day 5

Mom is still resisting eating at the hospital — mostly because the soft food they are offering her tastes horrible — she's fine with chocolate Ensure, or just about chocolate anything. She doesn't seem to have broken anything, so if we are lucky and she holds steady tonight, we may be able to get her out of there tomorrow. Of course, "out of there" means that she will then be moved on to a rehab facility, where they can get her moving and eating. For how long there remains to be seen. It's still day-by-day mode around here for the present.

Chocolate can apparently solve some ills

i hate doctor shows

I have never understood the attraction for doctor or hospital dramas. Or comedies. For me, being in a hospital is not a fun experience, whether you are there for yourself or for a loved one. You are not only exposed to germs, but the ongoing dramas and foibles of fellow patients and their families.

While being parked in the ER on Monday night with my mom as we waited for a bed in ICU to open up, we were treated to one after another triage episode. A man who had fallen down drunk outside his apartment building whose neighbors had called 911. A woman on dialysis who was screaming for pain medication, and the debate after she had moved on by two ER male nurses over whether she had needed the dilaudid and their hesitation in calling the on-call doctor to approve it. Another woman, apparently from a local psychiatric facility, was visting her third ER of the day (this part of Florida has quite a few hospitals) and we were treated to the derogatory banter about her between the EMS techs who dropped her off and the RNs receiving her.

The nurses were quite professional with each patient, but we got to hear more of their behind-the-scenes chatter than we wanted to. We were there during a shift-change, so we also got to hear maybe more than if it had been early in the morning.

Television shows like House or Grey's Anatomy or ER have always held absolutely no appeal for me.* I really don't want to experience vicariously either the patient's rare disease of the week or their family member's fears or end-of-life decision making. Soap operas seem too hospital-centric, too. Not for me. If I have to view blood and guts, keep it in the realm of fantasy, like Game of Thrones or Lost or Buffy or Angel. If I want to watch a doctor on a show, let it be Dr. Watson or Dr. McCoy. I get enough real-life health drama as it is these days. I want to escape.

*The only exception to this rule that I can think of is Quincy M.E., which I used to love watching with my dad. But that was probably due more to Jack Klugman (Oscar, Oscar, Oscar!) than whatever health-related puzzle he was trying to unravel or topical injustice he was battling.

bed 17

My mom took a fall yesterday. The kid heard it happen, 911 was called, and she was whisked to a hospital in record time. And then the big wait. First one ER, then another, at what was deemed a more appropriate hospital. As the seconds, minutes, and hours ticked away into a seemingly never-ending blob of incoming trauma patients that we could only hear through a curtained partition, I realized, that with all of her ongoing issues (dementia), we have really been lucky with mom. This was the first time we have had to go to a hospital with her in a very long time.


We are now in the wait-and-see mode, while the appropriate teams check her from stem to stern and make sure there was no damage to her head, spine, or hip (we got conflicting reports on the latter, but hopefully just an initial false alarm.) It sucks that she has to spend some time in the hospital, but she is in the best place for her at the moment. It puts us in "the zone," that emotional and physical place that seems like your regular day-to-day life, but just isn't. Not fun at all. But we're hanging in there.

saturday night at the ER

I can think of a lot of better ways to spend a Saturday night.

The kid managed to swallow some small piece of metal that broke off of her aluminum pop-top can. It wasn't the loop part that you bend to pop the can open, but a small U-shaped metal piece that holds the loop to the can. I ever noticed the construction, either. What can I say, childhood (and motherhood) is full of all sorts of little discoveries.

Yes, that upside-down U-shaped piece is working its way through her digestive tract at the moment

So rather be safe than sorry, she earned a trip to the ER on a Saturday night. Joy. We were the only ones there when we walked in at 6:30 pm, but that didn't stop time from standing still and us not getting into a room until 8:00 pm where we still had to wait to be x-rayed.

Luckily the Big Bang Theory was on Room 16's TV, which was a definite improvement from the Fox news station in the waiting room. Of course, being in a hospital is just one long waiting room. Suffice it to say that the line "If we ever get out of here" from Wings' Band on the Run was on an endless loop in my head.

The little bit o' metal didn't show up anywhere on her x-ray, so we were told to assume it will pass through with whatever else is in her intestines at the moment. I'm supposed to keep an eye on what she does over the next day or so and make sure there's no blood (poop detail!) and then follow up with her pediatrician on Monday, although I can't really guess what he would be able to do. They said something about him checking her out by pushing on her stomach.

As emergencies go, so far this has been a little one. I hope it stays that way. Apparently kids swallow all sorts of stuff. Pins, needles, other sharp objects. They gave me a standardized print-out about it, "When your child swallows a foreign object." I remember putting a penny in my mouth once as a kid, but it tasted so foul I spit it out. I never would have considered swallowing it.

We were so happy to get our exit papers, but both felt so bad on our way out — three HOURS after we first arrived — when we saw a family with a little baby girl and a man who was in pretty severe pain from gout who were still sitting in the outer waiting room. Both groups had come in a little after we had arrived. Saturday night at the ER