[Rerun]

I'll tell you a couple of stories about mine and my wife's hospital experiences

Two years ago I took my wife to hospital emergency dept because she was complaining of extreme stomach pain, tenderness in the abdominal region, and vomiting. We waited in the emergency dept for 4 hours before she was admitted into the dept. We stayed there a couple of more hours and hospital decided it was just indigestion or something like that and sent her home.

That night we went to bed and my wife woke up at about 2 am in terrible pain (she said it felt like someone stuck a knife in her). I rushed her back to the hospital and again waited 3 hours before she was admitted. My wife looked just awful.
Finally after about 4 hours after arriving there she sees a doctor. He examines her and says "I think you have appendicitis and it may have burst... we'll have to do an exploratory operation". Well 9 hours after getting to the hospital they cut her open.. and guess what ... her appendix had burst. She was in the hospital for 2 weeks recovering because she also developed Septicemia which is a life threatening infection... all as a result of her burst appendix.


My story.... in Dec 2007 I was admitted to the hospital with life threatening accute pancreatitis (I didn't know it was life threatening at the time although it the sickest I had ever been and it was the worst pain I've ever been in... later after I was released one of the nurse's confided in me that it was touch and go there for a bit and at one time they were concerned that I might not make it). Anyways I was in the hospital for 2 weeks and I'll tell you that there some very good nurses who cared about there patients and some others who didn't give a crap about the people they had to look after (you could tell that to them it was just a job... put there shift time in and get the hell out of the place)... to me its seemed like the latter were the majority.
As I said, I was extremely sick. I lost over 30 lbs in two weeks. One night I woke up (I was only able to sleep for about 2 hours at a time) with a real bad case of the night sweats. My bed was just soaking wet. That night I had one of the crappy nurses in charge. She had previously given me a hard time for bothering her too much... you know asking for a drink of water ... kind of stuff.. I was laid up in bed, could barely move, introvenous fluids and painkillers (hydromorphone... very potent stuff... I was in so much pain that demeral and something else they tried, didn't do squat for me). So here I am its 3 in the morning and I can't fall back to sleep because it feels like I'm laying in a pool of water. I don't want to ask the nurse because I know she'll be pissed off for bothering her... so I crawl out of bed and slowly shuffle into the hallway pushing my IV cart, to look for the linen closet so I can get some fresh sheets and a blanket (I was really cold .... probably because my temp was about 103F but sweating at the same time). I found it and changed my own bedding and just about passed out at the same time. All because some nurses treat their patients like crap.

Not all nurses are like that... there were a couple who were just angels and I made a point of going back there when I was better to thank them for the wonderful care they gave me. They discharged me after 2 weeks but I wasn't fully recovered til about 4 to 6 weeks after I got out of the hospital. I went back after I was completely well. The other nurses, the ones who don't care anymore, I didn't say squat too.