A Few Reasons I'm So Afraid For Mother

The space allowed for text on this page is limited, so I’m listing just some of what Mom has needlessly suffered in hospitals since September 2007. I will write in detail about every one of these things, plus more, as time goes on.

· Both hips were broken during the first 25 minutes in ICU, which left her with contracted legs and doomed her forever bed bound in the same position. She was also left with an unidentified object in the bladder area that shows on none of her old x-rays. They sent her home to die with hospice in tow, and without my knowing about her hips since I was ignorant of what contracted legs indicated. She survived.
· She came home from one hospital stay with her legs bound from the knees to the ankles with over ¼’ thick gauze to protect all the skin tears that resulted from being gripped too firmly. She also had a blood blister that hung almost ½’ under one knee, caused by the same reason. I liked to have never got them all healed.
· She contacted sepsis during one hospital visit and surprisingly survived after intensive antibiotic treatment.
· It takes weeks after almost every hospital stay to heal the chaffing on her bottom that results from hurried and improper cleansing, and from not being cleaned often enough. They will not let me clean her.
· She is constantly overdosed on sedatives to keep her quiet, even given medications that I’ve told them she has adverse reactions to. She is hypersensitive to medications and overdoses easily, which shuts down her respiratory system.
· She is always given soy-based products through her feeding tube even though I tell them she is soy intolerant and bring her products from home. That causes her untold stomach discomfort.
· She is constantly overdosed on sedatives to keep her quiet, even given medications that I’ve told them she has adverse reactions to. She is hypersensitive to medications and overdoses easily, which shuts down her respiratory system.
· Someone always causes pain in her hips and legs due to improper handling when turning her. They will also attempt to spread her legs, which is painful and dangerous. I always offer to show them how to turn her or clean her, but they don’t appreciate it nor follow my advice. They could easily do more damage to the fractures.
· She pulled out her capped front teeth that went from eyetooth to eyetooth during the middle of the one night out of eight that I came home to sleep during her last hospital stay. They found them on her pillow that morning. When I arrived, her gums were swollen, her mouth was full of blood, and dried blood coated three of her fingers. She could have choked on blood, or teeth for that matter, and they never would have known. Can you imagine how that hurt and how frightened she was? And all alone.
· She gets her mouth cleaned and freshened once a day if she’s lucky. Her mouth coats from Gerd and swallowing what’s there can cause stomach infections.
· Her feeding tube is never flushed, which means she’s shorted on the water her body needs.
· She is fed soft foods she shouldn’t eat because her diet is limited to foods that won't aggravate her Gerd or IBS, even though I repeatedly explain her diet. More discomfort.
· They yell when they say something to her, even when she’s sleeping. She can hear a pin drop. They terrify her, which can bring on a manic attack.

This is a mere drop in the bucket of what she’s suffered along the way at the hands of others. They are all true and verifiable, at least the more serious incidents. The others are things I've witnessed and happened even though I stayed around the clock with her almost every day she was hospitalized. Can you imagine what can happen in a nursing home?