After the last two months of incompetent doctors and rathole nursing homes with their idiotic staff, I'm starting to believe we have found a silver lining behind those dark, dark clouds.
After Mom was admitted to the hospital Tuesday morning and I went home to catch a few hours sleep before heading to work, I called to see how she was. When I asked who the attending doctor would be, I was told it would be the same wench who saw her last time she was hospitalized. This "doctor"'s main concern was not finding the cause of what was making mom so not-mom and getting her well, but getting her out of the hospital. (Sadly, this is what the insurance companies pressure doctors to do nowadays so they don't have to pay huge claims.) I told the nurse I did not want her attending my mohter and the nurse said she would speak to the charge nurse and see what she could do. Shortly afterwards the wench doctor called me and wanted to know why I didn't want her treating my mother.
I told her why, calmly. I told her I wasn't happy with the care she gave my mom, and that I felt her main concern was getting her out of the hospital without determing the cause of her illness, and that the fact that she had been readmitted with exactly the same symptoms as before showed that. She got very angry and said she would be contacting Humana. I told her to go right ahead and do that, as I was planning on filing a complaint against her with Humana myself.
So Mom has a new attending doctor and this time, I think we may have gotten a good one. Mom was very out of it last night, not responding to questions, not eating, staring off into her own private place just as she did two months ago. From what the nurse told me, this new doctor said she is going to concentrate on what the major problem is at the moment, the bladder infection and fever, which she is sure is causing the dementia. Not "water on the brain,", not "decline", not anything other than febrile dementia. They're giving her a very strong antibiotic IV, because what the nursing home was giving her was not strong enough to combat the intensity of the infection.
I'm sure that having a catheter is one source of the recurring infectios. She's left to lay in a dirty diaper all day and the bacteria have a stairway right into her bladder on the catheter tubing. I am going to INSIST they do some bladder training while she is IN the hospital, not the day she is to be discharged and maybe we can get the catheter out for good. (The last worthless urologist insisted there was no such thing as bladder training and claimed mom had "forgotten how to pee." Yeah, after a month of being catheterized, I'm sure her bladder was numb, just like the urologist's head.)
So I'm hopeful that this doctor will do what needs to be done to fix the problem and get mom on the road to better health and comfort.
I called the adminstrator of the nursing home yesterday, and after being told he was not available, left a message for his secretary asking for a call back before 4 pm. At four, I called again and left another mesage, saying "You can talk to me or you can talk to a state investigator, your choice." I had a return call in 5 minutes. I told him what had happened and he apologized, and said he was sorry we went through it, but was glad I had called so it could be investigated. I will follow up with a letter to him and a carbon copy to the Division of Families and Children.
And as per the advice of Celine's friend, I will contact the local licensing boards to file a complaint against the nurse and the on-call doctor at the nursing home.
Nothing would make me happier than to see these ratholes shuttered over and padlocked. The first free morning I have will be spent writing letters to my local representative, our senator, the governer, the president, Hilary Clinton and anyone else I can think of, begging them to do something about the deplorable health care for our elderly. One day, I will be at the mercy of those who should be caring fo us, and I told my son at that point to take me out in the Everglades and shoot me before putting me in a nursing home.
Linda2