The cost of hospital stay has risen so astronomically that the preferred method for treatment is to get you in and out of the hospital ASAP; i.e., baby delivery used to require a five day stay, now only one day. Twenty years ago, hip replacement required 10 days, now only three.
To make up for that difference, you are under the care of nursing staff (visiting nurses, home health care nurses) approximately twice a week. They show up with all their high tech gadgets, measure your vitals and report these back to the appropriate doctors. Technically, these nurses are there for home-bound patients, so their range of services could be very wide.
These nurses are competent, pleasant and a welcome break in your day. Usually the first time you see a nurse-evaluator who determines what level of care you need, then you see a regular RN twice a week.
From a technological standpoint, these nurses are far advanced from what hospitals use. Each one carries a PDA upon which they write notes that in turn are automatically synched to all other PDAs carried by their service and any of the appropriate doctors.
Time for an editorial……In my case, the medical community are just ballistic when you take a blood thinner like coumadin. (I will expound on this at great length in the future but the bottom line is to avoid taking coumadin at all costs.)
Two final comments about HHC nurses, (1) they are programmed like robots to give you standard answers and never give you an opinion, and (2) HHC nurses and nurses in general are perhaps the greatest source of selecting good and bad medical doctors. How you get this information out of them is a real art. So take a nurse to lunch – make a nurse a friend.
Oh yes, we made a private sale of our old blue van so we will not have to juggle three vans in our garage and driveway any more.
When I sleep, Judy sleeps. Good plan.
Dictated by Larry (Attila the Hun)
To Judy the Motivator (Nag)
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