Home Again

I was able to come home from the hospital yesterday, for the second time. When I went to Dr. Penn's office on Wednesday, Aug. 12 to get my staples out, they removed the stitches and my leg started leaking cereus. He was concerned that I had infection, so he sent me straight to the hospital for surgery the next afternoon. It was very depressing. My first night in the hospital was so-so, but went down hill from there. The nurses on the 3rd floor weren’t used to ortho. patients, so weren’t nearly as good for me as the nurses on the 2nd floor. Actually, they weren’t nearly as good of nurses in general as the ones on the 2nd floor. I don’t believe any of the RN’s I had, had there BA or BS. They either graduated from St. Louis Comm College, Kaskaskia, or Lewis and Clark. The nurse I had the night after surgery was the worse. She was next to abusive. I don’t know if she thought I was still out of it, but she was very rough. I called Jerry and he called and talked to the head nurse and reported her. My entire stay, they nurses didn’t answer the calls in a timely manner, they left my IV in 2 days longer than they were supposed to and my drain wasn’t removed until a day late. They didn’t change my bedding, or my bloody socks, I wore from the doctor’s office. They didn’t put my ice bags on, as they were supposed to, didn’t read, or misread the orders from the doctor. This was a horrible experience. I have bruises up and down my arms from the IV’s they kept changing. It took one nurse 5 tries and she didn’t even apologize. There were a couple of nice nurses, but out of the number of nurses that I had, the odds were not good.

29 minutes

29 minutes and counting. I will be away from here for at least 2 months. I'm getting a little nervous. Surgery isn't until noon tomorrow, or I would go home and go to bed to stop thinking about it. Lori Klosterman, the secretary in Athletics and a member of Trinity, called me a few hours ago and told me that she had both of her knees replaced earlier this year. (Both at the same time) Dr. Corvallis said that I'm pretty young to have my knees replaced, but I think that Lori is much younger than I am, so that made me feel a little better. I just hope that I do as well as she did. She's feeling much better than she did prior to her surgery.