This was my husband.

Speak to no doctor, see no doctor, hear no doctor.

Doctors did things like check prostates.

My husband could somehow intuit that his prostate was fine.

His motto was, “If I Can Pee, There’s Nothing Wrong With Me!”.

Doctors were for people with medical conditions.

Like high blood pressure or…..stuff like that.

He was right!

There wasn’t a thing wrong with his prostate….

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I had just spent the majority of my 12-hour shift wrestling, and I do mean wrestling, with a petite little woman with encephalopathy who could lift four grown men off the gurney.

Bad night.

Exhausted, I crashed around 0600.

Someone had the audacity to rouse me out of sleep around 1030. My husband had come home from the office rather early. Even attorneys have to work more than an hour a day.

A discomfort in his stomach and back had brought him home. Surprisingly, he had already taken Tylenol and Tums for the pain before waking me up.

Surprising because in 26 years of marriage, I have had to do a pharmaceutical consultation every time he required a medication. Somehow, he just could never find that Advil or Sudafed.

“What’s the use of being married to a nurse if you can’t take advantage of it?”, he would say. Once I told him that Sudafed was now a suppository. He nearly sprinted to the medicine cabinet looking for one last PO tablet!

Revenge is sweet.

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“I’m going to the ER.”

Now that woke me up.

John (hubby) described an epigastic aching discomfort. This from a man who downed a big bottle of Tums every month due to nocturnal indigestion.

He said it wasn’t indigestion and that it hurt to palpate the area.

I think I told him to stop palpating it.

In my groggy state, I asked him if he wanted me to go with him. Had I not been melatonin-ized, there would have been no question. He told me to go back to sleep and he’d wake me up when he got back.

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By 1430 I had to wake up to pick up the kids. John had not called and was not home.

I called the local hospital-with-a-trauma-center to get an update. They had just drawn his blood.

Four hours after his arrival.

Frankly, I expected them to give him a GI cocktail and send him home with Protonix. After all, that’s their standard care for chest pain, so why wouldn’t it be for abdominal pain? (/snark)

He paced in the waiting room for 90 minutes before being roomed. After vomiting on arrival, he waited a little over 2 hours hours to see a physician.

(Okay, busy ER. It happens and he’s been around me long enough to know he has to wait his turn.)

Except the pain kept getting worse. He couldn’t sit, he couldn’t stand, he couldn’t lay down. Finally, he said it was unbearable and became what we in the biz call “a squeaky wheel”.

The doctor saw him. Labs were drawn. And four hours after arrival for abdominal pain radiating to his back, he was given pain medication.

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I dropped off the kids and headed to the ER around 1600. John was gone from the room when I got there, but I was given report. He had been taken to x-ray, had been given pain medication and his blood sugar was high.

The report came from his roommate.

The nurse entered that room at least three times while John was gone and never acknowledged my presence or offered information. Hell, I didn’t need it. I could just address any questions to the other guy behind his curtain. He was very nice. He offered me an old Time magazine to pass the time.

I figured John was either getting a CT or an ultrasound and I just kept my mouth shut, waiting to see when anyone would talk to me. People treat you differently when they know you are a nurse. Turns out John had told everyone he talked to that I was a nurse.

Like anyone cared.

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John returned to his room around 1700 sedated from the Dilaudid.

I asked how his prostate was.

He didn’t appreciate the joke.

In fact, he slept through it.

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At 1900 we found out the ultrasound showed gallstones. Two hours after the test was completed. Around the same time the nurse told him his pain level couldn’t possibly be what he told her.

(Girlfriend, you do not question my husband’s pain level or I’ll kick yo’ ass….)

Sedation from pain medication does not mean you are painfree when you are roused. May I suggest an inservice on the JACHO pain scale?

So…. within 8.5 hours I witnessed a HIPPA violation and a JACHO issue.

Impressive.

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At 2100 we saw the hospitalist. He spent about 10 minutes and appropriately turfed to surgery.

At 2200 we saw the surgeon. She actually spent time going over the entire cholecystectomy surgery, including drawing a picture of the gastrointestinal tract that would have put Grey’s Anatomy to shame (the book, not the TV show).

Interestingly, she informed my husband of how she would be able to handle certain complications laparoscopically while other surgeons might resort to the “old” gallbladder incision.

No nonsense from this petite spitfire of a doc!

She told my husband, bluntly that he was a sick man. She told him, for the first time in twelve hours, that he actually had diabetes. And with his family history, he was “fooling himself” if he thought he was healthy, so he needed to get his act together.

She treated me like I was some useless appendage to be excised during surgery.

I could have kissed her.

God had spoken and She totally rocked!

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By 2250 we had a room assignment and report had been given.

My husband was not taken to his room until 0100.

FOURTEEN HOURS after his presenting to the Emergency Department.

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I had been there with my husband for seven of those hours.

I saw the ER doctor for 90 seconds. Good guy. Worked with him for awhile many years back. He had already evaluated and examined my husband prior to my arrival. I did not expect him to be wringing his hands at the bedside.

I saw the hospitalist for ten minutes.

I saw the surgeon for twenty minutes.

Nurses were present at the bedside for approximately one hour total out of the seven. Out of the three, one actually stopped to introduce himself to me and was kind enough to bring in the night nurse and introduce her to both my husband and I.

He was an LVN.

Some of the best nurses I’ve known and learned from were LVNs.

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Those are the facts.

The emotional roller coaster was poised at the top of a fifty story building paused at that brief second before it plummets to earth.

Funny, I’ve never been able to handle roller coasters.

I was about to learn.