Oxygen part 7

Yesterday afternoon we got a call from cousin Connie - she was at the hospital and Marie was having trouble staying awake. I was about to leave the office for the hospital, so both Candas and I arrived within a few minutes. I got there first.

The room was dark - once again no-one had thought to turn on the light. Or maybe the staff thought it best Marie rest. She had been down for more x-rays. She'd been retaining fluid, and when they inserted the catheter she had an extra litre of urine in her bladder. She had been too tired to tackle her lunch, but the Kangaroo machine was hooked up and she was getting 40 ml/hr of the Pulmocare.

Marie would struggle to say something, and then fall sleep. Her body was twitchy, but she seemed unable to fight the drowsiness. I turned on the light. Connie had already checked the oxygen connections, and the level had been boosted. Staff were checking her vitals every 2 hours - and they were looking pretty good compared to two weeks ago.

Candas arrived, and Marie gradually became more alert.

It seems her roommate, the wanderer, had had a very busy night. Wandering around, talking to visitors (which might have been the guard). Marie couldn't stay asleep. Then the bladder scan, the x-rays, and the catheterization.

The Medi-Vac pump still has the scummy liquid in it from when Marie's esophagus was being suctioned about 3 weeks ago. We've asked the staff about this before - and they told us that someone is supposed to come and add a solidifying agent to the waste before it is disposed of. We expressed our concern that this stuff seemed to be breeding some kind of mold, and we were told it was completely sealed and it would be fine until someone could get to it.

Today I took a closer look. The level of the liquid inside was about 250 ml. A bit milky, with something grayish floating on the top. You can see a pinkish scummy line where the liquid used to reach - and I wondered how it could be evaporating if it was sealed. All but one of the holes on the top were capped with red plastic. The remaining hole was not capped, but it had the suction tube attached - about 6 feet of clear plastic tubing that fell down, looped back up, and then hung dangling over the floor. The tube is not capped. So, in fact, this container is NOT sealed.

We asked the nurse again about getting this removed, and again we were told about the solidifying agent and that it wasn't the nurses' job but someone would get to it. I did not want to make a fuss about the fact that it was NOT sealed - not in front of the patient.

Marie was chuckling about waste. Apparently she'd had a linen change at he end of one shift, followed by a linen change at the beginning of the next shift - two changes in about half an hour. She tried to tell them it had already been done...