My father was sent home from the hospital Wednesday. I had called the social worker after the incidents with the dextrose in sodium bicarb and the diet change, telling her I thought my father would be safer at home. Home care can run antibiotics. I am beside myself with the mismanagement of my father’s diabetes in the healthcare setting while my mother manages his insulin pump.
I’m sure the hospital staff is not happy with me. But he was discharged the next day. Meanwhile, a dietician had counseled my mother about the fact that there was no scientific proof that low glycemic foods were any different for blood sugar than high glycemic foods. She actually even printed out a page from the American Dietetic Association’s website and gave it to my mother. My mother confused the Dietetic Association with the Diabetic Association when telling me about it, and I was very confused. On the day of discharge, the diabetes educator came to talk with my mother, and explained the difference. I told her that after 35 years of my father managing his own diabetes, that the dietician was NOT HELPFUL. Giving my mother this print-out felt like an “in your face,” sort of reply to my mother’s persistant requests for low glycemic foods for my father. I knew the diabetes educator agreed, but she couldn’t tell us so.
Mother is writing a letter to the hospital, and is including the incident in her journal of what is happening with my father’s care. People will not change their attitudes without some help.
Before leaving, I asked for a catheter strap. The aids didn’t know what it was, and thought I was asking for a leg bag. The nurse caring for him was pulled from the long term care unit, and she was the only one on the floor who knew what I was asking for. She said they didn’t have any on the unit, and she taped the catheter to my father’s leg so it wouldn’t get pulled out during transfers to the wheelchair, van seat and wheelchair.
Transferring my father into the van for discharge was a fiasco. If I hadn’t been there, he would have fallen. It was pouring down rain, and the hospital’s handicap ramp was too close to the edge of the drive-under area. It was wet. The nurse’s aids parked the wheelchair on the sidewalk with the intent of walking him down the ramp. I told them to push the chair up to the van door, and I insisted on orchestrating the tranfer. The ground was wet. The aids left his weak side unassisted, so I walked up and supported him. Most of his weight was on me, of course, and I am on light duty for hurting my back at the hospital I work at. I didn’t tell them so. We got him into the van without incident, thank God. I instructed my mother to wait until I got to the retirement home to get him out, and I sent my 17 y/o son with her to help in the van if needed.
When I got to the retirement home, after stopping for some things Mother had asked me to pick up, my father was already in the wheelchair, on the way into the house. My mother and my son were grinning proudly. My mother is so insistant on proving that she can handle this. And my father does so much better with her alone than with 3 nurses helping him. She has been doing this with him for a long time. I can see why doctors might question her ability to care for him, but doctors see so little, even of what goes on in the hospital. And they are far too dependent on what is reported to them.
I made my son help change my father the first time he soiled himself. My son had a hard time. But this is real life. At one time, I had said that I would not change my father when this happened, but the reality is, I’d rather do it than let others do it. I’ve been working in health care long enough to know that there is no way nurses and aids can know all the little idiosyncracies of every individual; that many of them overlook thorough peri-care; and that having family there means a lot to a person. I was suprised at my son’s determination to meet up to the situation.
My mother and father were both so happy to be home. It has been 3 days, and they are getting along great. Two days ago I picked up some diapers at Walmart and took them over. The home care nurse was there. When I walked in, Mother says, “Look what she brought!” On my father’s leg was a catheter leg strap.
Oh what things make a person’s day.
