1 October 2013
Tuesday

If I don't write about this, how is anyone going to know?

Would anyone believe this if I weren't here scribbling?

I was watching TED.com and saw this video: http://www.ted.com/talks/regina_dugan_from_mach_20_glider_to_humming_bird_drone.html. The talk was interesting but the comment below stuck with me.


Right now the Internet reaches two billion people, or thirty percent of the population of the world's people. That us only for the cost of access to the ports to get your message online. Whether you use a wifi connection, your own ethernet access, or even a lowly dialup modem, you can get your message out and over the horizon or down your street. You can offer a way of seeing that possibly no one else has known about. Possibly the work to which they are committed is too structured and tightly controled. Perhaps the hierarchacal operatives who over see the operation of the program are too concerned about the meddling by legislative oversight that is oriented toward coercing rule following more than the care, comfort and ease of use for the residents in certain facilities.


I find that many people who end up in facilities like this are more than surprised at how stark places like this are in reality than they ever thought. Some of their family members are equaully dismayed, but have no where to turn or no idea what to do. They feel as if they are all alone, no one will listen to them. If they do get heard some brilliant arguers offer that the medical people must know better, after all they went to school for this. In my experience attending a school does not equate with being highly cognizant of the full parameters of what is going on with some one.


It is when very few people know or care what is going on that things can very easily go wrong.


I found out this last weekend that some concern had been raised why I have been having so many sinus headaches during my stay here. I know my alergens, house dust and mold spores. My worst headache season is from when the snow melts until the forsythia bloom. That is when the mold that has grown beneath the snow is uncovered. On the days when a low pressure weather system comes through, the molds all release their spores and my head implodes. By the time the forsythia bloom the sun has dried out the ground and the mold has just about gone away. But this year they have been constant throughout the calendar. I have been having debilitating sinus headaches nearly every day of the week, the only relief has been two Excedrin often followed by a Claratin. The Claratin takes at least three hours to begin to have some effect while the Excedrin usually takes about twenty minutes.


This last weekend of September the medical staff decided to check my blood pressure at least once every shift. I inquired as to what was going on. I was told that the nurse had noticed that during my regular blood pressure checks it was observed that my readings were always high. I asked as to why I was not receiving the blood pressure medicine thati had been taking since I was about forty-five years old? The response was, what blood pressure medicine? Informed them that I had been taking 10mg of Lisinapril everyday on the direction of my personal physician. They had no idea. No one had ever asked me and they had nothing from the previous nursing home. Suddenly the reason for the headaches was becoming much clearer.


I spoke with the third shift nurse who was measuring my blood pressure at 1:00 AM. She indicated that she had a phone call in to the Physician's Assistant to see if she would authorize some Clonopine, which came shortly after. My BP was 184/114 before and 90/70 by 2 PM.


By today, Tuesday the first of October my BP was back to 209/120 at the end of the first shift when I was “informed”that the blood pressure medicine was to be a dirurectic type, then they would watchmy blood pressure for a few days and determine where to go next.


I was started on the medication at 6:00 PM, I also had another headache beginning at that time. By 9:00 PM I had already passed 1 liter of urine in 3 hours, how I am going to sleep like that is not to clear to me. A blood pressure check at 8:00 PM reported 190/ 107, I'm not too sure the diuretic is the best way to go. I still think maybe a beta blocker might be the better way to go, at least if I am going to get some sleep and/ or have some dry breifs by the end of the night.


Tonight at 9:30 PM my next door neighbor was returned from the hospital, to where he had been removed at lunchtime today. I heard the shift nurse reciting all of the reasons why he had been petitioned to leave the facility; difficult to get along with, constant in continance (usually five times a day – his bed is always soaked in the morning, several times a day his pants are dripping through his wheelchair and leaving a large puddle on the floor. He refuses to acknowledge or admit that it is he who is leaving puddles on the floor, or that his pants are wet), he has constant edema, refuses to take his medication, he often assaults the CENA staff for no reason … so the facility made an effort to get him some appropriate help,


Apparently the hospital didn't want him in their facility either.


Basically these facilities are dumping grounds. The first facility I was at could barely disquise that they were basically in the business because they could make so much money off of residents ($7000/ month) they made sure that their clients were on average 80 years of age and usually were of such a diminished mental capacity that they were not bound to have enough mental ability to offer too much obstruction to the facility's wishes.


This facility seems to be willing to take in anybody but there is not so much offered much above a pretty low level of stimulation or occupying activities. What is available for involvement is best covered by television, which is often insulting on its own, but makes a lot of head way in insulting most everyone's senseof self. There are Uno turnaments and discussion of current events – not much deeper than repeating the national headlines. Sometimes there is an outside activity that revolves around a simple quiz game. It is very easy and even though I wait respectfully for anyone else to answer first, most of the other respondents quickly look to me to complete the unanswered statement and then agree that was the answer with big smiles at achieving success. It is polite that most of these folks are so delightful toward one another, but there isn't a lot of challenge to be had.


There seems to be little in the way of anything to rise to meet as a stimulating situation and yet the staff does seem interested in trying to find something for me to do, they have not hit any big possibilities yet.


Meanwhile, I have no further movement on the blood pressure medicine front, my next door neighbor is unusually quiet as I am about to drop off, I had a chest X-ray taken while I was in bed by the mobile X-ray technitian at 9:30 PM (apparently someone upstream of me decided that for some reason I needed a chest X-ray – 2 views, as if on top of other things I might have pneumonia or something making my lungs full – my breathing is clear and free-flowing, I have no clues what they may be looking for).


Oh well, tomorrow is another day in this endless paradice. Lets see what comes up in that. Pass this URL along if you feel others might find disbelief in the events of my day. Its all true, happening every day.