I Won't Say It Was All A Blur

Because that would be a lie, and I refuse to have anything about this experience become a lie. I can honestly say that if I were to compare this most recent brain tumor surgery with the one from 1994 and had to choose between the two, that this one was the most difficult and yet least messy of the two! the first one was the larger tumor with fewer side effects though. I would gladly relive the first process all over again because compared to this experience, the hospital experience from 12 years ago was a cake walk! I figure that I am entrusting myself to the care of one of the premiere teaching hospitals in the state of Florida and that they would take care of me and treat me with kid gloves. Not a chance. I had a temperature that shot in to triple digits on too many occassions. If it wasn't for my mother and husband being at my bedside in alternating shifts I don't know what kind of care I would have gotten but competant nursing care wasn't one of them. I take that back. There were a couple of nurses and one or two aides that really did care but they were so overwhelmed with all the beds that they had to care for, that they couldn't keep up. My family are the ones that took cool cloths to my forehead during the fever bouts & had to cut up my food because the kitchen kept sending me food that required TWO hands to hold it or be able to use utensils to cut it up, which I could not do. I required a calorie & mineral supplement be added to my diet because I was dropping weight faster than a Weight Watcher's dream team counseling session and the doctor prescribed the drink Boost to be served with every one of my meals. My mother had to go and buy a supply of this stuff for me & keep it in a cooler in my hospital room because the kitchen staff couldn't get my menu right and kept serving me food that I had to cut up or chew when I could barely control the muscles on one side of my face to talk let alone chew! I ended up contracting a form of bacterial meningitis from that hospital & they say that it's impossible, yet I was on two antibiotics for the meningitis! And my recods indicate a lumbar puncture to test for it and that I did have it. Where did it come from then? I didn't have it before hand or their lab tests prior to the surgery would have showed it! A non sterile something or other was used and that's not good. I dealt with extremely high temperatures for a week as well as muscle contractures in my legs that were so painful that I would wake up screaming at all hours of the day or night. I don't know how my family put up with it. I know I was miserable to say the least. The physical therapist that came in to "help" me was there for all of 10 minutes on maybe 3 occasions and really didn't do much for me other than one time set me up for a shower that my husband actually gave me. The occupational therapist that came to see me one time was a nice fellow & told me the truth, that the hospital really doesn't care & just hopes to "moves patients along as quickly as possible". He cared though that my legs were shaking so badly & showed my husband how to stretch them to ease some of the pain in them & hopefully give me a respite from the constant searing pain. It did a little bit. I was cathetered at first but that was removed "in favor of restoring use of my bladder" as the doctor put it. Well, when a person has had two bouts with an anesthesia, their kidneys tend to shut down. The incompetence of the nurses at this hospital was astounding! I could hardly use a bedpan because my kidneys & bladder were "asleep" & yet I still had to be emptied so they would have to catheter me to do so. These nurses would drop the sterile cath tubing on the bed after opening the packaging, insert it incorrectly, then reinsert the unsterile cath tube into the urethra. Hmmm no wonder I came out of there with a UTI! I actually denied the nurses from touching me & would only let the student nurses touch me since I trusted them to be text book trained & be sterile! The antibiotic IV lines in my arm kept blowing as well. I ended up having to have a pic line inserted into my right arm which runs pretty close to the heart since those are the strongest veins that can take the doses of antibiotics needed to cure the meningitis that THEY gave me! A student doctor was the one who did the lumbar puncture & he did it incorrectly & had to do it twice! The first time he actually made the pinky toe on my right foot spasm & I started to yell that it was hurting & he told me to "oh shut the hell up." He told me to be quiet so he could concentrate & "do it right this time." Nice-never go to a teaching hospital. This is the same little shit that wanted to put a feeding tube down the back of my throat without the use of even hurrican spray because I wasn't eating. He kept telling me to swallow & to "quit being a baby about it." I finally grabbed his coat with my good hand and pulled his face closer to mine & told him to leave me the hell alone & that I would eat on my own. I did manage to eat some boost shakes but I did lose a lot of weight while in there. I was discharged from that horrid hospitable with a stroke, meningitis, a UTI, and a high fever to take a 5 hour van ride with no air conditioning to a therapy hospital closer to home because I refused to go anywhere that they recommended for fear that they would kill me since they nearly had in trying to "cure" my brain tumor. The more I talk with people now, the more I find out how horribly they were treated at that very same hospitable. I have nothing good to say about them to anyone. I've met one or two that absolutely adore that place & I say bully for them.