Revolving Door ER
Ginger was released from the hospital on Tuesday. For reasons that were as inadequately explained as the reasons why it wasn't necessary to keep her in the ICU, the reason they took her off the heart monitor or even why they stopped regularly testing her hemoglobin for, oh I don't know, signs that she was slowly bleeding to death.
I can't help but feel that the doctors had either grossly exaggerated the risk to her health then, or were negligently ignoring the possible risks now.
As a layman I would say that the color in her face and extremities looks much improved. She isn't so frightening pale and drawn as she looked just 48 hours ago. She more tired and unsteady on her feet than I'm comfortable with--but her energy level is higher than the lethargic, half-conscious state that she'd been in before.
Her temp was just a bit elevated when I brought her home (99.9) last night and she displayed a complete lack of appetite.
This morning her condition immediately went south. She was experiencing sharp stomach pains and her temp shot up to 102.2. These, by the way, were two of the three warning signs designated in her discharge papers as reason to bring her back to the ER.
At the ER a bunch more less-than-gentle testing resulted in another stack of negative results.
Yes. It's nice to know that her white cells are not elevated and her red cells are not depleted. Yes. Her heart is ticking away just fine and no cancerous polyps have reared their ugly heads. But it's frustrating to be sent away with no plan of treatment, not because Ginger is on the way to being well, but apparently because she's just sick in the wrong way.
"This is too hard; let's be firemen instead" - Monster Squad.
So in the end the last useful thing the doctors did was to give Ginger 4 units of blood last week. Everything else, from the unnecessary removal of the Pict line when Ginger was booted out of the building too soon, to the pointless reinstalltion of a new (and never used) Pict line an hour before she was booted out again this afternoon has not been worth the pain and misery and blood she was subjected to.
Even with all the blood tests I've seen performed on Ginger, all the finger jabs for glucose testing, all the IV inserted into her tiny little twisted veins, I have never seen a medical professional spill so much of her blood on a single procedure like I saw today when the new useless Pict line was installed. I have to admit that the end result was an improvement over the first Pict line that shouldn't have been removed in the first place--but, fuck, did that woman make a butcher shop mess in the process.
Now we wait. I pester Ginger with a thermometer and monitor her temp. I feed her Tylenol when her fever gets too high and pain meds when her stomach pains become severe. Until she develops easier to understand symptoms, the hospital staff are just not interested.
I can't help but feel that the doctors had either grossly exaggerated the risk to her health then, or were negligently ignoring the possible risks now.
As a layman I would say that the color in her face and extremities looks much improved. She isn't so frightening pale and drawn as she looked just 48 hours ago. She more tired and unsteady on her feet than I'm comfortable with--but her energy level is higher than the lethargic, half-conscious state that she'd been in before.
Her temp was just a bit elevated when I brought her home (99.9) last night and she displayed a complete lack of appetite.
This morning her condition immediately went south. She was experiencing sharp stomach pains and her temp shot up to 102.2. These, by the way, were two of the three warning signs designated in her discharge papers as reason to bring her back to the ER.
At the ER a bunch more less-than-gentle testing resulted in another stack of negative results.
Yes. It's nice to know that her white cells are not elevated and her red cells are not depleted. Yes. Her heart is ticking away just fine and no cancerous polyps have reared their ugly heads. But it's frustrating to be sent away with no plan of treatment, not because Ginger is on the way to being well, but apparently because she's just sick in the wrong way.
"This is too hard; let's be firemen instead" - Monster Squad.
So in the end the last useful thing the doctors did was to give Ginger 4 units of blood last week. Everything else, from the unnecessary removal of the Pict line when Ginger was booted out of the building too soon, to the pointless reinstalltion of a new (and never used) Pict line an hour before she was booted out again this afternoon has not been worth the pain and misery and blood she was subjected to.
Even with all the blood tests I've seen performed on Ginger, all the finger jabs for glucose testing, all the IV inserted into her tiny little twisted veins, I have never seen a medical professional spill so much of her blood on a single procedure like I saw today when the new useless Pict line was installed. I have to admit that the end result was an improvement over the first Pict line that shouldn't have been removed in the first place--but, fuck, did that woman make a butcher shop mess in the process.
Now we wait. I pester Ginger with a thermometer and monitor her temp. I feed her Tylenol when her fever gets too high and pain meds when her stomach pains become severe. Until she develops easier to understand symptoms, the hospital staff are just not interested.