Observations on the hospital floor - part 2

More observations from the inpatient floor...

Carl continued to work with his incentive spirometer.

As we were walking the halls, different monitors would be alarming -- as we passed this one, it indicated that Carl's room had requested water! We didn't even know that we could request water via the patient call device. 

We *did* notice that it did not seem that they were very speedy about responding to calls -- most of the times that Carl would call for the nurse, it was because she had asked him to press the call button when his IV was complete. He would, but it would be 20-30 minutes before anyone would respond. At one point, he noticed that his IV was leaking. He pressed the call button, and no one responded. We knew how to pause the IV, so we hit the pause button, and then I went out to try to find the nurse. All the nurses appeared to be in other patients' rooms. I found a PCA (personal care assistant, not the one assigned to Carl, but another one) and asked her if it was okay that I paused the IV. She interrupted a nurse going into another room, and the nurse said that was okay. 

Eventually, another nurse came in and confirmed that Carl's IV had "blown out" and they would have to place a new one. Unfortunately, they sent a trainee nurse to try to place an IV in his other arm. There was a reason why they didn't initially put the IV into that arm... the vein at his elbow is just not as accessible. She tried to insert the needle causing significant pain but without success. Then she was checking his forearm, mentioning that his veins were deep in his arm and they may have to use a sonogram to place an IV on that arm. By this time, Carl was tired of being a guinea pig. The trainee nurse eventually placed the IV in his hand/wrist area, also very painfully, but he had a working IV port again. 

As we were walking the halls, we also saw the monitoring station. Carl had a number of monitors stuck to his body and they could monitor them from the nurses station. In the Observation area, he was attached to the monitor in his cubicle and it had to be disconnected for him to walk around.

On the floor, the monitoring was done "wirelessly" -- he had wires that ran to this device that he had to carry with him, but he didn't have to disconnect it to walk around.

Carl took pictures around his room as we were waiting for his discharge to occur...

The IV pole and control device for IVs, nurse's control station which is to ensure that the correct patient gets the correct medication at the correct time and at the correct dosage.

The hospital room - Carl enjoyed sitting up in the chair in the far corner of the room. He could move the IV pole over there and sit more comfortably than in the bed.

The toilet room and shower room

On Tuesday late morning, they finally processed the orders for Carl to be discharged. We came home with two oral antibiotics and directions to follow up with Carl's primary care doctor and pulmonary care doctor. We have since followed up with both of them, and he has referrals for another chest x-ray in two weeks, another round of blood work to make sure that he still does not test positive for Valley Fever, and to follow up on a dark spot on a lymph note that was discovered during the CT scan in his initial ER visit.

Our social life has been upended with medical appointments!