If it weren't already so far beyond a joke, now it'd be beyond a joke.
You'd think, what with recent events, someone at the hospital might have noticed Vic's case and said, "You know, we've made far too many mistakes here. We don't want any more. Make sure everything's double-checked for this patient from now on." No. It's the same old slapdash shit.I'll try to keep this one concise, because my patience is thin.
Her doctors are monitoring Vic's INR, a measure of blood thinness. When it falls to 1.5, they will perform the lung-draining procedure. (It's falling because they've taken her off Warfarin.) Her consultant told her last Friday that she would be taken off Clexane 24 hours prior to the procedure, as to be on Clexane during the procedure would be rather dangerous. This much is obvious: blood-thinner plus surgical procedure equals disaster.
Vic's INR was 1.7 today, so her consultant reckons he'll probably perform the procedure tomorrow. Except that he then forgot to change her prescription, so the ward nurses still gave her the giant Clexane dose tonight. Vic did query it, and they checked with the duty SHO (the one doctor in the hospital after 5pm), whose response was not to worry, it'd probably be OK. Reassuring.
So, tomorrow, either they're going to realise they've screwed up and postpone the procedure by a day, or they're going to try to go ahead with it regardless and Vic's going to have to refuse to allow it.
This will be the second time that this hospital have unexpectedly had to postpone an operation on Vic due to their own fuck-up.
Not only have the doctors destroyed our faith in them. I and the rest of Vic's family are very pissed off that they've also destroyed our ability to reassure her. We can no longer believably tell her that it's all going to be all right or that she's going to be OK, because we've told her that before and, every time, have been proven wrong. My own credibility with my wife has been undermined, because I was foolish enough to listen to her doctors and to believe that they had a clue what they were talking about.
I doubt she'll be out for Christmas. Having been mistakenly discharged too early three times now, she doesn't even want to be out for Christmas. She simply doesn't trust them not to send her home while she's still getting worse. And neither do I.
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