Voicelessness and Emotional Survival > Voicelessness and Emotional Survival Message Board
Update from.....Izzy
Hopalong:
Izzy, this breaks my heart.
Of all the people who have taken care of you in the last months,
which person or institution is responsible for the neglect of your wound?
I have trouble keeping track. Was it the horrid nursing home that let this happen?
Hops
lighter:
::hand over mouth.... horrified too::
Oh, Izz.....
I'm so sorry. Is it just a basic lack in Canadian healthcare, or is it bad luck, or that your situation has been overlooked, minimized, and consistently underestimated since you were hit by the car?
I think some of each?
I think accountability would have been a good thing, though it seems there are no consequences, in any case? In Canada?
::sending your leg, and spirit, healing pink light::
You continue to be one of my heroes, Izz.
Light
Twoapenny:
--- Quote from: Izzy_*now* on April 18, 2014, 12:10:38 AM ---Wow! 2½ months since I wrote.
There are 7 wounds on my left leg. I have been "horrified" with whatever in me horrifies me, but must always look for the best.
When the first Home Care nurse came, she opened the brace and dressings while Karla was here, who said "Oh F___!" and Cathie, the nurse said "This is disgraceful!"
I can now look at that leg, as it has taken me this long to be able to, and ....yes! Horrified. It will take about a year to be somewhere normal. Once a day with 2 nurses to attend, turned into 4 times in 6 weeks. I had no idea this was breaking down my skin---too much lamb's wool to be able to see.......
I was home before I knew the mess and it is finally cleaned up enough to see 6 sores around the top of my ankle (base of the brace moving up and down), and the knee the same from a strap that was too tight for compromised skin.
Nurses came here for a while and worked around the brace, then around no brace, as I accustomed myself to moving with support, then no support but my own and began going into the clinic.....yep about 1 year more. The whole negligence case has been reported to the higher up in this area!
I now have a power chair and haven't totalled it or killed anyone! (Today was my second trip with it, to the Clinic.) Will use it for going to lunch with Karla tomorrow. I plan on keeping both chairs in action, so my arms don't lose their strength.
This is the worst struggle, as I am older now, but am managing.
Love to all.
Tale Care.
Izzy
--- End quote ---
Oh Izzie. I'm glad to see you writing again but my gosh, what in the world??!! All I can offer you is a great big cyber hug ((((((((((((((((((((((((((((Izzie The Great))))))))))))))))))))))))))
Izzy_*now*:
Hi Hops,
To tell it like it is, I have to mention the paralysis of 1969, as that was when my legs, particularly my lower legs began with poor circulation because of the paralysis. I had no problems for 40 years being diligent in skin care, etc. and no pain (from the accident), but my legs kept on demineralizing.
Then 5 years ago, 2009, that car backed out and hit me, breaking an upper leg bone, bringing on excruciating pain (femur, hip end) That’s when I was so drugged, that I was treated for Tourette’s Syndrome and Schizophrenia. I read these on the reports in the spring of 2012 and the case was settled in 2013. So for 44½ years I was still in fairly good shape even “without a left hip’, with the pain lessening, to next to nothing when the Polymyagia Rheumatica set in and caused weakness then pain in my arms and I am on prednisone. I learned that that drug can weaken the bones. I was already in “enough trouble“. I was left with worse balance, now having no hip and any one of my falls could have broken something, and suddenly one did, Dec 18, 2013.
No surgery, for bone condition so a knee brace was recommended and I had never known of such a thing. It was heavy plastic, material and Velcro, with a circular security piece placed at either side of the knee, but was prone to sliding with movement (as it was not held up by a rope around my neck, for instance.) The rules posted for the nurses was that my leg was to be tended to daily (and I didn’t figure out why except that would be when it was washed for me.) It was also to keep an eye on my skin, adjust the slippage etc. This was NOT done! Some nurses never saw that brace before and “were afraid” and refused to touch it. One said it wasn’t in his Union Contract. When Karla visited one day she saw how those “circles” were too low, and undid the straps to find the beginning of a wound at my ankle, from the bottom of the brace being too low. The brace had to be undone, my broken leg lifted out, washed, the stockinet changed, brace adjusted and re-strapped in a special order of the 5 straps.
I don’t know how much responsibility I bear, but would have been more aware if they tended to me daily (after 2 weeks I wore the original stockinet to Cottonwoods…..run by hospital... and I had only one change of stockinet while in Cottonwoods, plus I was aware of the pain and the broken bone and how was this strange brace working? So 2 weeks of very few ministrations, while the compromised skin on my lower leg rested on this hard plastic and, feeling nothing, it broke down a little more each day while I know now for a fact it was never removed from the brace, nor the skin underneath ever checked. Cottonwoods for 4 more weeks--"short term stay" until it is felt the patient can go home. 4 checks in those four weeks and all I could see was the one on my inner ankle.
Arrangements were set up for Home Care and the first nurse, Cathie, remarked immediately how this ought to never have happened and told me about the sores in which areas. She took pictures and wrote up a report for some “tops dogs! I had Home Care until I was rid of the brace but not healed at 2 months, and only able to go to the clinic myself when I felt safe without the cast and an only partially healed bone. (I still hold my knee in place as my lower leg is moved to get to all the sores.
The schizophrenia is still on my chart, as I was asked by a nurse this past Monday. She almost didn’t ask, she said, because she felt it wasn’t true. I asked if this would be following me around and I forget if she had said she would follow it up….how can records be changed, when the attending doctor has left the area? I saw him only once and did not know what was on my reports!
Onward to reply to lighter
Xx
Izzy
Izzy_*now*:
Hi lighter.
For all my hospitalizations, I found this last, at the Hospital and their spin-off, Cottonwoods, that at both places I heard it mentioned about being short-staffed. For the most part I have to say that I haven’t heard complaints about our Health system. Perhaps one must be a “test case” to really know? I need to hear/see more stories.
All the nurses from Interior Health, who came here and now I go to them (shows much improvement on my part) are very diligent and friendly. I am now able to sit up and turn my body and leg, so I can see the back of it. I watch what they do and I stop them to ask questions, which brings out a reason for the change, or for the nurse to double-check about what she has done, or might do. They have all said that these will heal, but the year to do it? What a great vacation!
Thanks for the healing light. My leg thanks you, but sometimes I want to give it to someone else to care for, while I go party a bit! I put my hands, one on either side, on my knee and hold it steady while I’m being tended to. Karla was doing my nail care with my foot on her lap and my holding my knee. She mentioned a black spot on the back of one toe…. Hmm! I started to hand her my leg and say “Here you hold this while I get a mirror.” I laughed first then told her what I almost said! (Is that like I have disowned it? Or just looking after it for someone else?)
Oh! Poop! I put pepper in the salt shaker and the pepper shaker was still empty. Sitting down all the time---try it for a day and see what you miss!
My doctor, with whom I had a down to earth talk, and I are on much better terms with his coming to see my in these places. I explained to him my thoughts, and he agreed that he was guilty of it too-----that I am talked to as though I were 50, not almost 75. I believe I’m being treated as a much younger person who knows about things, is independent and doesn’t require help. Not so: only partially true.
I suppose I could sue but that is just more stress for what? What is done is done (so far.) I am spending my $$, but still have an income, and in over a year from the settlement, am at about the same amount, as though I spent nothing, for just over that year. This chair will knock me down by about $7,000, but I just learned that Part 7 of our Insurance Corporation, from my other lawsuit is sitting with $25,000 for me, for rehabilitation (wheelchair) and living conditions (going to a home earlier than expected: 5 years.)
So much stuff crammed into my head, that I sometimes cannot think.
Later
Izzy
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