Wednesday, March 21, 2012

Surgery Update

Snackers' surgery was this morning.  I wrote my participation posts for school last night and then saved them in a Word doc so that I could just copy and paste them into the classroom this morning before we left.  I chugged my coffee and we were out the door.

We got home at 2 and I had a chicken pita and a water (first food of the day) and got right to work so this is just a quick update for the surgery.  Plans for this evening include my new "usual" workout on the treadmill plus yoga sometime between work and dinner but we'll see how that goes.  I'm going to cancel my Dr. appointment tonight because there's just too much other stuff going on (see below).

So we arrived at 8:30 a.m. and were one of the first patients to sign in for the day.  They took him back for pre-op and had me sit with him hoping it would help him to calm down but when that didn't work they gave him a happy juice injection that made him Stoogy (as in "The three stooges").  They finally took him into the OR at 10:30, the surgery lasted an hour (probably not a good sign but since the Dr. didn't come out to talk to me at all after the surgery and he didn't stick around to talk to Snackers after either ... we don't really know how it went or what the final prognosis was ... nice huh?  total bullshit if you ask me).  I ambushed the anesthesiologist on her way to lunch around 11:30 and she told me that he was done and that someone would be out to talk to me in 10-20 minutes.

30 minutes later when no one had come I inquired at the front desk and she told me that they would come get me in 10-20 minutes to go back and sit with him.  Another 20 minutes later I was literally the LAST PERSON still sitting in the waiting room when the door finally opened and they were wheeling him out in a wheelchair.  I was PISSED!  I mean I was happy to see him, glad he was ok and all but really mad that they didn't let me back there to help him put his clothes back on or sit with him or that they hadn't told me anything and then just "here he is, all done".  He wasn't too happy about it either because he had a hell of a time trying to put his sweats back on one-handed and did NOT want the strange nurses helping him.  Well duh!  I was 10 feet away, why wouldn't they have just come and gotten me?  They were calling everyone else from the waiting room back to sit with the respective patients but not me ... and for some reason I think that means something was wrong and they didn't want me to know.

He was so pale when they brought him out that he was almost green, it took him over 30 minutes to wake up from the anesthesia, and he started shaking uncontrollably in the car on the way home despite the fact that it's a lovely, sunny day outside (not bad but shivering and he couldn't stop it) but it must have been lunch time for the nursing staff because they put him in a wheelchair and sent him home anyway.

We stopped to get his new prescriptions filled and I got some food and apple juice in him while we were waiting which brought some color back to his cheeks and stopped the shaking but I am sooooo pissed at how that office handled his surgery.  Oooooh pissed, you have no idea.

6 comments:

  1. That is definitely not what they should do!! I'm glad he came through it o.k. Will he need to go for physio??

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  2. That's just ridiculous! You should really file a complaint with the administration for how 1) they didn't let you know during that entire time what was happening or how he was doing, 2) for their neglect in not having you come in to help him get dressed considering he had just had hand surgery and 3) for releasing him when he was obviously having a reaction from the anesthesia. The shivering does happen to many folks so it isn't a big concern but they should have offered him juice and crackers to make sure he was able to hold down food.

    Praying for a speedy recovery with little discomfort! :)

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  3. He said that they offered him cookies but they looked gross so he declined them. But, he was also still really out of it when they brought him out to me so whether he declined the cookies or not they shouldn't have released him like they did.

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  4. Wow waiting for the update after you have fury all over there asses.

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  5. Well a nurse from Dr. Young's office was supposed to call him yesterday morning to see how he was doing but when he didn't hear from her by 1p.m. he called the office and they told him that they would have Dr. Young call him instead since he didn't get a post-op briefing. At 4 p.m. he got a call from the nurse who had no idea that the other gal said Dr. Young would be calling and couldn't answer ANY of Shawn's questions about how much work they had to do or how bad the damage really was or how long it would be before he could go back to work or why the Dr. only gave him 15 pain pills with directions to take them 3x's daily but his follow-up isn't for another 14 days (do the math, it doesn't make sense at all). She also tried to tell him that the reason the Dr. didn't come out and talk to me after the surgery was because I wasn't on Shawn's HIPPA paperwork but I KNOW we filled that out because I remember writing "girlfriend" in the "relationship status" column on the HIPPA form at Dr. Young's office last Monday and then being all excited that I could write "fience" in the relationship status column on the HIPPA form at the surgical center.

    So she also said she'd have Dr. Young call him by end-of-day. No call. He was assigned a nurse by workman's comp as well and she called at 5:30 to see how surgery went and how he was doing so he filled her in on the negligence of Dr. Young's office. He was nice to her, because she's a nice lady. She was FUMING! She said she was going to send Dr. Young's office an email last night and then call him first thing this morning.

    Let's face it - Dr. Young's office is treating Shawn like he doesn't matter because he's a workman's comp case so they figure, whether he's happy or not, they're still going to get paid. What they're not realizing is Shawn can request a referral to a new office and if workman's comp gets the impression that the Dr. is "putting off" Shawn's chances to get back to work they're going to grant it in a heartbeat because they want him back to work ASAP too. Ooooooh she was mad. She was mad that they delayed his surgery for almost a week and are making him wait two weeks for his follow-up.

    It's gonna hit the fan I think because he said if he doesn't hear from the Dr. this morning he's going to have his boss drive him out there to stand in their waiting room and pitch a fit.

    He's having muscle spasms of his middle and ring finger that hurt all the way past his wrist and it's got him really scared so he deserves some damn answers.

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  6. Oh Wow!! This really is a nightmare! Sorry you both are going through this! Hopefully once the workmens comp woman gets involved the Dr and his office will realise he better step up or they won't be getting any more business from W.C.
    The fact that you guys are being pro-active is great. I think you are doing it the way you need to as well. As I always say, "you can catch more flies with honey than vinegar," so this is a good start. But I know you also know that some 'flies' don't like the sweets, and if that doesn't work they need a swat with a newspaper!!
    Good luck to you both, thanks for keeping us posted.

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