Catholic Health Partners
Patient Survey
My uncle, James Turk, asked that I fill this out for him since he has almost no memory of his stay in the hospital.
He is a widower of only a year and lost his wife in that same hospital to cancer almost a year to the day he was to have surgery that could have been minor, or very major. And upon entrance to the hospital he did not know which it would be.
I am his niece, 57 years of age, and I was with him for most of the 8 days he was in the hospital. He has almost no recollection of that either. We have written up our experience because I wanted him to know he didn't go through it alone, and also there were times I felt very uneasy leaving him alone because of some of the events that took place.
I spent most of every day with him from 11 until around 5, sometimes later. I called in the evening to make sure he was doing okay. At no time did HE know what was going on. And at times I had a difficult time finding that out myself.
He spent all but the last night in ICU. His room looked like it was a warehouse for extra equipment, I'm not sure how much of it was used in his care.
He is a quiet man who doesn't complain, and seldom even raises a question when it comes to the medical profession. He had been through 5 years of a medical nightmare with his wife before she died. I know my frequent questions to the staff and his doctors unnerved him at times but I had no idea what his real condition was. This was partly because he does not complain, but also because he was very frightened by what was taking place inside his head.
A few hours before he was to check out of the hospital I made some comments to the nurse who was doing final procedures before his release. She explained more to us than had been stated in the previous 7 days of confusion and concern on both our parts. What my uncle was terrified of was caused by the morphine and not a symptom of some brain malfunction as he feared.
When a person is seriously sick, and taking heavy medications for pain, they have no idea what reality is. And they also are unable to defend themselves against mistakes, or carelessness. They are a victim of the quality of care on duty at that time. While most of the time I could say he got good care, what he never had (therefore what I never had) was peace of mind.
And when he was released he was barely able to function. He had had lung surgery on a malignant tumor that was small, and also an exploratory surgery to discover what the reason was for his lack of proper oxygenation. His weakened condition prior to the surgery, his surgery just three weeks prior to implant a stent to make his heart road-ready for this upcoming surgery, and now this major surgery resulted in the doctors being concerned that he even survive the next few days.
Knowing this I felt responsible for keeping him alive until he could fight for his own life. He has survived two prior life-threatening illnesses so I never doubted his ability to pull through. But because he was so fearful of what was happening to him that he could not understand nor explain it to me, I believed he might die from fear.
My point in this letter is that your survey assumes the patient is well enough to know what went on. Since he has almost no memory of the experience and I believe that is partly because he was so consumed with worry that he had brain damage. All this could have been prevented with a little more understanding on the part of the entire hospital staff that even though a person is drugged and in some altered state of consciousness, there is still that small part of us that recognizes the truth when it's spoken. And it is that truth that a person hangs on to.
There were also a multitude of things that I believed could have been life-threatening..... his call button on the floor under his bed and his oxygen mask had been disconnected by mistake. Since he was in for a serious condition to his lungs, and compounded that with cancer surgery, his call button, and also his oxygen mask were vital to his survival. These are the things that made me very uneasy about leaving him unattended.
Immediately after his surgery, and as soon as he was able to speak without gasping he said: This is what I have been waiting for for five whole months! It was a HMO nightmare for him.
And what seemed to have made all the difference in his health, mental and physical and spiritual was a call he made to his doctor's office a few days after the surgery. He was talking to the nurse and mentioned the portable oxygen tank that had been his constant companion for the past month. The Nurse matte-of-factly told him "you don't need that thing all the time!" He hung up the phone, put the tank in the corner for use only when he was out and if needed, and he began getting better. He did his breathing exercise with vigor and the realization that he had it within his power to get better.
Why did it take five months of referrals, tests, pre-op surgeries, an 8-day hospital surgical stay that actually worsened his condition and weakened him, to find out that he was in much better shape than the medical profession led him to believe.
Nothing he got in a bottle, or via a machine, or on an operating table did him as much good as that nurse who told it to him straight that he was "fit" to live a good life.
I'm not a religious person, however, the "miracle cures" of scripture parallel with happened to my uncle. That nurse, and Jesus both used the same kind of magic words: "pick up your mat and walk!"
I realize we as a society have done this to ourselves through all our litigation. But it sure seems to me as if the medical profession is more likely to kill you with their tests and perscriptions than cure you. This one nurse with her strong and reassuring words, I believe saved my uncle's life.
Barbara Garrison for
James R. Turk