Feedback 3

When recounting my experiences of recent hospitalization, I usually referred to the caregivers as "nurse types." In discussing this, it was pointed out to e that you really can’t tell who is what in a hospital anymore. The days of nurses in specific and distinct uniforms are a thing of a bygone era. Now, everyone that works at the hospital seems to wear scrubs. Employers try to assign job titles to make even the lowest-on-the-pole peons feels important, to the confusion of a public who really doesn’t know just how much training, education or qualifications a "certified" nursing assistant does or does not have. Are these people anything more than an old style after-school candy striper? How do we know that it’s not a janitor changing our IV?
I’ve gotten lazy in one aspect of the blog writing, and feel the need for apologizing for that. I run a spell check, but proofreading is a lot more on my eye and drains a lot, so I tend to skip that for blog posts in a way I never would for anything I would write to send to an editor. "Our" and "out" may be confused. The mechanical spell-checker won’t flag this, and the grammar checker chastises my general style more than it finds actual errors. And I have a hard time seeing the difference so might often miss it anyway. While a spell-checker does not know the difference between public service and pubic service, human readers do. Eye hop ewe cam four give an E weigh this us dis tracking fir ewe.
Anyone who might feel as though I mentioned the misplaced portable urinal bottle too many times should invite me to dinner. You must pick me up and bring me home. I will bring a bottle and set it on the table in front of your other guests and we will see just how much of an issue other people find piss bottles on the eating table. Restaurants have been closed down for far less.
The blog has spread from being a blind man’s bluff to a broader medical things. I am relating subjective experiences. I’m smart enough to have been one with more interest and educational opportunities, but I am not a doctor and do not aim to be giving medical advice. My goal is more important, to share on a consumer awareness level that it is important for patients as the consumers of health care to know what they are getting by questioning their doctors. Diabetes is a profitable niche in the healthcare market. People should do their own research. If three years ago someone had told me "always include ‘side effect’ in any procedure or medicine you Google" I probably would not be so blind today.

Sturdy on My Feet

I did learn a couple things from my three-plus day visit to Sturdy Hospital.
I did find the diabetes educator helpful and approachable about things. I learned some of the reasons for some establishment thinking, even if I think some seem more like excuses or covers for profiteering than legitimate reasons.
The night of my admission, I had been having stomach acid problems due to the prednisone and had drunk almost a half gallon of milk before leaving the house. Because they ran blood sugar tests on my arrival, I learned how seriously I was underestimating the blood sugar effects of 1% milk; that was the reason for the spike into the 600’s, which was high by my reckoning of the numbers and how I was feeling in the ER that night.
I unfortunately learned a little more disdain for the "lower levels" of health care providers, and perhaps for declining American work ethic. That single nurse-type who did bother to rinse the portable urinal had a foreign accent. None of the American-accented nurse types–whether they would officially be termed registered nurses, nurses, or certified nursing assistants–could have been bothered. The priority of the nurse types’ convenience over actual patient comfort and care astounded me. I have a strong customer service background, and do not see how many of the staffers I encountered that weekend would ever have lasted under some of the expectations I have had to meet.
I did not find hospital food to be all that bad, but most certainly bland for the lack of "unhealthy" flavorings. The salt substitute packets on the tray didn’t cut it for me. As far as I am concerned, something called "Mrs. Dash" should be put on a woman’s yeast infection, not on food. My roommate smuggled in real salt. I’m not a heavy salt user, but need it when it is needed.
I learned to stick to my guns. Both Sturdy’s podiatrist Dr. Harris and my own podiatrist Dr. Mancini complimented my successful battle zone of not letting the surgeon poke anything into the Charcot foot. Support like that, along with the hospital roommate’s compliments to my willingness to stand up to doctors might be dangerous praise with the ability to make a monster out of the raw material I provide.
I’ll try to keep myself in check.
Six weeks after admission and the weekend imprisonment, the toe is OK. I still have it, which is a feat for diabetic feet with infection that gangrened. I am still bothered overseen by a visiting nurse that my podiatrist wants keeping an eye on the infected area. Mancini himself sees me every couple weeks to check on the toe and the same foot’s broader Charcot problem. He cuts away strips of dead or undesirable skin. As I can’t particularly see or feel what he’s doing, he finds me an easy patient because there’s no real need for even local anaesthesia. The removed toenail is growing in nicely, perhaps as a positive consequence of all that milk I drink.

Anti-Climax

I know myself and how I can be, and how other people see me as difficult. Primarily, I am brutally honest, which contrary to your mother’s lies, is not the best policy. I do not indulge other people’s egos for the sole sake of their egos, and see my life, even as it is now, as something other than clay for shaping by control freaks. My refusal to blend in with the flock of sheep or take that plunge with the other lemmings leaves me vulnerable to other predators.
I respect other people’s opinions and beliefs, but have found that others get upset in various ways when it becomes clear that respecting other opinions and embracing them as my own are two different things. I do alter my thinking and change my mind, but there has to be logical reasons that change the why of my thinking, not the what that is makes up the thoughts.
Those ways that my odd brain works really sums up a great portion of my almost-automatic disagreement with doctors. I can narrow it down to the differences in attitudes with my GP: he looks to maintain a quantity of life, and I would greatly prefer to have a quality of life. This same thing would cover the from-the-gate difficulty with Dr. Paz at Sturdy Hospital. He was opposed to a Do-Not-Resuscitate" order from someone so young. Put ego in the mix where others thinks their beliefs should automatically apply to everybody, and some level of conflict is as inevitable as neuropathy in diabetics.
I think of these quirks in relation to my last day at Sturdy because a "diabetes educator" came to visit me. I visualize some regular readers or people that know me going pale at the thought of the explosive conflict that must have resulted from such a meeting. No conflict occurred.
There is one major aspect to my personal diabetes care in which I am probably (almost certainly) dead wrong about but have and will stubbornly continue my way. The diabetes educator and I discussed this point with disagreement, but we each maintained enough respect for the reasons for each other’s opinions that no conflict arose out of a difference of opinion.
The diabetes educator did not draw out my more stubborn aspects because she at least listened to the me and the reasoning that developed over near 40 years of living with diabetes.
The diabetes educator was much younger than I. She freely admitted that I taught her a few things about how diabetes was handled long before she got into the field, and some things she quietly acknowledged but "they" were not "supposed" to acknowledge to patients. She dispensed advice, not dictates.
She got called away and was one of the few Sturdy staffers to leave my bedside without fuming from the ears. I was looking forward to speaking with her again, but when allowance for discharge came in that Monday afternoon, I did not wait around for tearful goodbyes. I figured Dr. Paz and the staff had a party to begin as soon as I had left the building.
The lack of conflict seems logical: the diabetes educator understood what I consider a basic fact: you cannot tell someone that the sum of their life experiences is wrong.

Mercy Me!

My co-habitant for my weekend in Sturdy Hospital was imprisoned for an infection of his throat. He worked at a waste water treatment plant, so the staff, as it turned out, had specific concerns about the nature and source of his infection. His doctor–who was not the self-worshiped deity named Paz–was concerned that he might have MRSA. The nurse who told him this in clear hearing of me said she didn’t think that was the case, but that if the doctor was right, they would transfer him to his own room to prevent widespread contagion.
I butted in to ask what that was going to do for me–the guy with a chronic and temperamental illness and an open infection on my big toe who had been trapped in the room with the MRSA for an entire weekend.
The nurse was completely unconcerned about the potential of me catching MRSA from the roommate or its potential to worsen whatever fast-moving, as-yet-unidentified infection that had afflicted me. She told me I had no risk of catching it, but could give no non-contradictory reason why he would have to be segregated to a separate room if he did turn out to have MRSA.
MRSA "mersah" stand for Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus. It’s a staph infection resistant to the usual antibiotics. Staph bacteria grows on the human body without harm but can go bad if trapped under the skin such as in a boil or ingrown hair or when the body is feeling overloaded with other problems.
Most people "catch" MRSA in hospitals or nursing homes. My concerns were by no means paranoia and I do not understand why my roommate was not sequestered on the doctor’s first suspicion. MRSA is that superbug you leave the hospital with when going in for something more routine. In a setting where the nurse-types are too lazy to rinse urinal bottle, should I believe they are meticulous in sanitizing themselves between patients?
The reverse possibility should have also been considered. At the time of my discharge, the exact nature of my infection had not been determined. How wise was it for the staff to place the roommate in with the surly guy with the unknown and extremely fast-forming toe infection that had gone from being red to gangrenous in two days?
The contagion concern may be the real reason neither of us had our bandages changed in more than a day. It’s certainly easier for the staff to neglect the patients than to thoroughly sanitize every time sanitizing would be called for.
The roommate was also discharged that Monday, and was told specifically that he did not have MRSA. I left without having heard what had afflicted my toe. Only because I was diligent in learning the truth did I finally get results, and not until June 6, a full 30 days after discharge. It was, as was "usually" the case, a combination infection of basic staph and strep. Yes, you can get strep in other areas outside the throat, and even on your toe without having cause to stick your foot in your mouth.

Monday Monday, can't trust that day,

Monday Monday, sometimes it just turns out that way
I will admit to the possibility that I was in difficult mode by then. I try to come across as easy going, but that’s an act I cannot usually maintain for long. This blind guy tends to look for problems once he has seen problems. Sturdy’s staff had provided many to be seen.
First problem: the 4 AM wake up to be poked and prodded. Neither my roommate nor I could get back to sleep that morning. The man-baby was screaming again in his drama queen way, a voice of protest that carried not a hint of actual pain. My routine of calling out belittle commands to "man up, you wimp!" shut him up to the amusement of the nurses and my roommate.
The 4-in-the-f’n-morning wake up demanded of sick, recuperating and in need of rest people became more of an issue when one of the nurse types let it slip that we were woken so the staff could take the end of shift patient vitals. The shift ends at seven.
When questioned about "end of sift," the worker said they don’t have time to do it in the last hour. I asked by what stretch of the imagination could something be considered at the "end" if it did not even fall in the last 25%. She held on to her time constraint excuse and I went into calmly sarcastic conjecture of ill patients prescribed enforced bed rest then woken up at four AM for something by her own admission should be being done at six; that I could hear the staff hanging around the desk idly talking for the last half hour of each shift; and that if she got bedridden with illness I sincerely hoped she would see more consideration at whatever facility she ended up.
I am not a morning person.
In between the wake up and the conversation about shift ending, one of the nurse types emptied the portable urinal from the window sill, again did not rinse it and replaced it to the tray table. My reaction was immediate: "What is wrong with you?!" She did not see the problem, because she had put it where you can find it." I resisted telling her exactly where she could put it in favor of pointing out that if I left it on the window sill I could find the window sill, she did not rinse the bottle, and that I eat off of that table. She began to withdraw, but I loudly insisted that the table be thoroughly cleaned. I suppose that helped make me a difficult patient.
I was not inclined to get better when I heard the big reveal to my roommate: his doctor–who was not the self-worshiped deity named Paz–suspected the nature of his throat infection....

Heparin

Because the staff at Sturdy Memorial Hospital deemed the lame blind guy as a trip and fall hazard to be restricted to the bed, they injected heparin several times a day. This is a sulfur drug intended to prevent blood clots in people kept prone too long, and or have an IV in too long as clots can form at the TV catheter.
One of the nurse types started a conversation on Saturday by remarking that I was not bruising from the heparin at all, even at the stomach injection sites. She explained the heparin in that conversation. I asked if a medication meant to prevent blood clotting could have produced the positive side effect of lower than normal blood pressure. She said it very well could have.
On Sunday, when the bandage from the open and infected foot was finally opened, the previously dry toe abrasion had bled freely for the first time, through a diabetic’s reduced circulation and through the constrictive Charcot foot swelling. I figured the heparin was helping in a number of ways and had no complaints about the side effects.
Side effects of this drug can include fever and chills, which made the whole "cold blanket" debate with the nurses seem pretty sinister on their part, as if they gave a drug with those potential effects to a feverish patient then threatened temperature and anal sensor probing torture for kicks.
The potential side effects of lightheadedness, loss of balance or coordination, sudden weakness and leg numbness seems to make this either the most perfect or absolute worst thing to give someone deemed as a trip and fall hazard.
I am sure that before long, at least some of Sturdy’s staff had been wishing that the side effects of confusion and difficulty speaking or understanding would afflict me. Instead, I stayed sharp minded throughout my imprisonment.
I had no bleeding problems as can be common, including skin discolorations or foreign matter in other bodily fluids. I’m sure some of the staffers were wishing me to bleed due to my constant questions and concerns, which I had no shyness in voicing.
The problem came on the Monday morning when the nursing staff declared they had to draw a lot of blood, not just for the usual rounds of tests but because they had to type me in the event I needed a transfusion. Apparently, my hemoglobin counts and blood volume had fallen. I asked if this was due to the heparin. I thought it was a reasonable question in and of itself, especially considering what the other nurse-type had said two days before. This nurse type became defensive and told me flat out that heparin had no side effects.
I don’t respond well to people who lie to my face. As the next post will relate, that last day at Sturdy started badly and the lying woman just added fuel to the fire of my soul. I not only let her know that I knew she was lying, but questioned if all the blood they had leeched out of me that weekend would have reduced my blood volume, and pointed out that taking "even more than normal" amounts of blood because the blood volume was down is an absolute absurdity.
I was more than she could deal with and she retreated.
Really, in response to my question of the potential heparin connection to the blood volume, she could have said "maybe" or "I’m not sure" and I would have resigned myself to the situation without a confrontation.
Why is it that people who choose to lie react so badly to being called out?

Toeing the Line

After slinking away from my harsh refusal to indulge his god complex, Dr. Paz did call in a surgeon to look at the infected toe.
The toe had brought me to Sturdy Memorial Hospital, but after the Friday Night ER admission, it seemed to be ignored in deference to my being diabetic, and I am sure that the toe’s condition instigated some finger wagging of "bad diabetic."
As a diabetic, my circulation does not equal a healthy person’s. I know that, and also know that the side effect is pretty inevitable. I apologize if you’re reading about the inevitability for the first time here; your doctor may not have told you for fear that you would surrender to the inevitable and not take care of yourself. If you’re diabetic, know this now: doctors lie.
My diabetes was never as bad as my numbers–A1C peaking at 16–say it should be. But I had developed Charcot Foot, which passed in and out of Phase One twice. The relapse of the massive swelling further reduced my circulation and the infection, in most likelihood, would not have developed without the Charcot.
Dr. Paz had obviously warned the surgeon about what a hole I am, without tempering the situational truth with how Dr. Paz himself had drawn forth my rougher aspects. The surgeon approached me with an attitude, even while I regarded his arrival with relief. Unfortunately, the surgeon, whose name I don’t remember in part because he ended up doing nothing, harbored his own god complex.
The surgeon looked over the toe, which necessitated the first bandage change in a day and a half. He looked over the Charcot foot. In his godly wisdom, he decided he would take the infected skin off the oe, and would probe the massive swelling that was the tendon that runs on the inside of my foot. I readily agreed to the former but refused the latter.
"We have to know if it’s infected," he insisted.
Told him that the non-toe swelling had been previously diagnosed as Charcot foot. His willingness to stick something into the Charcot swelling told me that he did not know much or anything about that. "No offense, I said, "but the Charcot is known for getting infected by well meaning doctors who either culture it or try to mechanically reduce the swelling. If you do that, two months from now, you’ll have forgotten all about me and I will be having my foot amputated. The toe needs care, but you are not going to stick anything into the foot."
He must have been thinking "Paz was right. What a hole." Because he could not do everything he wanted to do, the surgeon left me without doing anything, including replacing the bandage.
A nurse asked me about the incident a short time later. I asked he if she had ever heard of Charcot foot. She said she had "heard of it." I emphasized to her that most medical people, like her, had only heard of it and that the highest incidence of foot loss directly from it was when well meaning doctors broke the skin at the swelling. I had researched it and would minimize those risks myself.
I had been told that Sturdy had no podiatrist on duty that weekend. After the incident with the surgeon, one appeared, Martin Harris of Plainville, Massachusetts.
Dr. Harris cut away infected skin, determined that the infection had not reached the bone, and removed the toenail, which had pretty much detached itself anyway. He rebandaged the foot.
He also told me that I had been 100% right in stopping the surgeon from probing the tendon with the clear prediction, "It probably would have been a lot sooner than two months before they’d have to amputate."

Be-pazzled

Day Two of "consultation" with Dr. Paz went differently from Day One. That is to say, it went worse.
I will take some responsibility for being in a peevish mood to start. It was convenient for Doctor Paz to do his rounds at breakfast.
The hospital stay with arbitrarily restricted movements made me understand the boredom of house cats, how every part of the day is an event. The doctor visit should have been separate from a meal, particularly breakfast, which didn’t have much chance of still being warm from the trip from the kitchen to begin with. Instead, Paz arrived right after the food and wanted full attention. Getting medical attention–even the bandage changed–had been difficult enough that it did not seem prudent to ask him to come back later. I have no doubt that being considered more important than food feeds his ego.
The man himself immediately overwhelmed any irritation I had about his timing. I started with a reasonable question that should have been answerable after two days: what type of infection did I have?
He answered, "Well, usually infections like this are..." and he used a $12.00 medical jargon word that meant "multiple sources of bacteria."
I made it clear that I did not care what these things usually are and wanted to know what I had. His response was to ask if I "even" knew what his big word meant.
The arrogant display of God Complex pissed me off. I defined his word for him, pointed out that he had not answered my question, and that my only interpretation was that he did not know.
He said that not all tests had been returned but that the blood culture showed that I did not have a widespread blood infection. His answer to "Why couldn’t you just say that?" was to stare blankly.
He also could not adequately answer my questions about the change in my basic insulin regimen from reliance on time release insulin to total use of only instant-acting regular insulin. He started with generalities about the instant only theories of treatment, but had no answer to the question of why he would make such a change in a patient he had never known. I can and would have readily accepted changes in the amount of insulin, but not a switch in basic regimens.
He basically resorted to manipulation by informing me that if I was not happy with him as my doctor, I could request a change. I told him that I was a proactive and involved patient and that if he could not deal with that, he could assign me to someone else.
I made sure he knew that I expected bandage changes on the infected toe. I had been admitted Friday night and this conversation on Sunday morning had no bandage change in between, I made it clear that the nurses adamantly maintained that they could not do a bandage change without specific orders from a doctor and wanted to know how such a basic thing that was the reasdon for my being in the hospital had been overlooked while less important things like my insulin had been changed.
He resorted back to my options if unhappy with his care.
I was out of patience with the manipulation and the God Complex by then. Fully and completely out of patience. I told him that I had not seen any real care from him and that if his godhood could not deal with patients who asked questions, that he needed to transfer me to someone else and explain the shift to his hospital supervisors, but that I knew he couldn’t do that because "you are not a very honest man."
He walked away from me after that. I know from asking nursing-type staff that he was still officially my doctor but I saw or heard nothing from him for the final 24+ hours of my stay at Sturdy.
My fellow inmate complimented my ability to stand up to a doctor who he agreed had been being cagey in answering questions and wished he could be more like that.
I reminded him that there’s always a cost to being like me.

Imprisonment

I must confess that I am not the best patient in general, but that the events at Sturdy specifically made things worse.
Sturdy Hospital seems to have a great reputation among the people I know, although I never asked anyone I know who is more from the Attleboro than Providence area. Sturdy’s good reputation earned specific regard for the emergency room and trauma care.
I had one surge of frustration in the ER Friday night. When I needed to urinate, that simple objective was blocked due to footwear. They didn’t want me moving without the skid-pad socks or something so didn’t want me using a bathroom. I remember having a flare of temper about that simple bodily function becoming a "project." My fever was at a height and I accept full blame for the flare up. Both from my emergency care that night and from the retina reattachment surgery of last January, I have no complaint or criticism of Sturdy Hospital or its employees.
I’ll admit it; sometimes I can be difficult. Throughout the weekend, , I had been poked and bled out continuously. That will sour anyone’s temperament.
Intravenously, I was fed various antibiotic cocktails. It seems the IV monitor sensed emptiness continuously, and the machine made rude, awakening noises.
I was restricted to the bed by the hospital’s fear of a trip-and-fall lawsuit rather than by my disabilities.
So I may very well have been testy by imprisonment and restriction and sleep deprivation. Unfortunately. Justifiable complaints flooded me fast and furiously after those first nudges.
It took an entire day to stop the "nurses" from putting an unwashed urinal bottle on my food table.
By machines, staff or another patient, I was being woken constantly and always either too hot or frigidly cold.
The Charcot foot was back to maximum swelling and pain; this was the probable cause for the toe infection.
I could get answers to no question.
My insulin regiment had been changed, then changed back and the on-duty person clearly did not understand how insulin worked.
Even after constant explanations and instructions at every dose all weekend, the staff could not get the eye drops required post-retina reattachment right; this increased the prednisone that gave me so many other problems.
My blood sugar was being lowered by number management rather than how I felt. This always results , in depression and irritability on biochemical levels.
The final slice to my frayed nerves was the guy down the hall, the one who insisted on drama queen screaming every time the nurses did whatever it was they were doing, any time day or night. His screams were fake, like those of a four year old who screams out for the attention of being potentially hurt rather than because he was hurt.
Maybe my harsh judgment of this other patient was unfair, considering I am both insensitive and have an extremely high pain threshold. But when I called out "Shut up and take it like a man, you wuss!" all the fake cries of "Ouch! Oooh! God damn it, lady!" ceased instantly.
So by the time Dr. Paz interrupted my already cold breakfast on Sunday morning, I was alert to problems because I had seen problems, and of no mind to tolerate further ones....

Feeling an Unseen Presence

Dr. Paz disappeared from my hospital room at Sturdy Hospital that Saturday morning while the prednisone dropped in my eye was making me puke. His inability to find a bedpan for me had proven him pretty useless at the scene anyway.
I did not see him again until Sunday morning, not because of my blindness but because he never came back to finish the conversation or to ask about the sudden and more violent illness. The unsaid implication that astute regular readers may have picked up on is true: NO doctor looked at the infected toe on Saturday.
The toe remained in the same bandage from Friday night to Sunday morning. This seems standard at Sturdy; one of the nurse-type people yelled at my roommate for having changed his own bandage on his wound. He did so because the nurses" had not, and they said they cannot change bandages without a doctor’s specific instructions.
Yis excuse dominated my stay at Sturdy and came off as an excuse for laziness by the staff. I don’t want to call them nurses because I am not sure which were actually nurses, which might be "certified nursing assistants" and which might be volunteer candy stripers. These days there are no differences in uniforms and I would be too blind to probably see the difference anyway.
I was allowed to neither shower nor bathe because they had no doctor orders allowing me too.
My long term insulin regimen of mostly time release insulin bolstered by smaller doses of regular had been completely changed without consultation with me or my GP. This did inexplicably change Saturday night, to further confusion by the "nurses."
I requested whole milk instead of a 1% or 2% because the lower fa milks raise my blood sugar more than whole milk does. That needed doctor’s approval for "cholesterol concerns."
The doctor, presumably, had also disallowed further blankets because of my fever. I could shiver violently and be denied further comfort. On Saturday, while I was afflicted with one of my violent fits of shivers, they told me that they would have to wrap me in a chilling blanket that would have a temperature sensor up my rectum if the fever did not break. I told them to dole out more (and real) aspirin for the fever because the cold blanket thing was not going to happen. When they said the blanket was "doctor’s orders" I told them clearly and sincerely that if such a thing were tried, more than the temperature sensor would end up deep inside someone’s rectum, and it would not be mine.

Paz-manian Devil

The duty nurse who brought me from emergency to my third floor room at Sturdy Hospital gave me the first warning that I might not hit it off well with Dr. Paz. I had stated clearly that I wanted no resuscitation or mechanical means of being kept alive. The nurse was clear that Paz did not approve of those decisions with people as young as myself. I made it clear that no one else should be making quality of life decisions for me.
Let’s be real here: if I were a blind dog with a lame leg, many compassionate owners would put me down.
Doctor Paz avoided the issue when I brought it up directly to him the next morning. I repeated my wishes clearly. The conversation did not last long for a completely different reason. The prednisone prescribed still for recovery from the retina reattachment surgery gave me one of those sudden, empty-stomach surges of stomach acid. Paz stood by in a useless frozen panic as I asked for a bedpan, He disappeared during the ensuing confusion and I did not see him until the next morning.
I did, however, feel his presence and influence. I hade listed all medications upon arrival, and despite my insulin regimen of 25 units of N and 5 of R, Paz decided to prescribe a course of treatment that completely eliminated the time release insulin in favor of reliance only on the "instant" R at mealtimes. I went more than 24 hours without any time release insulin, and the nurses did not seem to fully understand how the different insulins works or that it is a dangerous to willy nilly change the entire philosophy nod treatment of a diabetic, particularly one whose sugar will be off due the an infection. I asked for time release insulin with each shot they gave at meals.
I got a shot of only time release around 8 PM that Saturday, with a snack of graham crackers and pudding (which doesn’t sound diabetic-recommended to me either) but with NO R Insulin. An hour later, the nurse took my blood sugar yet again and was in an uproar that it was now higher.
They has given me food without any instant insulin when my body contained no residual time release insulin. Of course the snack hit the blood sugar long before the time release insulin had effect. I had to explain this more than three times to a nurse. My hospital roommate understood it long before the nurse did.
For the life of them, the staff was also not able to get my course of eye drops correct over the entire weekend. I was being pumped with various antibiotics and heparin. I had been bed-bound even to the exclusion of a shower or bath even though I was mobile, just slow and blind. I was being poked and bled out in various ways several times per day in different ways. No one could tell me what type of infection I had contracted. It had taken me all day to break the staff of their habit of putting the never-rinsed portable urinal on my food table. The doctor had not returned since that morning, when he had stood by uselessly unable to find a bedpan.
Day Two under his care at Sturdy would be different, but no better.

Reaching for Godhood

I think it is almost inevitable that most doctors will eventually develop some element of a god complex. Their jobs lends them authority over their patients. Most patients grant the authority automatically, and the unearned power over other people develops automatic assumption of power over other people. The phenomenon also readily overtakes people in other professions where power and authority is granted without the need to be perpetually earned, including judges, police, teachers and parents.
I expect little agreement with this thought, but I think authority figures need to continuously earn and prove the worthiness of their power. When they don’t, you end up with burned out teachers, abusive cops, corrupt judges and Morgan Stanley CEOs who collect multi-million dollar bonuses after losing billions of dollars.
I don’t have much patience for teachers who patronize adults like children I more often want to slap control freak parents in department stores than the children they ride and deride. I do not deal well with doctors who think it is enough to issue orders without thoroughly discussing all aspects of the instructions or prescriptions with their patients. I’ve stayed with a GP who has this problem, though he and I have long since wondered why the other bothers at all. In my mind, it’s a place other than an emergency room to go with a minor emergency. In his mind, I am sure that I have not been a deadbeat even as a self pay patient factors in. I have always been able to manage my GP’s personal level of God complex, in part because he does show some appreciation for my blunt honesty. That honesty has usually manifested as incredulous sneering laughs or open refusals when I have completely disagreed or knew I would be unable to follow through with specific aspects of prescribed treatment.
While in for a massive and sudden toe infection at Sturdy Hospital over the first weekend this May, Dr. Paz realized pretty quickly that he had not acquired a new worshiper.
I had seen problems at Sturdy despite my blindness, so maybe I was looking for other problems. I’ll accept some responsibility for the difficulties without getting into specifics of Doctor Paz’s upset that while he was the most educated, he was not the smartest person in the room that weekend. By the time the problems at the hospital had mounted, I was certainly more than a little cranky.
Why I don’t think I was wrong in the situation: I was arguing on grounds of treatment of care; Dr. Paz was reinforcing his God Complex to someone who wasn’t ever going to be drinking the Kool-Aid.

The Smaht Guy

I have to make a statement that I don’t like making. It sounds arrogant, and I do not believe myself better than anyone else when each individual’s strengths and weaknesses are tallied.
I am often–but far from always–the smartest guy in the room.
Intelligence has not gotten me all that far; I have a permanent disconnection to other people in general and this can make it hard to utilize specifically. I have intellectual friends, and friends whose company I greatly love without ever really noticing that they are not what the "smart crowds" call my type." I have low standards: if I enjoy the company and get a few laughs out of time together and the other person is of good character, I make friends without worrying too much about common interests.
I try not to use big words, although guess at times I underestimate how big some might be. Particularly in my time as a property manager, I developed a "Schneider the Super" persona in large part to keep people in my solidly working class neighborhood comfortable in our interactions.
My intelligence is not just empty book smart leaning towards "greater" philosophical leanings. I seldom find people like that top be very practical. The intelligence I have, however, is intuitive, creative and analytical. Those applications lend themselves much more broadly than sheer intellectualism.
This can be a problem for people sometimes. People who think they’re smarter than they are often develop problems with my casual from-the-hip attitude. Those who need to derive a personal sense of superiority from their intelligence often develop problems with me. I’m no better than anyone else, but I am no worse either. I have never had much patience in inflating anyone’s ego, power trip, or God complex.
Usually try to just let the world tun as it may until something I perceive as a problem crosses my personal lines in the sand. I’m not quiet or submissive after that happens.
During my stay at Sturdy Hospital, I was the smartest person in the room for the entire imprisonment. Worse, my movements were restricted because I got labeled as a trip and fall (thus lawsuit) hazard. Add to this that a blind guy, as I have learned, is often considered with the same regard as a piece of furniture in the room.
Blindness is confused with stupidity. When I complained that the portable urinal had not been rinsed out over the entire weekend, the nurse questioned how a blind guy could know that. I heard the pour into the toilet, the flush, and the steps back to my bedside, but never heard any water running or bottle filling or being re-empties. That is not rocket science.
The piss bottle became the foundation of a difficult hospital stay. I definitely got the impression that "my problems were twofold I was smart enough to know what was going on around me, and uncouth enough o question it.
I maintain that I was simply paying attention and taking an active role in my treatment. It turns out–yet again–that doctors don’t like that.

Sturdy as it Goes

I’m planning in shorter posts that deal with the many elements of my sta at Sturdy Hospital. This seems unfair in a way, but the stresses of the increased Charcot foot problems and the infection have stressed me enough that my eyesight has seemed further diminished. It’s easier on me this way.
I ended up at Sturdy because the retina reattachment was done there. The hospital has a good reputation for trauma care and I saw nothing that contradicts that in the OR or the ER.
The actual hospital care, however, warrants public warnings. Maybe that II was there over a weekend left me with exposure to poorer conditions than would be normal during the regular workweek.
My combination of blindness and foot problems got me labeled as a trip and fall hazard, so I was restricted for the duration. I was allowed away from the bed only with assistance and only when I had to take a dump.
I had to pee in a "portable urinal," the hospital’s name for a wide mouth bottle.
I do not see well enough to know if the roommate in the hospital room kept the curtain between our beds drawn, He had a lot of company an they always sounded nearby and unbuffered. Luckily for me, I’m not the type to worry about such niceties.
I had two issues with the urinal, and both set me in a negative light to the entire stay.
First, only one nurse or assistant rinsed the bottle over the entire 3 ½ day stay, and that was only on one occasion. I asked about this and the nurse asked how I know that if I was blind. I had to point out that I could still hear them empty out, flush, and not rinse..
Even worse, the nurses kept returning the unwashed bottle to the tray table I was expected to eat off of. They did this for the last time on the third morning there, which had also been my last day there. I yelled to the nurse about what she had done with the admonishment appropriate to any moronic three-year-old, "WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU?"