The Good, Bad, Ugly, and Funny

[Ed Kennell 38,414]

I'm back after spending a short vacation in the hospital this week.

 

 

The Bad       During my routine 4 month checkup last week, I complained to my Dr that I experienced some shortness of breath while dragging  a tree top that had blown out of one of my spruce trees.

                     Due to my past history of heart disease, this triggered an EKG...then a stress test...then a heart cath.

 

The Good    The cath was inserted in my right wrist therefore only requiring a 2-3 hour period of time without moving as compared to the 6-8 hours required if the cath is through the groin.

                     The new cath showed no additional blockage since the 30% branch blockage was discovered by the cath in 2004. 

                     The cardiologist said "See Ya in ten years".

 

The Funny   The young lady( she appeared to be a teenager to me) that prepped me for the procedure  seemed very matter of  fact,

                      as she went about her duties of installing the electrodes, the  IV, and shaving  my wrist and groin (in case the Dr can't get the cath in my wrist). 

                     All the time asking me the same questions I was asked by every person I met that morning.

                    What is your name?  ekennell.    What is your date of birth? Jan 8, 1944.  Do you have any pain? No. Do you have any stents? No. Have you had bypass surgery? No.

                    Did you have a stress test this week? Yes.     Did you not study?              You failed the stress  test or you wouldn't be here. 

 

The Ugly    About 1 hour into the recovery time I felt the need to readjust my position. And ignoring the nurses instructions to not move, I grabbed the hand rails and pushed myself up in the bed. 

                  Almost instantly Mrs K started screaming and running  for the nurse as the alarms on the monitor lit up and started beeping.  

                  I had separated the incision in my wrist artery and by the time the nurses got there, my right side and the bed had changed to a Regal Red color.  

                  The teenaged looking nurse that made the no study joke calmly grabbed my right bicep and applied a vice like grip to stop the flow while

                  another nurse reapplied the compression bandage to the incision.  

                  After the situation was under control, I apologized for the mess had I made and thanked the teenager.

                  She said it was no big deal as she had not walked to the cafeteria to get her donut yet  where she would have been 4 minutes away.  She said I had 6-8 minutes to go before I would have died.

                  That's when I learned this happens in the cath lab about ever two weeks and she has been doing this job for 18 years.  

 

                 I guess anyone under 40 looks like a teenager to an old guy.  

 

The Moral      Please listen to these young teenaged medical experts....they may save your life. 

 

[squonk 41,226]

Last year I ran the gamut at Hospitals. (And I don't mean working there either! ) Before my shoulder surgery they asked me who I was and why I was there a dozen times. The last one was the anesthesia doc. Before he could utter a sound I rattled off all the info.

 

Before my knee surgery, I critiqued the docs' artwork he made on my knee with a sharpie. He said He'ld doanother one on my other knee if I liked.

 

Before my heart cath, They jammed an IV into my left forearm that sent me to the moon in pain. I almost clobbered the nurse!. The heart doc offered me a margarita before the procedure to relax! then I had to pee right in the middle of it. One nurse jammed a bottle under my blankie and said have at it. I must have pee'd 10 times in an hour after it was over! 

Edited February 7, 2016 by squonk

[roadapples 6,983]

Funny now, but sure glad everything worked out all right...And I`ve noticed too that those 40 year olds are starting to look better...uh..I mean younger..

Edited February 7, 2016 by roadapples

[DougC 2,641]

Glad it didn't ALL leak out, boy your wife would have been mad at you...... 

[953 nut 55,540]

So glad Mrs. K was there and the nurses were so quick.

18 minutes ago, DougC said:

Glad it didn't ALL leak out, boy your wife would have been mad at you...... 

 

While I was in rehab following last summer's surgery a very young Physical Therapy nurse was helping with my exercises and I made a comment about how competent she was at her age; she showed me pictures of her grandchild!

[dcrage 628]

You guys realize all of the quizzing and body art work prior to procedure/surgery is the MDs/hospitals attempts to make sure they do the correct procedure on the right patient. Made me feel better when I had a retinal procedure a couple of years ago when every person who talked to me all the way to the surgeon himself 'quizzed' me. 

[SPINJIM 1,981]

Glad to hear you're doing ok now.  Sometimes those nurses take better care of you than the doctors.   I had a heart cath in the groin, and the doctor didn't wait long enough for the local anesthetic to take effect before he thrust the cath needle in.  I rose about a foot off of the stretcher, and almost took a swing at the doc.    The nurse told me later the that doctor had a reputation for being kind of rough.

 

My daughter is an RN, an she takes more personal interest in their patients than most of the doctors do.   THANK A NURSE .

 

[rmaynard 15,556]

Glad all is well Ed. I can't say enough good about the nursing staff when I had my back surgery. Some are better than others, but without them, doctors would look bad. 

[Ed Kennell 38,414]

16 hours ago, DougC said:

Glad it didn't ALL leak out, boy your wife would have been mad at you...... 

 

I can only imagine Doug,   She joined forces with the nurse scolding me as it was. 

 

  Didn't I tell you not to move !        He never did take instruction very well.

[JC 1965 1,530]

Glad all the tests were good Ekennell. I like the way you describe the blood color as Regal Red. Just goes to show you that this   addiction can get in your blood.    

[ztnoo 2,298]

My dad, who graduated from med school (1944) during WWII, was in Japan after the war for a year and a half with the Army Air Force, then established himself as a general practitioner (known as a family physician today) in a small Indiana town of about 6,000. His clientele included four generations of some families and he did everything, as it was required in those days of few specialists in smaller towns and rural areas......x-raying and setting broken bones, sewing up accident wounds, delivering babies, practicing industrial medicine at a local glass factory under retainer, treating kids with ear aches and sore throats, administering uncounted injections of penicillin and other meds of the era in ye ole gluteus maximus after the intended recipient "dropped drawers", making thousands of "house calls" (yeah the doc went to see the patient, not the other way around), assisted in surgery usually at least a couple of times a week, and participated in "school roundups" (at that time a physical exam by a physician was required for a child to enter school in Hoosierland). Generally, whatever needed to be looked after in a non-emergency situation, he did. He did officially take an afternoon off mid-week, but that often went up in smoke because of patient needs.

 

He was basically on call 24/7 in my hometown, and he was well respected for what he did and how he ministered to people with his medical skills. Realistically though, his medical practice wasn't restricted to just physical medicine. He counseled with patients about personal and family problems, their phobias, their hangups, their anger, grief over a love one's death, etc., advising as he saw fit to give them what relief he could from their mental angst, dilemmas, and emotional crisis. This included topics such as out-of-wedlock pregnancies (a big, judgmental, rather unsavory situation in the '50s and early '60's), physical abuse, contagious conditions such as gonorrhea and syphilis, and on, and on, and on. Whatever was on a patient's mind, my dad was likely to hear about it once his personal office door was closed. He, in so many ways, served the same function as priests and ministers did, and still do. More often than not, he became a Father Confessor, not necessarily by his choice, but by his intimate position of trust with this patients. People would tell him things they wouldn't necessarily tell a priest......meaning the really bad, and the really ugly. All this was before HIPAA, and its staunch legal guidelines regulating patient confidentiality. My dad followed HIPAA's guidelines decades before it became law, because he felt that was his moral responsibility as a personal medical caregiver, and as such, was considered by his patients to be a confidant. They could always talk to and tell "Doc" anything. He knew way too much about people (their flaws and sins) and events (meaning the bad and embarrassing stuff).

 

Part of my dad's method of practicing medicine which is a very serious moral and ethically commitment to his fellow man, was having a healthy dose of humor at the ready, to be administered, at a moment's notice, but in the proper situation, at the proper time. He always had a long list of jokes and funny stories cataloged, ready to be used on cue. His patients loved him for his story telling almost as much as for his medical and professional skills.

Shortly after my dad retired in Dec. 1989, someone said to him at one of his retirement parties, "Doc, you should write a book!"

Dad thought a few seconds and then replied, "I could, but I'd have to leave town."

He decided not to become a local historian and literary figure.......

 

"Doc" (April 28, 1920- June 30, 2011)

 

Edited March 8, 2016 by ztnoo

[Ed Kennell 38,414]

Great tribute. Thanks for sharing.