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.
# posted by Jack @ 4:52 AM 
Comments:
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I follow your blog faithfully, and though the entries are few and far between, I enjoy your passion and your intelligent indignation when a blog entry comes along.
My theory as to why physicians maintain an environment that forces sickly people to lose necessary, beneficial sleep in a hospital the day before major surgery rather than allow them to rest is that someone else, namely lawyers, are forcing physicians to cover their ass because of our highly litigious society and the fear of making a mistake that has ensued.
I also believe that the generation running this scenario ingested way too much dope in the 1960's, and this explains WTF is going on.
I won't wish you good luck on your surgery. I'll pray that despite sleep deprivation, you'll fully recover and blog some more passion.
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My theory as to why physicians maintain an environment that forces sickly people to lose necessary, beneficial sleep in a hospital the day before major surgery rather than allow them to rest is that someone else, namely lawyers, are forcing physicians to cover their ass because of our highly litigious society and the fear of making a mistake that has ensued.
I also believe that the generation running this scenario ingested way too much dope in the 1960's, and this explains WTF is going on.
I won't wish you good luck on your surgery. I'll pray that despite sleep deprivation, you'll fully recover and blog some more passion.
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