Had to follow my own advice
OK So as many of you know I just got out of the hospital with a total knee revision. Not the greatest experience to say the least and not totally the hospitals or Doctors faults. Everything started off good and I was healing right long with the exception I couldn't get a handle on my pain. So instead of just giving me 2-7.5/325 Hydrocodone every 4 hours they added a 1 mg shot of dilautid. That should have put me in happy land but unfortunately it had a weird effect on my breathing. LOL I was afraid to go to sleep because I had to remind myself to breathe. Weird, weird. They cut my Dilautid dose in half and it didn't do much good. OK in defense of myself who was pretty well drugged at this time, I did not take a proactive stance in my care and just let the nurses slide instead of insisting they give the surgeon a call and change my pain medications. I finally did come to my senses and realized the nurses had not done any of the things I had requested, Like make sure a Hospitalist was assigned to my case, and when they finally did it was the surgeon who took the God Stance and refused to do what I asked. Surgeons are good but they aren't always worth a crap at regular medical practice and managing medications. Luckily I am still alive to file a formal complaint against this surgeon. I had requested a hospitalist to follow my medications since my regular MD was not a practicing physician at this particular hospital. I made the mistake of assuming things were being carried out correctly. Well I was finally discharged on Monday to come home. On discharge I was given a few prescriptions that I needed to pick up at the pharmacy on the way home. When hubby stopped and brought the meds back to the car is when I found out the Surgeon had only been giving me 40 mg of Lovenox twice a day to cover me until my INR came back to within therapeutic range. OK here is where a bit of an explanation is called for. My therapeutic PT/INR levels are 2.3-3.5, when I get below 2.5 I tend to throw clots in my lungs, thats why I take 90 mg of lovenox twice a day until I am therapeutic. OK I also find out the surgeon has not only under prescribed my lovenox dosage but also has only given me 2 days worth and discontinued my lovenox and just put me back on Coumadin. When I tried calling him he was nowhere to be found. When I got one of the doctors to call me back who was on call for this particular doctor, he was appalled at what this doctor had done especially knowing my clotting history. Like I said i will defend myself by saying I was extremely drugged out and couldn't hardly talk let alone be pro-active in my health care. We did call the hospital and talked to the charge nurse and she was amazed I was able to think as well as I was considering the amount of pain killers I was on. My other complaint to that particular nurse was the nurse who had been taking care of me did not give my husband discharge instructions. When hubby asked about discharge instructions she merely said she had talked them over with me and I understood what needed to be done. Honestly I don't remember her talking to me about any of it. I seriously was that drugged. I guess all I'm doing here is venting a little and hoping some of you might take my experiences and think about them if you are ever in the hospital, so you can make sure your spouse, parent, partner whatever is pro-active for you. We were not prepared for the lack of professionalism we received at the hospital I work at. I can only imagine what kind of treatment a non employee receives.
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