All's Well

I want to thank everyone for the prayers and support while my mother was in the hospital; it really did me good to see all the comments and get all the phone calls.

Thank you.

My mother is back home, and is doing better; she's on the mend, but it'll be a long trip back to where she was before this. But we're going to be able to make that trip, so I think we're heading in the right direction. As usual, the hospital visit was hard - North Austin Medical Center performed to thier usual sub-standard of fail. The internist who treated her after she was admitted ignored a direct request from my father that he request my mother's GI doctor come see her.

See, without the attending Doctor's permission, Mom's GI doc couldn't come see her; it would have been considered assault.

So, the attending doctor (read: raving worthless fuckwit) decided not to do as my father asked. Because obviously? He knows better than the GI doc who's kept her alive and functioning in the past. Obviously, he is so omniscient and skilled that he didn't need the assistance of a specialist when dealing with a woman who has more medical problems than a med school textbook. Obviously, with only the barest of medical histories, he was fully capable of diagnosing and treating a woman with delicate and complicated health issues.

Because's he's just cool like that. He's a third-party doctor, one a service sends to the hospital to help with the admissions and such. Obviously, he's fucking Gregory House or Leonard McCoy and can avoid making stupid mistakes, like giving my mother, a chronic pain patient, a medicine that flushes all her meds out of her system and putting her on a pain med that doesn't work for her. Or giving a woman with a damaged, dysfunctional and disabled digestive system a full course of stomach-rending meds the evenning after she's been admitted to the hospital because her vomiting and dehydration were so bad she couldn't get out of bed. Or, taking eight fucking hours to get her an IV of fluids and such. To say nothing of antibiotics, because someone on two or three immuno-suppressive drugs wouldn't need those, oh no. A compromised immune system in a hospital full of germs? Why would that be a worry?

Instead, he stick a catheter in her and leaves her sitting in a room for a few hours. Admittedly there was an emergency where he was needed, assisting the on-call GI doc.

The on-call GI doc? Was my mother's GI doc.

Or, instead of being patient and getting a nurse capable of putting an IV in a patient with damaged and small veins, he just had a ham-handed intern tech jab her with a needle until she's covered with bruises the color of rotten plums smashed against a whitewashed fence by a sledgehammer. The spread pattern even looks similar - you know, all over her freakin' arm?

The emergency room floor was covered in debris - syringe caps and other, less idenfiable bits of plastic that may or may not have, at one time or another, been inserted in a human person.

The tech that moved my mother from the emergency room to her hostpial room almost got himself curbstomped into yet another stain on the floor when he was raising her bed. It had a foot pump and he was stomping on it like he was doing some insane white-boy dance at a geek fraternity rave.

One more foot pump that made her wince in pain? And my brother and/or I would have given him an urgent need to see a doctor. Luckily for him, the Fuckwit was around. I mean, with Fuckwit's careful and concerned care, he'd get well in five or six years. If he didn't die, first.

The clincher? The last time this happened, Mom's GI doc had her out in 23 hours. This time she was in three days.

She never saw her GI doc. Her GI doc was never informed my mother was in the hospital. On the night she was on call.

Mom's GI doc is a very aggressive, take-charge kind of lady. I get the feeling she's gonna staple fuckwit's balls to his stethescope.

Austinites, if you ever end up at that particular dungeon - erm, hospital - and you get Steward McKenna as your doctor, demand someone, anyone else. Say, a records clerk. Or a janitor. Or the janitor's pet monkey. The pet monkey will only bite you, give you raibies, and fling dung everywhere.

Much more helpful than fuckwit.

On another note, fuckwit gave my father his card. If you know my father at all, you realize that giving him a peice of information like your name, contact info and place of employment is tantamount to giving him a loaded gun with a pre-labelled bullet.

Dad isn't going to do anything so prosiac as sue. See, malpractice insurance takes care of that, and all we'd get at the end was whatever the lawyer didn't claim. Instead, my father is going to make his life a living hell with complains to anyone and everyone who has authority over him. Like the state board of medical examiners. The hospital director. That sort of person. The kind of person who just loves hearing about a doctor that fucked up a simple thing like 'please let my wife see the doctor who treats her for this condition on a regular basis.'

Still, Mom's okay, and that's what's important. Next time she gets admitted to that hospital (which is the only one her GI doc practices at), we're going in force. As many people as we can get. Dad can take care of Mom and I can do what I do best.

Be a royal and utter pain in the ass.

I'm the most stubborn person I've ever met. There is no beauracratic system invented I can't stubborn my way through. It hasn't been invented. God gave me a gift to put my head down and charge right in, making a right mess of things until people do what they need to do.

Dad can take care of Mom. I'll get the morons to let her see the right doctor. They won't even know I'm conning them until after Mom's doc has handled the problem.

/angry rant

On other, more random notes - the last two blog entries have usurped my blog on the Twilight movie. It's almost done.

I fit into three of my old, smaller shirts. This makes me happy.

Barack Obama is a smoker. For some reason, I like him better now. People best lay off him 'bout that, too. Yeah, yeah, bad example for the kiddies and all that but, shit. It's not like the man isn't about to start a stressful job or anything. Better he take care of his stress with nicotine instead of, say, bombing someone.

(Says the conservative. Go figure.)