Two pain pills.

[ReRe]

8. K&R

... The real problem is legalized malpractice by Hospitals. To explain where I come from with this...my grown son was involved in an accident. He took out a tree one night as he was driving home under the influence of alcohol. He was by himself, and the accident involved no other vehicle, hurt no one but himself. Ambulance was called and he was transported to the hospital ER. He had a broken collar bone and a bunch of broken ribs. Yes, alcohol was the reason he found himself in such pain, but what happened to him while in the ER was not justified. They made him lay there with no pain medication, no treatment, for about 18 hours. It was as if they were punishing him for driving while drunk. Now, I used to work in the hospital, closely associated with the ER. Never once did we treat one patient differently than other patients, UNLESS the patient was experiencing apparent dire excruciating pain, whereupon they were bumped up to the top of the list. Didn't matter what had brought them to the hospital. I wanted him to file a suit against the hospital, but he was so demoralized and disappointed in himself, he wouldn't do it. He blamed himself.

Back to the current OP... I'm so so sorry Jamie Lynn lost her life. Yes, they worked against her welfare, made sanctimonious assumptions, probably thinking she was some sort of drugee wanting pain medication. And in so doing, she lost her and her baby's life two hours later. There is nothing more painful than what she was going through. My mother's last pregnancy (back in the '50s) was an ectopic pregnancy, complicated with uremic poisoning. Either she and/or the baby were not expected to live. She got lucky and had an angel for a Doctor and he pulled them both through.

Nowdays... if I go in the hospital, I let them know real quick that I have worked in the medical field and they literally tip-toe around me and take real good care of me...

Oh God... I've got to tell you one more nightmarish hospital story, and then I swear I will shut up. My Mom (yes the same Mom I mentioned above), 9 months before she passed, lost the use of her last failing kidney. 84 yrs old. In the hospital, and they talked her into letting them put her on dialysis. How she lived thru the procedure to get her ready for dialysis, I have no idea. They had to place a shunt catheter in her right upper chest, where it stayed for two weeks. When they were getting her ready to release from the hospital, they had to replace it. So, they did, and brought her back up to ICU where I was waiting for her. She started bleeding from the cath sight on her chest. I kept calling the nurses and they would come in and change the dressing and place a little pressure on it a couple minutes. Then they would disappear again. Well this happened a couple more times, and I was really becoming alarmed. Mom's blood count was already low because of her condition. So, I remember that I had a digital camera in my bag. I got it out, looked at Mom and told her to look at me. She looked at me and smiled. I took the camera away from my eye and told her "No, Mom, don't smile." Bloody bandages and all, I got a great photo and don't you know that the nurses flew in there and stopped everything they were doing...ran Mom back down to the Cath Lab and got the bleeding stopped. Viola'! that is all it took. The flash of a camera made them realize that I was not a happy camper. If you wonder why I laughed, my Dear Mother would smile every single time a camera was pointed in her direction, all thru her life. She had no idea what I was looking at thru my camera lens, (as she couldn't look down) and being thrilled to still be alive, gave me one of her famous beautiful smiles. We got such a big kick out of that picture after we got her home and she recuperated for a while... she lived about 8 more months when dialysis wasn't doing any good anymore.... I'm so sorry for monopolizing this thread. Please please forgive me..

What I will end with is this: Stand up for yourself in the hospital. If they know you will stand up for yourself, they will take better care of you!