The Hospital stay (or The Invisible Nurse) ...

Last Thursday evening I drove down to my sister to spend the night. We took off and had a Chinese dinner and then watched Survivor...(what's up with voting Debbie off? Why not surprise Coach?) anyway.....

Friday morning she had to report by 6:30am so off we went at 6am. I took hot tea with me because it would have been cruel to make her smell coffee and know she couldn't have any. We found a parking spot (of course FIRST we had to drive around the whole parking lot and get lost in the parking garage and then end up in the same parking spot we had at the beginning, but whatever!). We finally made it up the elevator after being sent to the wrong check in desk... apparently I am no good at directions inside a hospital and she was weak from no food/no caffeine. We check in at the desk (oh, we missed that the first time also and had to back track). And what does she get. A BEEPER!! A freaking beeper! Like a beeper from Olive Garden that says your table is ready. It comes with instructions. First time it beeps the patient goes to op registration. Second time it beeps, pt goes to pre-op holding. Third time it beeps, family (2 at a time please) can go to pre-op to sit with said pt. Now just imagine....a LARGE waiting room, many pts, many beepers. Dang it, beepers were going off right and left. What a nightmare. So, her beeper goes off, she leaves and comes back with bracelet on. Beeper goes off again. She returns after having blood drawn. Beeper goes off again. DON'T COME BACK THIS TIME!! She hands me the beeper and no, she doesn't return this time....
I sit and sit and sit and FINALLY the beeper goes off and I can go back to pre-op holding to sit...in a hard chair...freezing my freakin butt off cause the hard chair is under an air conditioning vent and apparently the nursing staff is HOT and it must be 40 degrees in there. Of course the patients all have nice heated blankets! I sat and shivered and finally one of the nurses brought me a heated blanket. oh yes...that was nice....

So now I have to leave. They have given her a "happy shot" and she is off. I still have the beeper cause it's gonna go off one more time when she hits post-op. I got some hand embroidery done (one little girl asked me if I was knitting...lol) and finally the beeper went off. I was given a paper with her last name and room number on it and told to HAND OVER THE BEEPER (gladly) and "please proceed to the 6th floor waiting room). Now, I was lucky enough to find that on my own, so it must be my sister that gets us lost. HA HA...

I sat in the dark (some ICU families were sleeping) waiting room and it was getting to be lunch time so I took off for the cafeteria to see what was good. YUM...big pieces of pizza and a bottle of water and where will I sit? Oh look, a hospital volunteer sitting by herself. I used to work in a hospital and if you are ever in a hospital cafeteria for a meal with no one to sit with, sit with a volunteer. This lady was very nice, and after a nice conversation we found out we had quite a bit in common. Her husband was a Shriner, my dad was a Mason,mys sister and I both belonged to Jobs Daughters, my quilt guild makes charity quilts for Shriners Hospital (over 600 to date) and so on.... I had a very pleasant lunch with her and for the life of me, I can't remember her name. Oh well, it's very unlikely she reads my blog..

After lunch, I returned to the 6th floor and asked one of the clerks (I am sure they have an official title, but all hospitals call their clerks something different, so there) and my sister had come up from post-op and was in her room..


"Well, there you are!!" my sister says as I enter her room. What?...I just ate LUNCH!! She arrived in her room around noon and for 5 minutes had been wondering where I had gone off to.... She did really well. She ate about 1/2 of the lunch they brought and snoozed off and on during the afternoon. She ate some ice chips and about 3pm we realized that from 12 noon until 3pm NO NURSE CAME AND CHECKED ON HER! Isn't that unreal? She is a fresh post-op and NO ONE CHECKED ON HER...No vitals, no nothing... It's a good thing I was there, although nothing happened. She finally beeped the NA to get up to go to the toilet (that word was for you Anne! and all you other Aussie's that read my blog HA HA, cause I would have typed bathroom, not toilet)

She told me that she was gonna eat dinner (5pm) and then tell the nurse to get the paperwork done, she was "out of there". The nurse did finally show up around 4pm or so as which point my sister asked for more ice chips and of course the nurse forgot about them and the NA showed up and my sister asked HER for some and then she must have said something to the nurse because we ended up with two cups of ice chips...LOL

And we were...(out of there) but not before
I had to help her out of bed as the nurse just stood there watching
The NA ran a race (really! I walk fast and couldn't keep up with her) with the wheelchair through the hospital to get her out
AND ran my sister's foot into the wall....

We stopped at Walgreens to get some "happy pills" and went HOME!!

She is back to work today with only tylenol, a heating pad and a pillow...

Of course I won't name the hospital....but I will think twice about ever going there as a patient...

I am playing with bubble jet 2000 and bubble jet set today.... I want to do some fabric printing using the computer on the mystery quilt.

Tomorrow is a class at a LQS on Piping Hot Binding...Have to get my sample ready to go and pack up for that...

Happy Sewing,
Nancy