It all started when I had had enough, already. This phase I mean. This phase is after the disillusionment and the vision. This is the genesis. The disillusionment began long ago when I experienced a child and a parent being hospitalized within months of each other, and as a result decided to become a nurse myself. The trek to becoming a nurse is a story in itself. And the vision began after reading the first few chapters of Walter Wink’s book, “The Powers that Be,” when it dawned upon me that the healthcare system could be applied to his model of sick institutions, even though he spoke of religion. But the genesis of this blog began on June 1, 2007 when my father had a right frontal stroke. In August, I will have been a nurse for 10 years, and this trip that seems far from reality – but WAIT – it IS reality – this trip through his stroke made it all come together.
Hilary Clinton has been saying there is something seriously WRONG with the healthcare system. People have been saying that for years. The images of doctors in labcoats marching on Charleston’s capitol lawn are burned into my brain. I was working in home care then, and most of the doctors in the West Virginia panhandle (in our home care area) were out of town that weekend – and on strike. Several of my home care patients kept the channel on court TV the whole duration of my visits around then. Many mentioned their doctors’ sportscars or other perceived gluttenous extravagances, as if they were Tammy Bakers. My sister in the fashion district in NYC was writing me, “I work hard, so I play hard,” and the doctors had the same attitude.
Another image burned in my brain is the daily dressing of a rotting black foot of a patient, sitting in front of his TV sipping on a sugary soda, and a big cake his wife had baked him sitting on the kitchen table in their pristine clean house; court TV blaring; him barely speaking to me during the dressing. That was the year I started looking for another career. That was the year I really liked coming home to my goats and taking the dog for a walk on the farm. That was the year I decided I’d rather be a farmer than a nurse.
But Walter Wink has been whispering to me ever since. It is June 21st. My father has been in 5 acute care institutions since June 1st. His blood sugars were never managed sufficiently. The dieticians in not one of the institutions catered to his and my mothers PERSISTANT requests for NO REFINED FOODS. He was supposed to go to acute rehab, but that facility sent him back to the hospital after day 1 for out of control blood sugars, and after he returned, the very next day for a temperature (imagine….after high blood sugars for 2 weeks, that he would develop a temperature). The second time, the nurse on staff sent him to the wrong hospital. I guess it was too much of an emergency for her to take a look at his chart. It turned out to be a blessing in disguise though, because the hospital staff and doctors were a little more pliable.
We insisted this time that he come HOME. The social worker at Wheeling Hospital tried to tell my mom that the insurance wouldn’t pay for his hospital stay. Old story. I’ve been told to tell patients that, and it is a lie. I made a beeline to the nurse’s station, found a nurse, and informed her that this was not true – that the insurance WOULD pay if the doctor wrote the discharge orders. She admitted that was true. I told her the doctor needed to write discharge orders. I backed myself up with the course of events of the previous 3 weeks and my father’s condition as a result.
So here I am. This is not even the tip of the iceberg; it is only a figment of the consciousness of the problems I perceive. We all perceive them. There are solutions. We have to call the healthcare system back to its mission. We have to seek Truth. The creation of this blog is not easy for me. I don’t know where it will go. But I feel called to do it. So here I am.
