Code Mommy

We fired my mother's pulmonologist today; I am honestly at this point too tired to recount the entire day, but it started with my having an outpatient procedure and being signed out by Meg, then (as I'm coming off my sedation) hearing 'code blue, Dr Fucktard, call xxx-xxxx' repeated over the hospital intercom. I turned to Meg and asked, 'Mom?' and Meg dialled Mom's unit, cos she knows how I am.

Yep, Mummers.

Dr Fucktard had, without disclosure, had Mom taken down for a 'procedure' (I get the Code Log tomorrow), where Mom went into respiratory arrest. Meg said she was in Unit X, but we were to go to Multiple ICU and wait. I said 'fuck that', and ran to Unit X with Meg behind me. We saw her wheeled out with her crash team, and I raged at them to stop steering and keep manual ventilation going. At some point in time, we acquired a Nursing Administrator, probably because we weren't supposed to be down there, and I was a little loud. I tried to get in the tiny elevator with them, and there was no room, so Meg and I rode up with the Nursing Administrator. NA asked what she could do to calm me down, and I told her she could arrange transfer to City Hospital and stop trying to murder my mother. As my life goes, NA turned out to be the one from last year's Foam Party, but I was still coming off my own dose of Versed, Benedryl, and Fentanyl, and didn't recognise her just then; after I raged a bit up in MICU, all of a sudden I recognised her, and when I reminded her, she remembered me and actually stopped trying to calm me down, believe it or not. She gave Meg her number and left.

They tried to keep us out of MICU until she was stablised, and I pushed some blonde on the team out of my way and told her that if they were going to kill my mother, they were going to do it in front of me, that they lost my trust earlier today when Dr Fucktard manufactured a conversation with my mother where she expressed a DNR wish (bullshit) and a desire to go into Hospice care and stop curative efforts (more bullshit). I'll get to that conversation later, let it suffice now to say that we told him no. Mummers has been VERY clear on her beliefs for as long as I have ever known her, and she has never ONCE wavered, or expressed ANY consideration of the possibility that her beliefs are wrong. My mother is headstrong like a horse, and would tell you that *I* am a cat murderer because I have euthanised some of my cats (like Romeo, for instance; Mummers holds to this day that I was wrong to have him put down). My mother believes, unwaveringly, that the body must be given time to heal itself, and that God plays a role in this healing, and He must be given a chance to work. I have lived in mortal fear that Mummers would keep Veggiecodia alive for decades on life support for the majority of my life. My mother does not believe in refusal to treat, withholding any curative attempt, or the hastening of death in any manner, be it by commission or omission. PERIOD. And I may not agree, but I am under a moral obligation (and my brother and Meg agree on her position; she isn't shy about stating it) to honour her wishes at all times, until the end.

So she is back on a ventilator, after having unattended respiratory distress for over twenty-four hours. Yes, Meg and I left multiple orders for her pulmonologist to contact us in that time, and he finally responded with today's fuckery. So we fired him and placed her with another pulmonologist (despite my brother telling me I couldn't do it that fast, at six p.m., no-one would take her actively tonight, she would lounge uselessly with time ticking away on the vent until tomorrow, blah, blah, blah; I literally screamed at him 'You don't believe in me, motherfucker? Just you wait!' and hung up on him in the MICU waiting room {shift change kick-out after Mummers was stable}, where I had collected quite an audience, having no god damned idea how I was going to dig up another competent pulmonary physician).

So then I cried. And I tried to think of what to do, and I phoned the hospital pharmacy to see if I could get my prescriptions filled while I thought. With ten minutes to close, the pharmacist declined, saying it would be 'impossible' to fill two common prescriptions over the phone as I walked the chits down to him in less than ten minutes. Impossible. IMPOSSIBLE. I told him he had a bright future here at St God's Memorial Hospital, and to have a good night.

So I let myself back into MICU (I told Meg, who had left to teach her evening class, that I phoned because she really disapproves of my scenes) by coat-tailing some doctor who swiped in, and glaring at him when he started to say something to me. I am sure that he left me alone because I looked like a sweaty psycho by that point. I went to the MICU front desk and asked if there was anyone in charge of this shit hole. Then I remembered my brother warning me to not alienate people, and amended my question to include a 'well?' and exchanged 'shit hole' for 'unit'. A nurse I had earlier told that she had better get out of my way said that she was (oops), and she would finish her paperwork and come talk to me if I would wait in the Family Consultation room. I didn't have any better offers, so I did. I figured I was going to be blown off, so I tried some Internet searches (as if I know how to dope pulmonologists), and tried to think of where I could find one in-hospital to force up to MICU. When the nurse came in, she told me that she was the Charge Nurse, and I told her that I was sorry about before, but if she would listen to today's events and understand that I am still dry-and-foul-mouthed and woozy, she would maybe understand. So I unloaded the whole thing on her -- from the ignored respiratory distress to the fabricated 'wishes', to the failure to advise and seek family authorisation for a procedure that stood such a likelihood of CAUSING my mother to code, and I told her that I needed someone NOW, not later, and if she wanted to get me back for being a bitch that was fine, but there was a woman lying in her unit who never did a god-damned thing to her, and it would be immoral to make her suffer because her daughter tries to protect her by being a bitch.

Let me make a very long story short, cos I am tired. I won. Charge Nurse Rita may wish me death on a stick, and rightfully so, but she fixed Mom's chart to reflect Mom's wishes for no palliative (only) care, because I told her if one more person tried to talk our family into putting Mom to sleep against her wishes, I was going to rip their oesophagus out of their body with my bare hands. And she corrected all of the old doctors' names, so there would be no confusion over who her hospitalist is (we're on Round Three). And she phoned Mom's current hospitalist and changed her pulmonologist. And got him to come to Mom tonight; he showed up at nine p.m. And she stayed almost two hours over her shift to do it (even though I am sure she justified it by figuring that she will be less likely to come tomorrow to find that this psychotic bitch has destroyed her nice, pretty MSICU). When the new pulmonologist showed up, he won me over immediately by asking if Mom was responsive; I told him yes, that she was on a Versed drip, so her alertness came in waves, but if he needed me to rouse her, I could get a hand-squeeze or something out of her at the next window of alertness (I can see it around her eyes, even though they are closed). He said that was okay, that sometimes the family can see because they know the patient, while the doctor does not. He adjusted her ventilator settings, and left to read her history. My brother texted me during this, and I snuck out a reply (no cell phone policy) that I'd get back to him 'cos her NEW PULMONOLOGIST is evaluating her right now...ha, HA!!'

Teach him to doubt me. And yes, if honey (well, as honeyed as *I* get) hadn't worked, I would have tried going down to Surg and dragging one up or something. I don't know. One of these days, I am going to get into serious trouble...I just don't carry a gun on me. You can all see it coming, can't you?

So...she hates me, but I am in love with Charge Nurse Rita.

And my brother admitted that I amaze him. :D after the new guy left, I phoned him and read Mom's new vent settings, and he said they are good. And he said Mom's old pulmonologist was a total tool. Then Meg came back, and Dr New Guy came back a few minutes later. He wants a PICC line run, and I don't remember why, but it's what Mom would want, and my brother ok'd the decision cos Dr New Guy agrees with him that the goal is to get her off-vent as soon as humanly possible, ideally within 48 hours.

I will fill the rest in later. I have to sleep now.



- Posted using SomeBlogApp that I don't know how to use. o_O