INFORMATION OVERLOAD

So much information............I promised a detailed update.

I have so much to get all of you caught up on so bear with me. I will title each section so you can jump around or just read whatever seems interesting to you at the time.

The past few days have been emotionally draining. I have had very little sleep since Sunday night. Lets see – 0+1+7+3= 11 hours of sleep since Sunday night. That is clearly not enough sleep. I am so tired that I sometimes get nauseated and I can’t eat. Tonight I plan on getting at least a little more sleep hopefully.

JAXISM
So, we are at the Old Spaghetti Factory tonight and Jax and I start talking about school. It is my Dad's last night in town and Gary's parents, the boys, my Dad and I spent a little time together. I was going to stay at the hospital but Gary was more alert so we left him alone for about an hour. Here is the conversation I had with Jax. Short and sweet.

ME: Jax, I am so excited you are starting 1st grade. You are going to learn so much and you will really learn to read a lot better. You are going to have to work hard on your reading.
JAX: (eyes rolling back into his head and dead serious) Why don’t you just go ahead and expel me now!

Every single day I wonder how much trouble we are going to be in as Jax gets older and even smarter than he is now!



Gary ICU TRANSFER TO 8TH ONCOLOGY FLOOR
Let me start by saying that Hoag is a wonderful hospital. Our care has always been top notch here and the staff has always gone the extra mile. With that being said I can go ahead and fill you in.

It is 2 AM Tuesday and the transport team comes in to take Gary to his room. 2 AM? What’s up with that? Gary was FINALLY sound asleep after a very long, hard day.
The transport team was comprised of 2 men who were less than careful with Gary. They were very rough as they put him into the new bed. Take in mind he does have a 12 inch OPEN abdominal incision people.
Once we get him in the elevator we find out that he is being transferred to the 8th floor and not the 6th. The 6th floor is sub-ICU and they are basically a surgical floor. The 8th floor is the oncology floor. While it is true that Gary has cancer right now this is not the issue we are dealing with.
Gary’s nurse is very sweet but it is obvious from the start that she does not have experience caring for someone who is post-op. It is also obvious that the aids have no clue what to do with Gary either. His nurse is a wonderful nurse who can care for cancer patients in a very upbeat and amazing way but like I said before we are not here for Gary’s cancer.



INCISION
Let’s face it. Gary’s open abdominal incision is pretty scary looking. It is held together by 3 retention bars and is open in between. I can see his insides – intestines and all!
So, for a nursing staff that is not used to dealing with wounds of this nature I bet it would be very intimidating.
Changing his dressing and packing it is quite uncomfortable as you can probably imagine. However, when the wound was cared for in the ICU Gary was in much less pain and discomfort. Now that we are on the 8th floor the dressing change became this HUGE ordeal and extremely painful for Gary to go through.
Let’s move ahead to the next morning.


CONVERSATION WITH THE DOCTOR (one of the many doctors)
The internal med doc comes in and we tell her that we are concerned about being on the 8th floor. We tell her that we think the nurses are nice and wonderful but not equipped to handle all the things Gary has going on. She agrees with us and said she had requested Gary to be placed on the 6th floor but there were no beds available for him and this is why he is on the 8th floor. She tells us that we are waiting still for a bed to open up.

Fast forward to last night
Our night nurse comes in (the really nice one who struggles with providing Gary with the care he needs) and confronts Gary. She tells him that she is aware that he does not want her as his nurse and does he want her to be reassigned to another patient? ARE YOU KIDDING ME? First of all, THAT IS BEYOND INAPPROPRIATE and UNPROFESSIONAL.
Did I ever say we wanted another nurse? NEVER. The only things we said is that we thought Gary would have much better care on the 6th floor given this huge surgery he has just undergone. It is like being a car salesman. If you have Ferraris and Mini Vans on the same lot and you ONLY sell Ferraris you might be in big trouble if the boss asks you to go sell Mini Vans! I bet the training would be completely different. It is the same in this case.
Besides, Gary is TOTALLY drugged out of his mind and is incapable of answering that question much less being asked the stupid question in the first place!
Who’s the idiot who told his nurse that we didn’t want her and then sent her into our room to confront us and ask us? I was mortified and so incredibly angry. Like I said the nurse is lovely and nice and fun and I never said anything ill about her. The chain of command here should be embarrassed by their behavior.



SOCIAL WORKER
So, in light of the above story I went ahead and contacted the Social Worker that is assigned to us through the hospital. I wanted her to know how awful I thought it was that information was so grossly miscommunicated and that they handled it so poorly.

I hate having to manage Gary’s care – especially in the hospital. We are still waiting on a bigger room for Gary and I bet now that we have kinda created a little bit of a scuttlebutt we probably will be damned to this tiny room for the length of our stay.

Jax is here with me spending the night on the cot. Picture the cot – about 6 feet long and about 30 inches wide. We are both somehow going to fit on this cot and sleep? We will see.



GARY IN GENERAL
Gary has made leaps and bounds over the past few days. His infection is getting better and his wound is looking great. His body parts are beginning to work and heal. The only thing we are still working on is controlling the pain and dealing with his intense anxiety. We will meet with docs tomorrow to talk about his liver surgery (to stint the bile duct) and with the psychiatrist to try to help him head of any extra anxiety he has so that he can concentrate on getting better and healing.




DEEP THOUGHTS
Gary has been through an incredible ordeal over the past 18 months. He has had MAJOR surgeries and countless chemo treatments and radiation that has caused irreversible damage to his body and the list goes on and on.

Still, while praying, he manages to thank God for all of you and he also thanks God for allowing him to have cancer so that he can hopefully touch lives through it.

That being said, enough is enough.!! We keep praying with faith and repetition for healing and complete earthly restoration to Gary’s mind and body. God is good.

Gary has been talking about how much he misses working. He loved his job and he looked forward to going to work every day. I am looking forward to the day when he can go back to work and work for someone who really appreciates him. It still irks me that his old boss never calls him or comes to see him. Gary worked for him for 2 years and I was under the impression that he liked Gary. Gary is pissed that I am talking about this so I will drop it.

CONCLUSION
Anything else? Who reads this thing anyhow? If I am restless and can’t sleep then I will write again.

Off to a sound slumber. Yeah, right! Move over Jax and Gary better behave tonight!

Love,
L