It has been a rough night. If you’re ever in a situation like this and your loved one is St Luke’s East or St Luke’s, you have the ability to access your loved ones medical record via an app called MyChart. Unfortunately you don’t have the ability to see any nurses notes are doctors notes or even x-rays for that matter. But you have the ability of looking at live vital signs such as heart rate, respirations, blood pressure, also oxygen saturation. I have been obsessed with looking at those numbers probably about once an hour. You got to be careful though because it could cause you more harm than good.
I will give you an example. Last night was a rough night. Seeing the heart rate at 93 and respiration sometimes at 51 and 52 was very concerning for me. The normal respirations is about 12 to 20. Oxygen saturation normally runs it 90 to 99. As far as I know her oxygen saturation has been bouncing around between 87 all the way up to what the nurse said about 86%.
A situation like this you are never prepared. The emotional drain on somebody that’s sitting on the other side and cannot visit their loved one is incredible. I am not even going to water it down. You will cry many times. You will worry. There will be times you will cheer because of great leaps of successes. Those tears will eventually turn to sorrow because your loved one may have fell back a little bit. Your days are going to run together. Minutes will seem like hours, and hours seem like years.
I will tell you one thing you really need to make sure that you have. You need to make sure that you have all the support that you can get rallied around you, because as an advocate for your loved one it is going to take twenty-four hours a day 7 days a week for you to make sure that your loved one is being cared for by the best possible care but they can get.
I also want to tell you that the Frontline nurses are very very good. Sure I’ve run into a few bumps and bruises along this way, I really wish I had all the information I know now back then I think things would have been a little bit easier and less stressful. I have been talking to the patient advocate because of my situation. I have been upset, angered, sorrowed, and in the dark since this whole thing happened. When I tell my patient advocate all the things that I’ve been dealing with and all the problems today I’ve been going through, I always try and give them a solution on how to help anybody else that may end up in the same boat that I am. I explained to them that if I had a packet of some sort before I was told to leave they had everything that I needed to know and understand about our situation oh, I think it would have made it easier for me and less stressful. I had mentioned the most important thing about this whole situation is communication. Frontline nurses are very very busy taking care of your loved ones, yet they have also been tasked to answer the phone for their loved ones as well. That takes away support at that time for your loved ones. I got to thinking through that. So I made the recommendation to the patient advocate that they need to set aside just one nurse with their sole Focus to answer the phone or to call the loved one to make sure that they are communicated with. To let them know what their current vitals are. To let them know what their next steps are. The other thing I mentioned is how they swap out with doctors from day to evening. My wife has had many different doctors over this past week. I told the patient advocate that it would be nice to get a call from a doctor that’s going on shift just for a short minute to say this is Doctor so and so and I will be treating your loved one for the next 12 hours. Then let them know that they would call them at a certain time in a day to give them a status update. One of the doctors that I had called me everyday it may not have been the same time every day but he did call me let me know what was going on, even if it was just for a short 5-minute chat. That meant the world to me. Those of you know about the whole situation we sit outside waiting for loved ones, worrying for a loved ones and I think a lot of times we get forgotten or the nurse is too exhausted from all the distractions that they’ve been dealing with.
I think the other thing that we should be able to know and understand is how many patients one nurse is assigned to. As for my wife situation, she moved from two patients per one nurse, to three patients per one nurse.
Last night was a rough night for me. I couldn’t sleep real well. I was chatting with someone on Facebook who spent over 30 days in the hospital with covid-19. She to refused the vent. She made it through. She told me that there were a couple of times where it didn’t look like she was going to make it, she pulled through. I was asking about her recovery experiences. It is still a challenge even at this point. She had a lot of scarring in her lungs from pneumonia. They had to retrain her how to breathe. Once she got home she needed a lot of help.
I can tell you right now that if your loved one makes it through the recovery. You as the loved one will be taking care of that individual for quite some time until they recovered to a point to where at least they can function. If you can’t do it on your own I highly suggest that you discuss with your family on how to properly care for your loved one as they progress through the recovery process.
You will get to the point, where no news is good news. But it is very important call and check on them at least once or twice during their shift. Have a lot of people for support, because you will be by yourself for a while. I am expecting at least a month that my wife is going to be at the hospital, maybe longer. I’m not sure if there’s ever going to be a time that I will be able to go and see my wife. I haven’t reached out to the patient advocate to ask that question. Again I am completely and totally in the dark as to how they handle things when it comes to covid-19 patients. I’m hoping to understand that soon.
I have the media on standby to give my story to the public. It is not my intention to slander or badmouth any facility. It is my intention to make sure the people are aware, these processes and procedures that are being followed are not working for the loved ones that are stuck on the outside. The key problem of this whole thing, is communication communication communication! Without communication back to the loved ones outside, it will drive you absolutely nuts. Your emotional suffering will be so great oh, you will get to the point where you’re so numb and so exhausted, but you forget to do the things that you need to do for yourself. I have been television free since this first started. I have had no desire to turn on the TV, I have no desire to even watch TV. I spent about 15 to 20 minutes last night and prayer on my knees asking God to get her through this. Letting God know that it is his plan, not mine. Letting God know to put good caring Godly medical professionals at the care of my wife. He has answered those prayers many many times. I have been listening to a lot of Christian music to try and keep my mind off of things. Christian music has a tendency of putting that perfect song and your heart that is exactly what you need. That is what God does.
So this is just a little bit of what I am dealing with on a daily basis. I truly hope that you don’t go through this at all. No this is not about pushing you to go get vaccinated. That is your choice. This is about what you’re going to experience in the event that yourself or your loved one ends up in the hospital with covid-19.