Keeping Warm

These were first things I saw when the cab pulled into my driveway when I arrived home from the hospital.  Frank, my next-door neighbor, had covered the tips of all of his torch cactus with styrofoam cups to protect them from the overnight cold.

We are often warned to cover sensitive plants when the temperature gets near or below the freezing mark.  I never think to cover my torch cactus.  Perhaps I should. 

I arrived home from the hospital at 8:15 pm.  I took a cab rather than have have someone drive into the city at night during the rush hour on the interstate.  It seemed like the right thing to do, and worth the cost.  I figured I could save the receipt and write it off on my taxes next year.  I was pretty ticked off when the cabbie didn't have my receipt (I had prepaid). 

The good news is that all of my tests were negative.  My heart is fine and I did not have a pulmonary embolism.  The bad news is that they never figured out what was  causing me to have the chest pain,  the numbness on the side of my face resulting in the slurred speech, the extremely low blood pressure and a few of the other symptoms.

I still occasionally experience some chest pain.  The nurse gave me a list of about eight things which could  be causing it.  I remember when you'd stay in the hospital until they got to the root of your symptoms, not simply rule out what would be the life-threatening causes then push patients out the door. 

Now, for-profit hospitals are concerned with the bottom line. When I asked for ride to get home, I was told that, "We are a for-profit hospital now and we've had to do away with the free cab vouchers," which was something I could always count on by St. Mary's Hospital.  Tucson Medical Center is the only non-profit left in the area.

The care I got the ER was great, but I was there for over eight hours, even though it was known almost immediately I would be sent upstairs.   After being cared for by the ER doctor, I never saw a doctor during the rest of my stay in the hospital.  I wasn't given my medications.  I didn't receive the anti-clotting injections every 8 hours in-patients are supposed to receive (especially heart patients).  I was never given results of blood tests or other tests, other than being told that "no news is good news" by the nurses.

It was only this morning when I looked at my lab results online that I saw that my kidneys are beginning to fail...and NO ONE TOLD ME.  My GFR has fallen into stage 4 (26)  I haven't been in that stage since 2010 when my doctor and I went into full panic mode. Now I am in full panic mode and ANGRY at this hospital for not informing or treating me.