Sunday February 9^th/2014

Yea… another day at St. Michael’s Hospital.  I didn’t hear from my mom this morning so I knew we were at the start of another off day L

I got here @ 11:50 am – did a run in the Timmy’s in the lobby so I could get a bagel for breakfast.  I’m sick of the food/junk food in this place.  I lost 11 lbs after my recent heart attack and think I’m going to gain it back thanks to the food available in this “health” institute.  They should be ashamed of themselves in regards to the food in this place, especially in the vending machines.  It’s all junk.

Speaking of which, I am going to write Toronto Public Health about the cafeteria.  A couple of days ago I got a “hot” meal there, the chicken souvlaki.  My mom was on the 7^th floor, the cafeteria is on the 6^th.  Her room is but 50 feet from the elevator, even less if I take the staff elevator and by the time I sat down at her bedside and opened the food, the chicken wasn’t much better than tepid.  The hot food is not being kept to safety standards.  Certainly not the chicken.  Gee thanks for the salmonella folks.

It’s noon, time for her pills.  I can barely wake her up.  Got them in her though finally.

She needed water and all I can find is a cup that is dirty on the outside and warmish water in it.  No jug.  I go to get one and not a single clean jug in the pantry.  Goodie.  No facecloths, no clean water jugs, no clean cups…   so I go looking.  I ask the lady delivering the food, she doesn’t know.  I ask her nurse T only to be told she is on a NO WATER restriction!!  Hellooooo  she’s already been dehydrated are we trying again?

No water…  why?  I told T that this damn place doesn’t know what to do with her and don’t follow the damn directives there, to just ask me.  No water my ass.  I finally found her jug, hidden behind the chair on the windowsill here.  I took it into the pantry and filled it with ice and a bit of water and got a clean cup.  Maybe tomorrow I should not only bring a facecloth but bring cups too?  Anything else?

Her lunch came.  They keep messing around with it as well and I’m pretty fed up with this issue too.

Took off the couple of things she can actually have on it..   the applesauce for her pills, her supershake and there’s a thing of asparagus soup too but doubtful she’ll eat it since she’s drifted off yet again.

I also cleaned up the leftovers from yesterday and caught a look at something.  Yesterday she ate very little, maybe got one supershake in her.  But I just got an eyeful of the best before dates on these.   The strawberry one which looks a pale yellowy colour is dated February 7^th !!!  She got it the afternoon of the 8^th.  The vanilla one is dated the 9^th.  That one is fine but why the hell is she getting one that obviously isn’t the right colour, you can see a wee bit of pink and the rest is off, dated the day before?

Got the tv finally on and the poor thing is sleeping through the one thing she loves the most, the Olympics, especially the ice skating.

She has eaten nothing today.  I got a few teaspoons of applesauce into her with her pills and about a third of her morning supershake.  That’s it.  According to this place it really doesn’t matter that she’s not eating either.   So exactly how long can a person sustain their health on maybe 300 calories a day at best? 

So let’s see…

-          They give her food she can aspirate into her lungs

-          They have someone that doesn’t have a clue feed it to her as well

-          They have removed her water  and have said she shouldn’t have it

-          They no longer have her on i.v. so she isn’t getting fluids that way either

-          They can’t get her food order correct and no one feeds her the one thing she is suppose to have that is her calories and nutrients for the day and to sustain her health.

-          They take her c.i. away so when she is agitated and trying to get out of bed there is no one watching her and chances are, she is going to hit the floor yet but I can’t be here 24/7.  I’m physically unable to be.

 1 pm and she’s still sleeping.  When will this sleeping stop?  I just keep trying to think sleep is healing. 

Her nurse also brought her pills in.  Her codeine and Tylenol.  I can’t wake her up enough to take them all.  Got her codeine in her in one spoonful of applesauce and only got one of the two Tylenols in her.  She’s down for the count yet again.  Think I’ll go and buy her some flowers from the gift shop.  Maybe if she wakes up later they will cheer her up.

 

Are you kidding me?  No damn wonder you can’t find a sheet or bedspread here for the patients.  Last night after I left at 8 pm someone went into my mom’s room and removed the only chair for anyone to sit on and it turns out they dragged it up the hall to a room 4 rooms up.  Guess they figured since she was pretty much passed out it was ok.

 Today I come, no chair.  Her nurse found it up the hall with a c.i. sitting in it.  She got it back for me.  I told them I wasn’t about to stand for the next 8 hrs.   This chair was uncomfortable for some reason, made no sense since it was comfy yesterday but there was a sheet over it.  I figured the sheet was bunched up and that is what was uncomfortable able so I got up and I removed the sheet.  There was another one under it..   I removed it and something was in there and it was a bedspread all folded up to make a cushion.  Under that was yet ANOTHER sheet all folded up to make another cushion.  And then under that is another freakin sheet, this one was a fitted bed sheet tied in a knot at the back to keep it in place.  6 damn sheets on this freakin chair!!!  I pulled them all off, went for some wipes and wiped down the stupid chair then sat my ass down.  It was now comfortable.  What the hell is it with this place?  So now patients have no sheets, and believe me, I looked in her cupboard, there is only a fitted sheet in there, there are now 6 sheets in the bin for washing and I can just imagine the laundry bill in this place without all this excess because someone working here obviously has some kind of germ phobia.  Cripes..  get the damn wipes and wipe it off. 

 2 pm – nothing..  still sleeping.  One of her old nurses, Bev, dropped in to say hi and we couldn’t even wake her long enough to say hi back.  I think she saw her but I’m not sure it registered.  Bev was sad by my mom’s appearance.  I remarked it didn’t even look like her and she agreed.

 2:15 pm a Dr. Gallagher came in.  Says he will be her Dr for the next few days.  Nice man but gave me a scary scenario saying this confusion may last a long time.  She will be here for another couple of days according to him with hopes of getting her back on track like she was last Thursday.

 2:30 pm nurse and c.a. came in to change her and damned if she didn’t fight them off.  Yelling my name, being combative, she wanted nothing to do with it.  She won’t even listen to me.   Kept saying she’d do it herself ..  don’t know what on earth is going through her head.    It took 10 minutes just to change her and put a fresh gown on and clean pad under her.  But then I noticed something, she is laying on a dirty bottom sheet and the c.a. said it was ok.  Could be changed later.  It had a urine mark and some feces.  It can wait?  If I could do it myself I would but in the shape she is in I can’t, she’d fight me all the way.  What the hell is with this place?  This is ok?????  If that Dr comes back in any time soon I’ll ask him if he would appreciate his mom laying on this. 

 4 pm..   nothing… nurse brought her heart pill for me to give but I can’t wake her up enough.  No one even comes in here unless necessary for the lady in the next room.  In all the hours I’ve been here  the nurse popped in twice for meds which I’ve given her.  That I don’t care about, she takes them better from me at times.  And once to change her.  So that’s less than once an hour.  Good thing she’s not on the floor again eh?

 Speaking of floors.  Just looking at this one.  There is stuff on this floor that has been here since she came here Friday evening @ 6 pm.  Stir sticks on the floor.  Yesterday the student nurse dropped the bag that covered the syringe they use to clear the iv and it’s still there too.

5 pm – her gums are bleeding, as usual, no one cares.  She woke up and I managed to convince her to take her teeth out so I could clean them because of all the crap I took out of her mouth yesterday and she is sticking her fingers in her mouth and coming out with more crap.  I used the green sponges to clean inside her mouth as well and damned if they didn’t come out with blood on them.  WTF?  Nurse wasn’t concerned, thought I scrubbed her mouth too hard.  Ass.  It’s a sponge for one thing and for another really????  Sure..  I just dug in there like I was digging for gold.  Stupid.

6 pm – sleeping yet again, she has sleep 90% of the day I think.  At least.

 No one ever puts lotion on her skin either and it’s getting dry.  Just what she needs, cracked skin.  What the hell happened to real nursing?  Some of these younger ones are in and out so damn fast your head will spin. 

I’m worried about all this sleep, it’s just not normal.

7 pm she’s refusing her medications …  with much ado and prompting I finally got 2 in her that she needed but not her pain meds. 

 I left at 7:45 with her telling me to bring her curling iron tomorrow for her hair.. sheesh

 

Her nurse contacted me near 10 pm and mom was so combative.  They needed to change her and her bed and she was having nothing to do with it.  I've never heard my mom like that.  I told them to call me if they had problems.  At least while I'm on the phone with her I'm somewhat of a distraction and they can get their job done.