A Bad Day

Tuesday, February 17, 2009 – 4:45 P.M.   This has been one of those bad days. I wish that I could forget it ever existed, but I do not think there is any way of doing that.   My home healthcare nurse came to see me today. It started out as her normal weekly visit. She wanted to irrigate my bladder with a liquid antibiotic. Since I was already on some pills for my UTI, I refused to let her do the irrigation.   I told her that I had not been feeling good for more than a week. I said that I had been having several bouts of dizziness, and that last night; in addition to that, I had a lot of severe pain in my back, shoulders, and neck. That was including a severe headache, which would not go away.   She proceeded to take my blood pressure, and then looked at me oddly. She said that in all the months she had been working with me, my blood pressure had never been this high. She took the blood pressure again, but the result was the same. My nurse decided to try my other arm, thinking that it might show a different reading. It did not. My blood pressure was 155/121. That was the highest it has ever been.   I told her that I was not surprised, considering everything that I have been going through with this home healthcare agency. I told the nurse this, adding that the last time I saw my doctor; he wanted to know when I was going to go to with another agency. My nurse did not look too happy upon hearing this. I am at the point where I do not care how she feels, because it is how I feel that is important.   During this past weekend, a new CNA started working with me. Although she would only be helping me on weekends, I seemed to take an immediate dislike to her. I made a complaint about her today, and she will no longer be working with me.   I told the Director of Nursing at the home healthcare agency, that my physical therapy had been stopped in January, because I had started getting range of motion (ROM) therapy at home on a daily basis. I then told her that after my physical therapy had been stopped, for some unknown reason the ROM had also stopped   (My physical therapist had thought that the ROM could take the place of my needing to go to the clinic several times a week.) The Director of Nursing and I had a small argument about this, with her saying that I could not go to the clinic as an outpatient to get some physical therapy, and then expect to receive ROM at home. I said that I had to go to the clinic in order to get traction therapy and pool therapy, both of which I could not get here at home. That did not seem to placate her. I said that I would discuss this with my doctor when I saw him this coming Friday.