Is Hospital Care An Oxymoron????

I know I should focus on the positive, but I think it is important to document this…The worst part of this whole thing was the hospital care. Now, I am not talking about the doctors. My team of doctors, Osborne, Albo and Izaddoost has been wonderful and I will highly recommend them to anyone. But…. from the time I got in the hospital I had to deal with the following: For the most part it took at least 30 minutes, sometimes more, to get a response from the nurses… I had to put up with testy responses from the caregivers… Had to ask repeatedly for ice and water… Drs I had never seen before, walked in without introducing themselves…. Dirty towels and rags left in the room and bathroom—even after repeated request to remove them… My mobile toilet seat with urine in it was left in the room. After repeated request to empty it, my sister had to do it herself …the cups with blood from the drainage tubes were left to stink up the bathroom—even after repeated request to remove them… Nurses and aides trying to measure my blood pressure from my arm—a big no-no for double mastectomy patients, even though a large sign on the wall clearly indicated that was not to be done…. Nurses tried to take blood from my arm—again a big no-no for double mastectomy patients. Remember there was a big sign on the wall with instructions… Caregivers didn’t know how to work the chair where I slept. I had to instruct one night aide each time she came in the room how to get me out of the chair to go to the bathroom. That was every two hours each night. I was in hopes that she would remember how to get me out of the chair, but she never did.  Caregivers repeatedly trying to put me back in bed, even though I said over and over it was against my doctor’s instructions… At one point I looked at my foot and it was swollen quite a bit. My sister said it was infiltrated meaning the contents of the IV were going into my tissue instead of the vein. Starting and having the IV in my foot was extremely painful. A new IV was hung when the existing IV was infiltrated. Really painful… Their was lack of informed consent from an internist, ordering IV meds for slightly low potassium without discussing with me the option of taking that medicine orally. The reasoning was the pills were too big to tolerate. I can tolerate big pills far better than the excruciating pain from the IV in my foot. Taking that medication via iv instead of orally made me stay another day. That meant putting another IV for antibiotics. At that point I broke down in tears threatening to walked out of the hospital if anything else was stuck in my foot.. After much argument and putting in a call to my doctor I got an oral antibiotic. The hospital stay was a nightmare. Don’t, I repeat don’t ever go into a hospital without a friend or family member to help you. I don’t know what I would have done without my sister there to help me.