Saturday, July 18, 2009

Grrrrrr

Kendall did NOT have a good nurse today. Took forever to get her in the room with all kinds of machines beeping and at one point, Kendall was feeling crappy and asked for Tylenol TWICE and after 30 minutes I gave him some of mine. Then I went and found another nurse, asked where ours was and told her that I'd given Kendall some tylenol myself. I dare them to give me a hard time about it! She came in shortly after and Kendall said he thought he had a fever so she took his temp and it was 101.9!!!

Then later he wanted to pull his mediport needle so he could take a shower, so we were waiting for her to come and do the heparin block on the port. I finally went to the store and when she came back he told her he couldn't pull the needle himself since his left arm still isn't working 100%. She said "OK, I'll be right back" which is what she said ALL FRICKIN DAY and we never saw her again for at least an hour every time. Our night nurse finally came in TWO HOURS LATER and she hadn't been briefed at all on the stuff we were waiting for. So needless to say, Kendall is pretty pissed and I told him I didn't blame him a BIT and he said he'd better not get the same nurse tomorrow. I told our night nurse we didn't want the same gal tomorrow and she asked if we wanted to talk to a patient rep. I told Kendall it was up to him, but I think he wants to.

And I gotta tell you, the IV and tube feed machines when they start to beep - especially in the middle of the night - sooooo annoying, I want to take a hammer to them. And one of them would get progressively LOUDER. So Kendall hits the nurse button and we wait and we wait, he usually hits the silence alarm button, but when he's sleeping (or at least trying to!) he doesn't have the energy to reach across with his good arm so I have to get out of bed.

The night charge nurse just came in and he's going to talk to the day shift charge nurse about improving the response time tomorrow. And hopefully he will get a little more sleep than he did last night and in the morning. And this is why I came up with the MamaBear moniker. I'm a fierce defender of my son when he's in the hospital. :-)

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

You shouldn't have to have someone talk to nurses to get them to respond! That's just crazy! What is the call button for anyway?! It's horrible when you have bad nurses! Hope you get better ones tomorrow!

Diana said...

You definately need to talk with the patient advocate (or whatever they call it in civilian hospitals). They do wonders sometimes. I just can't imagine being in a profession like that and being so careless. I hope things get better and that he starts feeling better.

Anonymous said...

Sorry Kendall had such a crummy nurse. I know that good nurses and doctors can make things so much better. I hope that things improve with the staff and that he feels better soon.

Hanlie said...

When you're paying for care, they owe you proper care, so I would absolutely complain.