Recovery going pretty well so far. Once again using voice dictation to help write a lot of this.
Ran into a bureaucratic issue. When I was discharged Monday, I was supposed to have two types of pain medication. One a slow acting type, good for about 12 hours, to take 1 tablet twice a day. That was to be the primary. In addition to that, shorter-term tablets, to take from 1 to 3 as needed, as often as every four hours, depending on the pain and pain goals.
I had a great care in the hospital, but discharge process was a bit ragged. I certainly wanted to get out of there, but wanted to have everything ready as well by the time my ride arrived. I had not gotten any of the discharge materials, paperwork or medications, yet I had been given the okay to call my ride to come get me. I pressed the nurse call button to see what was going on but nobody answered for over 20 minutes, and by then I'd walked out of the room in the hall to find someone else to help figure it out..... although they were not able to do anything. Anyway, this is a bit long about way of saying that finally, just before my ride arrived, I was rapidly given my paperwork and a sealed bag full of various medications for different purposes, wheeled out to the entrance within five minutes of that.
The very kind of rushed departure I had hoped to avoid.
"Do I have everything, all the medication?"
"Yes" (no, as it turned out)
That first night back, I found the short-term pain medication, to take 1 to 3 tablets as often as every four hours, and I did as needed. However, I did not find the long term 12 hour tablets that I should have had as the primary pain medication. But I was glad to be back, mostly feeling okay from the 12 hour tablet I was given shortly before leaving. So that was fine for then. By Wednesday, I had gone through my belongings bag and medication paper bag multiple times, to confirm that I did not have a bottle of those 12 hour tablets.
I contacted them using "my chart", which I have had great success in using for communicating with the local County hospital system that I've used the last few years. However when I broke my arm near midnight it was not practical to go to the county hospital way downtown. I went to a closer-by urgent care, and ended up in a totally different healthcare system (ironically when I did get hospitalized I was transported to a different hospital farther away than downtown). I have found out the hard way that they do not communicate very well via my chart, as I have come to expect with the county healthcare System that also uses my chart. In other words I never got an answer using that system.
By this morning (Friday), I maybe had enough of the other pain medication (not refillable) to last me through Monday if I was willing to increase the pain level more (as I had already done). So I called around, taking three tries to reach someone that could even attempt to address the problem. It turned out that they did not send me home with the 12 hour pain medication in a bottle, they sent me home with a
paper prescription to be filled at a pharmacy. Except.... Nobody told me this.... And after going through dozens of pages of printouts.... No.... Nope.... No such paper prescription was there. So not only did they not tell me that a bottle was NOT in the bag like I had asked ("Do I have everything, all the medication?"),
they did not send me home with the paper prescription to begin with.
I was given two options. One, return to the hospital, about a 90 minute round trip across town, potential to get caught up in rush hour traffic, to get the stupid piece of paper. Only the holy official piece of paper (prescription) would be acceptable for me to get the prescription for pain medication to be filled. No faxing, no email, no nothing - this is the 1800s when it comes to pain medication prescription documentation. By all rights they should've sent someone to me to bring me the paper prescription but that was never going to happen. Even though this was 100% their screw up.
The other option was to see a doctor to write a "New" prescription. I'd had not intended to see my primary care physician until after I visited the surgeon for a follow-up and staple removal. That was the sane logical thing to do, and my primary care physician had already agreed I should not see him until later. But given this situation, I called the clinic of my primary physician, and was very fortunate that he could see me this afternoon. His location is not exactly close by either, but not nearly as bad as going back to the hospital I would've needed to go to for the piece of paper.
At least by going to him, he was also able to check and verify that the arm was doing okay in the four days since I was discharged. And he adjusted my pain medication prescriptions, to not only provide the primary 12 hour tablets that I have not had since I left the hospital, but to add more of the short term pain medication that I was running low on (which could not be refilled without seeing him).
So that finally all got resolved. But it was extremely frustrating, and totally unnecessary, because somebody made a mistake (sending me home without the holy piece of paper prescription, as well as not telling me about it), but I was going have to deal with finding out how to solve the issues surrounding their mistake. Also, as I sat waiting to see my doctor, a lady came in with her 4 to 5-year-old daughter, they were late for their appointment and missed it. There were no openings available, so they had to leave. Most likely if I had not needed to visit my doctor today, due to bureaucratic screw ups, this lady's daughter probably would have been able to see my doctor (rather than me). So that screw up in its own way screwed up someone else. I can't feel guilty about it, not my fault. But this made me more upset with whoever screwed this up to begin with, knowing that my needs as a result of the screwup, probably cost a little kid being able to see their doctor today.
I have taken pride in the fact that when I have needed pain medication in the past, I have used it as needed only. Not just using it up because I have it laying around. And I know it's easy to get hooked on this stuff, yet another reason to be careful. But when you need it you need it. I woke up this morning at the end of a dream where something bizarre was happening in the dream to cause me to feel pain..... and I was feeling real pain when I woke up. To try to stretch out what I had left, I had not taken as much as I should have in the previous 24 hours.
Anyway, that prescription screwup is resolved, and I feel I'm about right in the middle of where I should feel. Not as much pain as before, but feeling a little bit, which to me means I should be at about the right level. The mistake would be to take so much that I don't feel any pain. And as I found out that hospital it's more like a pain goal, where a pain goal of zero at this point in time, is unrealistic.
I'm mostly posting about it just to vent.
I do want to stop to note note that regardless of the chain of events that occurred to cause me to end up where I ended up I am very glad that I became a patient of the surgeon who operated on me. I was super impressed by him, and the way he mentioned his surgical team and the separate medical team which was considering my nonsurgical issues (on blood thinners due to clotting, the need to stop the thinner for the operation, as normally an operation would not be done once on thinners), I was reminded somewhat of Wernher von Braun. Von Braun was a great rocket scientist but he also had a great crew, some of which were even better rocket scientists than him, whom he listened to and relied on. Von Braun was a great manager. This surgeon, Dr. Armitage, came across to me not only as someone that seem like a great surgeon, but a fantastic manager. This prescription hiccup reflects in no way on the great work that he and his people did.
As unfortunate as I was to break the arm, I was very fortunate for the chain of events to result with him and his team to be the ones to be so involved in the planning and work to do this operation.
Otherwise, there's not much significant to update about. Simply that in general (ignoring the prescription complications)
it's a little better each day. It's a bit easier to climb out of bed each day, and that is a bit complicated for me because ideally I should roll out of the right side of the bed but there is wall there so I need to roil out the the left side. What has helped with that, is to tie a jump rope to the foot of bed, so I can use my right arm pulling on the rope, to pull me upright, then I can get my legs over the left side of bed.
In the few days between the original break and going back to urgent care and getting hospitalized, not only was getting in and out of bed an issue as mentioned above, but with the arm just in a sling at that time, it was just a hanging hunk of meat which hurt most anytime I moved it especially getting in and out of bed. With the surgery having been done, I cannot put any stress on the arm, but it no longer feels like a free swinging pendulum hunk of meat. My arm is really attached now.... with a lot of titanium parts, and some surgical cement. Fragile, but with time it will heal and be stronger. So the arm does feel attached, unlike before the surgery.
I could mention some other ways of daily improvement, but some of those would go past the edge of TMI.
I am doing a bit of exercise with it, mostly involving the hand and wrist and some with the elbow. I Want the upper arm to heal more before I exercise it more specifically.
When I visited my regular doctor today, that was the first significant amount of walking around I had done since before the accident. Later when I went to Target to get the prescriptions filled, I walked in for that, and had to kill 20 minutes while they verified my insurance would cover it and filled the prescriptions. So I walked around the store for a while and got something from the grocery department while I was at it. So I can walk okay. I still feel some of the bruising on my bottom or hip from the fall but I don't need the walking stick I rigged up earlier.
A week from now, there is a holiday party that was delayed from December due to weather. I feel confident I can go to that, and enjoy it.
When it comes to rocket building, certainly not soon. But I am trying to plan things out so when I do feel up to building, it should involve more actual building, and less planning. So I can make more efficient use of time and capabilities.
- George Gassaway