play with my IV monitor. This was probably not intended to wake me, but 10 seconds after they left, the monitor began beeping loudly, and I had to summon them back. (I'll only count those two entires as one interruption.) At 4:10, someone came back to punch buttons on the monitor again.
Let's count this up. Between 12:30am and 4:10am, a period many people might well consider the middle of the night and prime-time for the old sleep routine, a space of 3 hours and 40 minutes, I was intentionally awoken 3 times, unintentionally awoken once, and once was risked being woken but probably wouldn't have been had I been asleep. Three intentional plus one unintentional wake-up calls in under four hours! One hour of sleep, a wake-up call, another one and a half hours of sleep, and then they poke a hole in my arm, after which I never fall back to sleep, though if I had, it would have been for, at most, one hour. That's 2 1/2 hours sleep, or if having a hole poked in my arm hadn't thoroughly made it impossible to fall back to sleep, another hour before the monitor alarm, and another 40 minutes before intentional wake-up call number 3.
What is the point of the heart monitor I'm wearing? I know that they know that my heart is beating, at what rate, and what my respiration rate is. So how is it possible that they think that knowing my blood pressure and temperature, and whatever-t-f they need blood for is more important than the most basic human need to effing sleep through the night??!!? Maybe the heart monitor is a placebo. I'll disconnect it tomorrow and feign death and time how long between the disconnect and someone entering my room. It better be under 30 seconds or I'll have another beef.
From my life experience, I know that if I wake in the middle of the night too much and don't fall back to sleep within an hour, I'm pretty much awake until 5am, after which I'll sleep fitfully with weird dreams (mostly about trying to stay asleep.) So, I got out my computer around 4:45am and spewed out this tirade against the unthinking incompetence of the interventionist system, upon whose surgery a long life ahead depends, but for which they want to ensure I am as tired and stressed as possible.
Oh Lordy, it's 5:20am, and I'm tired enough to fall asleep, but I'm sure there is a six o'clock wake-up call.
Call me weird or old fashioned, but I firmly believe that healthy people need a good amount of sleep. Go too long getting inadequate rest and you'll eventually get good and sick. Based on my experience in life, I know this to be true. (Or, if I'm wrong, I mistakenly believe it to be true to the core of my being.)
Call me weird or old fashioned, but I believe this continues to hold true for sick people, and even more so. So what is it about hospitals in the United States that makes them attempt the very opposite?
I am in the hospital, hoping to stay alive and healthy until surgery tomorrow. But what do they do? I'll tell you exactly what they do. (Of course I will. It's a blog.)
I went to bed a little before 11pm, after deciding the Red Sox game was too stressful for my heart. (It was tied 6-6 when I retired.) I had trouble falling asleep, and probably fell asleep around 11:30. One hour later, at 12:30am, I was woken to take my vital signs: temperature, blood oxygen level, and blood pressure. I fell back to sleep pretty quickly and was awoken at 2am to draw blood. I had major problem falling back to sleep, so I was still awake at 3:30am when they came to take my vitals again. Somewhere in between someone came in to play with my IV monitor. This was probably not intended to wake me, but 10 seconds after they left, the monitor began beeping loudly, and I had to summon them back. (I'll only count those two entires as one interruption.) At 4:10, someone came back to punch buttons on the monitor again.
Let's count this up. Between 12:30am and 4:10am, a period many people might well consider the middle of the night and prime-time for the old sleep routine, a space of 3 hours and 40 minutes, I was intentionally awoken 3 times, unintentionally awoken once, and once was risked being woken but probably wouldn't have been had I been asleep. Three intentional plus one unintentional wake-up calls in under four hours! One hour of sleep, a wake-up call, another one and a half hours of sleep, and then they poke a hole in my arm, after which I never fall back to sleep, though if I had, it would have been for, at most, one hour. That's 2 1/2 hours sleep, or if having a hole poked in my arm hadn't thoroughly made it impossible to fall back to sleep, another hour before the monitor alarm, and another 40 minutes before intentional wake-up call number 3.
What is the point of the heart monitor I'm wearing? I know that they know that my heart is beating, at what rate, and what my respiration rate is. So how is it possible that they think that knowing my blood pressure and temperature, and whatever-t-f they need blood for is more important than the most basic human need to effing sleep through the night??!!? Maybe the heart monitor is a placebo. I'll disconnect it tomorrow and feign death and time how long between the disconnect and someone entering my room. It better be under 30 seconds or I'll have another beef.
From my life experience, I know that if I wake in the middle of the night too much and don't fall back to sleep within an hour, I'm pretty much awake until 5am, after which I'll sleep fitfully with weird dreams (mostly about trying to stay asleep.) So, I got out my computer around 4:45am and spewed out this tirade against the unthinking incompetence of the interventionist system, upon whose surgery a long life ahead depends, but for which they want to ensure I am as tired and stressed as possible.
Oh Lordy, it's 5:20am, and I'm tired enough to fall asleep, but I'm sure there is a six o'clock wake-up call.
