Update on G

G did not have viral pneumonia, but he did need a pint of blood.

I got a call from his nurse about 2:30 PM after the Dr. appointment this morning saying that G had to come in to get a blood transfusion.

G wanted to do it the next day, because he had an appointment with his renal Dr. in the morning, but the nurse phoned back to tell me "if he doesn't get this blood, he might not live through the night".

Well, that scared the S out of me...so I put him in my car and drove him there myself. There had been a mix up by the wheelchair transport company and they took him home instead of to the VA....it just all gets so frustrating.

Anyway, he gets to the VA and they don't have a room ready in telemetry, where they want him so they can monitor him during the transfusion. So he hangs around for a couple of hours. Luckily my brother R is in town so I can go to the VA.
So I ask the chief Dr. (who is now taking care of G since it's the beginning of the month and all the residents have just started to work)...."so if this was so critical, why isn't anything being done?", to which he replied "well, I think they were must being a bit dramatic".

So the new Drs (residents) came in to do the history. Of course the VA is basically run by residents, and lets face it, Drs. have to learn somewhere. So G and I took a lot of time and went over his whole history, which is quite interesting. They were concerned that G was losing blood somewhere, so they sent him for a CT on the leg where they did the procedure last week.

Of course as G said, they could just look at it and see it wasn't bleeding, but, Drs. can't just look at anything these days and see what's wrong. They must have a diagnostic test. That's why G didn't get blood when he was in the hospital. He was discharged with a hemoglobin count of 7.1, and they won't transfuse less than 7But by Wed. it had dropped down to around 6. The thinking is that because of the volume of fluids they pumped into him to get his blood pressure up, somehow (I guess) this masks the true hemoglobin level.

So once again, if someone with a brain looked at him (as I did) and said "this guy is sick", and, if the Dr. who did the surgery had the guts to say "this guy lost a lot of blood during the surgery, he probably needs a transfusion", maybe they would have given him blood, like they would have in the old days before all this testing.

G pushed to get released on Thursday morning in time to make his Dr. appointment. Once again he had to irritate the nurse to get her to do her job. And, when the renal Dr. nurse came out to the waiting room she said "we thought you were in the hospital", despite the fact that the hospital nurse said she had called the renal Dr. nurse to let her know he was being released.

Now, there are some very, very good nurses at the VA. We know them. Generally they are working in the general part of the hospital. For some reason all the bad nurses have been shifted to the ICU/telemetry part, or, the nursing home.

G's renal Dr. called him at home yesterday, to tell him the VA surgeon can do the surgery he needs for access for dialysis, which is BS, the guy just forgot.
So G should see him next week, and then he will remember, and then G should be able to get a referal from the VA to the Dr. in town who can do the surgery, as that is his specialty. The VA surgeon is just a general surgeon.

G's catheter has been running slow for dialysis the last 3 times, but he took an extra pillow to sit on, and that helped. He now wants to go in the car to places, and I guess we will. If he were to die soon, it would really suck I was so careful and didn't enjoy life a little bit. And now that catheter has been in him so long, it is probably well "set".

G is feeling much better, which is good for me, because with all I am going through I can't handle him being grouchy.