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The past 24
hours have been a tad bit frustrating.
As noted in yesterday’s journal, I received a call from George about an
hour after I had gotten home because we were told that a bed would not be
available on the regular surgical recovery floor – or the chances were pretty
slim. Apparently when Dr. Bastidas got
back to the hospital to check on George he noted that he was still in ICU and
he went about to get him moved. He
arrived at George’s bedside just about 9PM.
George was surprised as he had just fallen asleep. George then called me and I told him I would
meet him at his new room since he told me they were “packing him up” as he
spoke. When I arrived, he was not yet there -
and did not make it down for about an hour after my arrival.
Since he
arrived at the magical hour of shift change, he had to endure two sets of vital
checking, one with the shift going off and one with the shift coming on. Then his new nurse arrive about 11:30 and
proceeded to do some updates with his equipment that apparently are not things
available in ICU. One of the things that
has to take place regularly is flushing out George’s TPN (feeding tube)
line. In ICU they used a syringe to do
this periodically. Here, they add
another water bag to the line and program the unit to flush the lines every
four hour so there is no need for someone to come in and do it. Hmmm, why is one floor able to have the
equipment and not another??
At midnight she
completed all the things she needed to do and told us that things should be
quiet until vital needed to be done at about 3:30AM. She left the room – and not 5 minutes later
one of George’s IV lines starts beeping loudly.
Nurse Valena was nearby and heard it and came in quickly to take care of
the “air in the line” coding. She left
the room –and 5 minutes later something else started beeping – the compression
line for George’s calves. She came in
and took care of that. Five minutes
later – and the TPN line started up again so we called her in again. She left and five minutes later the
compression line started to beep again.
Seriously?!?!?! What the heck is
this all about! That was the last of the
beeping for the night so we were grateful she figured it all out.
George woke me
up at 5AM to use the urinal and we called the nurse in for help (it is a major
feat to accomplish getting out of bed with all the tubes, etc.) Since he was up she fetched the scale so he
could be weighed because she knew the doctor would be looking for that number
in the system. A few more things and, 40
minutes later we attempted to get just a little more sleep.
The next shift
came on and things went relatively smoothly.
Since George knew that we needed to PT sessions today, just before ten
he asked if I could find the therapist and have her come in. I told him that the nurse would be in shortly
to do an additional TPN flush and we could find out. At that time, George decided he wanted to try
sitting up for a bit so the nurse and CNA came in to help get him situated. Nina, the PT, arrived about 11 and got him to
take two walks to the door and back.
George complains about the “room spinning” and we think that is the
dilaudid. We need to ask Dr. B if there
is something else that will adequately administer a pain medication without the
spinning because we need George to be able to get up and walk around more but
he can’t if the spinning keeps on happening.
Too unsteady for that!
This afternoon
was very frustrating as George’s pain medication line ran out and the unit
started beeping like crazy. It beeped
for a while but apparently the nurse could not hear it. I silenced the unit and we gave a call to the
nurse’s station. It took probably 10
minutes for the nurse to come in and take care of it (and me silencing the unit
every 2 minutes). When she finally arrived
she changed out the meds and went to add another potassium bag. This took her a bit of time to set up and,
during the set up the unit kept beeping and beeping. George finally glared at her and said “can
you shut that thing up!” So then she
kept on top of silencing it whenever it started to beep while she kept on
trying to get the line going. She left
the room after getting it going and the stupid thing started beeping for air in
the line. She came back in and tried to
fix it and thought she had but a few minutes later it started again. Needless to say, the patient was very, very
angry!!
This evening I
left the room to make a phone call and was gone a while, but forgot to put the
call button low enough for George to get it.
(he was sleeping and I did not want to disturb him). Apparently, shortly after I left one of the
lines started beeping because it was complete.
No one could hear the unit beeping, George couldn’t yell loud… and so he
listened to it beeping until I returned 45 minutes later. By this time he was absolutely livid! Not a good day for man and machine!!
The PT came in
right after all of the afternoon stuff but George was so exhausted form the
beeping and stuff that he did not feel up to doing anything! So she gave him a pass and will be back in
the morning.
We had lots of
visitors today – Sara, Keith, Stan, Rob and Angie, Denise and Rosemary. George did pretty well. He sometimes dozed off, or listened with his
eyes closed, but he managed to hold conversations. By the end of the day he was pretty tired. We
are hoping that things stay relatively quiet so we can catch up on our
sleep. Right now the only line going is
the TPN – and I think that one will need to be changed out sometime during this
night shift.
Dr. Bastidas
was in this morning and says things are going okay. No other news for the day on the medical side
of things.
George and I
are making peace with his current condition.
Taking a “Let’s wait and see what we are dealing with – and then deal
with it” approach.
Time for some
sleep - - hopefully will get a good 5 or 6 hours in with minimal interruptions
for me (maybe I will sleep through the shift change tonight? One can hope!)
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