"PeterL" > wrote in message
.25...
> http://www.caringbridge.org/visit/kilikini
>
> Talk about the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing!!!
>
> :-/
>
> --
> Peter Lucas
> Brisbane
> Australia
>

I continue to keep good thoughts for Christy. I'm keeping up with the
Caring Bridge Updates but hadn't read this one yet, so thanks, Peter.

/rant on
I know just how confusing dealing with hospital staff can be. My mother had
a legal DNR (do not resuscitate) order and I had what is called Healthcare
Power of Attorney over her medical decisions. When she went in for tests I
gave the staff a copy of both documents. The information was never entered
into her chart and they lost the documents.

The doctors would not listen to me when I told her she was only on 3
medications at the time of admission per her primary care physician (a
gerontologist who makes house calls*). He had just done lab work a month
before and reduced her from 9 medications down to 3. I even gave them the
medications I'd brought from home; they ignored me. They put her
immediately back on the 9 she'd been taking when she was in the hospital
last January. By the time she finally came home they had her up to 30!!!
It's no wonder they kept telling me she was demented! As for the DNR, if
she had coded while in the hospital they would have ignored her wishes and
resucitated and done whatever to keep her alive, even as a shell on a
breathing machine. I was furious they lost the paperwork and it never got
into her chart.

*The organization of gerontologists don't have hospital privileges. They
treat patients at home, in nursing homes and assisted living facilities. I
had her doctor call to speak with the doctors who were seeing her inpatient;
they never returned his calls.

The day she got home her doctor was here along with a nurse from the
hospice. She hadn't been given any of those 30 meds before discharge so she
was already much more cognizant when she got home. Her doctor reviewed the
list of those 30 meds with me and explained why the combination of all of
those drugs, particularly in an elderly patient, is contraindicated. Many
of them were for treating the exact same thing, duplications if you will.
Mom was just fine the next day, talking to me, making perfect sense. The
hospital made it sound like she was a raving lunatic. (When I went to see
her it was indeed as if her mind was gone.) Well no wonder, look what you
people did to her!
/rant off

Jill