This evening when I arrived for work at the Writing Center, my cell phone rang. I didn't dare turn it off because of my father. I had been speaking to doctors and nurses and my father himself all day. The cardiologist had explained to me that the doctors could not do the cardiac stress test they had planned (as I had thought they'd decide) because by doing it, they would stress his kidneys, and they were already failing. So it's a hard choice: go by kidneys or by the heart. One way or another, he'll surely have a traumatic, and probably fatal, event the next time.
I told them that I was fully aware of the problem when he went into the hospital, and had already told the doctor in the ER as much myself. We've been through all of this before. So she said they'd release him tomorrow, and that the hospital would arrange transportation for me.
I laughed because I knew that was a fantasy. The only transportation available is me, unless I pay the driver to do it, and that's not an option because the damn hospital makes a person wait around for hours, during which she would be charging me, just to get the paper work together and find a nurse to disconnect the patient from tubes and machines and dress him.
So the ninnies called the owner of the board and care and told him to come get my father! He was quite upset, and had the caregiver call me and ask why I had them call him. Of course, I had nothing to do with it! And for another thing, dad wasn't even being released today!
So tomorrow, when I have to work till fairly late in the afternoon, I will have to get him after work, and will no doubt be standing around for hours and hours and then have to stop somewhere for dinner so we both don't starve.
I had hoped to go to the final Casa Romantica reading tomorrow. Oh well. It's awfully far for me at night, anyhow.
2 comments:
Eh, always take what people say with a grain of salt and confirm everything.
Administrators often think the hospital is about them, though of course the real, the genuine hospital is doctors and nurses and med students and interns and residents and various therapists and lab people and so on caring for all-important patients. But lots of people at various levels think it's about them and their power over some little corner of government-demanded or hospital-demanded paperwork, so one has to tread with care. A lot of them feel that they know things that they don't know, not really. There are good and poor people at all levels.
My two cents.
You're quite right, Marly. I have learned not to trust doctors anywhere near as much as I used to.
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