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I've been looking for some other CP/IP (Chronic/Intractable Pain) patients who would like to contribute to this site, whether one time, sporadic, or regularly. If anyone is interested, please email me at IntractablePainKills@gmail.com

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Thursday, November 14, 2013

Another ER visit

I haven't been online much lately because I've been exhausted. On Friday, my wife and I volunteered at a local dog shelter for three hours and I WAY overdid it. I missed everything we had planned on Saturday. On Sunday, we volunteered for about eleven hours, but  I made sure that I sat most of the time (not easy for me). I washed and folded laundry, except when we took the dogs to Petco, which was really easy, almost therapeutic. I felt a lot better at the end of Sunday than the end of Friday, so we planned on volunteering on Monday (didn't happen).

Yesterday, we went to the dog shelter again, but unfortunately my wife got pretty sick. She's had  a headache/migraine for days and hasn't eaten much. She was pretty dehydrated and couldn't stop vomiting, so we went to the ER. We were taken back pretty quickly because of her cardiac history, but they left her in the room without the nurse or CRNP checking on here for over AN HOUR!!! Even once the doctor ordered the IV Zofran, Toradol, and saline it took over half an hour before they gave it to her (I had to page the buses station repeatedly). The ER want even busy! They're usually at 200% capacity (patients in hallways), but they were only at 50-70% capacity.

They discharged her without her having eaten anything

The b!tch nun that came in to discharge was extremely rude when we asked for the sandwich and ginger ale that the CRNP said she could have. She got a ginger ale. I had to give her my Zofran 8mg before we left the hospital because she was discharged so quickly.

How can you discharge a nausea and vomiting patient without making sure they can keep food down? Plus, it was 1am and we didn't have want food at home that was easy to keep down, so we had to stop and buy her something on the way home.

ERs need to stop rushing patients out the door before making sure they're okay, ESPECIALLY when they don't need the bed.

I wonder if they do it to everyone. My wife has a capitated Medicaid HMO and I have Medicare Parts A&B as primary and traditional Medicaid as secondary. Has anyone else experienced this? If so, what type of insurance do you have?

She's doing better now, thanks to my Zofran (her insurance refuses to cover it). She's been sleeping ever since, except when I wake her up to take her meds.

To be completely honest, if my ER hadn't helped her, I was ready to go out and find her some cannabis so that she could eat and drink and break the cyclical vomiting cycle. She's become acidotic from this before, so I was pretty worried. Thankfully, their 2mg of IV ondansetron and 990ml of 0.9% NaCl solution (saline) helped her enough that she could keep down 16mg (8mg*2) of oral ondansetron, then some real food.

Steve