This post is not for the squeamish. It contains a great deal of clinical detail and some extremely emotionally distressing situations. And mild profanity.
In 1997, after my father passed away in June, I found out in September that the back pain I'd been having for a few months was the result of possibly malignant uterine tumors that were so large they had begun to compromise my kidney function. I was going to die unless I had radical surgery.
I went to a hospital that had a sterling reputation for this type of surgery. I did an advance blood donation for myself, etc. The surgery itself went well. However, 12 hours later, at about 10 PM, I had a severe abdominal spasm. I saw my abdomen rise and rise and rise and finally felt something tear inside. This was on a morphine PCA drip, and I still felt pain.
The nurses blew it off.
I knew I was hemorrhaging.
They continued to ignore me, claiming that my mind was fuddled by the morpine. I responded that I am a paradoxical reactor, and that morphine is, for me, a stimulant. They refused even to look at my chart, where I had clearly told the anaesthesiologist this fact and asked that it be noted for reference.
I realized that these people were going to let me bleed to death, rather than paying any attention to what I said, apparently for no other reason than to show me that I could not tell them what to do.
I asked that my doctor be contacted, and this was refused. I tried calling them myself, and got blown off by the answering service, which asserted that the hospital was the only one who could place such a call (so help me.) So I pulled myself up into the tightest 'tuck' position I could, reasoning that if I could minimize my internal abdominal volume, I would perhaps stop bleeding before I died. I kept myself awake all night long by using the morphine continuously.
In the meantime, my lactated Ringer's IV drip was going like a firehose. You'd think these fine professionals would have noticed that, wouldn't you. No, I had to page them repeatedly to get it replaced as I went through one bag after another after another. Did they ever think even for a second about what it might mean? Of course not, that would have meant acknowledging that the patient they were snubbing and ignoring actually understood correctly what was going on.
By 8 am, I had a hammer pulse and a headache, on morphine, remember. The shift changed and the day nurse came in. I told her what had been happening and asked her to contact the primary surgeon. Instead she asked what I do for a living, and I told her (I have been in the healthcare allied industry since 1983, have a PhD). Her response was - and I QUOTE: "Oh, so that's why you're such a neurotic." Then she flounced out of the room with her nose in the air, clearly very pleased at having "won" some sort of sick, mean contest.
THANK GOD, I had had a small piece of elective surgery done. I had a lipoma removed that had been bothering me for years, joking that I might as well lose something else that I wouldn't miss at all. A different surgeon had handled this. He showed up to look at me about 5 minutes after this other fine healthcare professional departed, and I told him what I'd told her, including a description of her reaction.
He did something amazing and radical, and actually took my pulse. And immediately started screaming for an EKG and the lab.
Yeah, I'd been hemorrhaging all right. My hematocrit went from 45 preop to 19 by the time they tested me that morning. I barely survived. Especially because I have asthma and a congenital heart valve abnormality also, which I was also trying to get the night staff to confirm by looking at my chart, with similar success. Hypoxia or hypovolemia = death sentence. At this point, most of my bloodstream was lactated Ringer's.
After that, it took them 12 hours to get around to giving me my own autologous packed red cells. The minister of the church I was attending made it in to give me last rites faster than they managed to get me my own blood back.
Then, after I had my morphine discontinued, they kept trying to push NSAIDS (with anticoagulant effects) onto me for pain, and getting ticked at me when I refused to take them because of the anticoagulant effect. (Duh, like I could afford any more bleeding, whatsoever.)
When I asked for prophy ABs because of the massive amount of intraabdominal bleeding and risk of sepsis, they laughed and refused, whereupon I became septic within 3 days. They'd tried to send me home one day before this happened, but I refused to go because I was too week to stand unassisted, and my Nmom and Nsib weren't about to do anything to help me at home.
So they ended up having to put me on IV antibiotics, and I ended up in that hellhole for ten days.
They fired the nurse who called me a neurotic. The rest of the nursing staff were as mean as humanly possible to me (God forbid they should admit I was right and some of their own had done something inexcusable), except for the ICU nurses who supervised my transfusions and were very supportive. Later, I found out that I should haver been moved to the ICU as soon as my low crit was confirmed.
Sorry you were offended, Kaz. Apparently, you've never known nurses like the ones I've encountered. Good for you. I know some wonderful NIC nurses personally, as well as some really fantastic RNs, LPNs, and psychiatric nurses. I wish I were as lucky in the ones I encountered professionally in this particular situation. It would only have taken one.
But I was nearly killed, by deliberate and malicious negligence on the part of people whose job it was to help me and protect me. One can't invalidate that merely by finding my awareness of it offensive.
I wonder just how many meeker, less clinically educated, more easily intimidated people have died because of stuff like this?
The hospital went bankrupt three months after I escaped. One could argue, I suppose, that morale was terrible while I was there. So what? Nothing I did justified the treatment I received.
