Ertl Amputation Day 2

Thursday, June 12 2008 -

I'm sitting in the hospital room with Carol and her mother. Carol is sleeping, occasionally waking up to talk or eat, but mostly just sleeping. Her mother and I are amusing ourselves as best we can (reading, writing blog posts, etc). The hospital does have Internet access, which is nice.

Today has been very quiet. Carol isn't in nearly as much pain as she was yesterday. She was given some more medication through her epidural this morning, which has helped a lot. It has started to wear off a bit now, but for the most part she is comfortable. She has started running a slight fever 101. It dropped after they gave her some stronger antibiotics, but has since gone back up to 101. Hopefully it will clear up over night.

There was an incident today that really pissed me off. A piece of equipment was malfunctioning and the nurses attempted to get it working. It is a vacuum pump that keeps pressure on her wound. After looking at it, and even getting the on call surgeon to look, they decided to get another unit sent over from the company that supplies them. They set Carol up so the vacuum was in place, but the pump wasn't working (though it was still attached).

A woman came in and in what I consider a very cavalier way was looking at the unit. The problem was that she was holding it in such a way that if she dropped it the unit would land on Carol's wound. The thing weights about 10lbs so it would have seriously hurt as well as caused problems. The woman kept looking at it, front and back, back and front. Eventually she plopped it down on the bed, again a little too close to Carol's wound for comfort, but I said nothing. She then set it down and as she was leaving tripped over the tube that ran from the machine to Carol. Mistakes happen, so I said nothing, other than warning her as she stepped away that her foot was caught. Carol didn't feel anything.

The woman came back a few minute later and basically repeated the same process. This time she both stood on the tube and tripped over it. Once is a mistake, twice in 5 minutes is just careless and stupid.

Five minutes later she comes back in, picks the unit up and unplugs it. Mind you the unit was still on, though not functioning properly. She then announces she is taking it because it isn't working anyway. She turns to leave and I stop her and point out that it is still attached to Carol and that she can't just "take it". By this time I'm seriously pissed. The lady tripped over the tube twice in 15 minutes but forgot it was attached to Carol?

I then proceeded to get the serial number(s) for her and she left. Had she come back I would have forbidden her to come near Carol again. Once was a mistake, twice was stupid, but three times is just downright criminal.

Aside from that Carol got some flowers today and I took a few pictures. I will take a few more before we leave tonight and then post them with another update.

Carol was very funny yesterday, constantly apologizing for being so boring. She's apologized a few times today as well, but not nearly as much as yesterday. Dr. Ertl told her that she asked him, while in the surgery room, for pictures of the procedure for her blog. He didn't know what a blog was, but told her that he did take some pictures. I will see about getting those and depending on what they look like, and how Carol feels about it, I may post a few.

Day 1 Part 2 is here