Dale, sorry to hear about your bad experience at the hospital. We can thank the California Nurses' Association for the lower quality of care in our hospitals. A number of years ago, they came up with this formula to determine how many patients one nurse could care for. Well, it spread across the U.S. and is used in all hospitals. Well, not all patients are created equal as some require more care than your other patients, and someone always gets short-changed on the care. It's almost like you need someone staying with you to be your advocate any more. I think in Dan's case, it was more a case of laziness on the part of his nurse, and yes, there are lazy nurses out there, just do what they can to get by and collect their checks, because they're well aware of the nation-wide nursing shortage. Things to watch for is nurses using sterile technique when changing dressings, doing dressing checks at least every 2 hrs, just in case one incision is still oozing, as Dan's was, and had soaked that dressing. I should have caught that earlier as it would have been really bad had an infection gotten hold as he is diabetic. Trust me, both the night supervisor and the on-coming day supervisor spoke with me, and said they would be making a written report. Dan just happened to get a lazy male nurse, and the floor didn't even have that many patients, so no excuse.
BTW, Dr. Ramos was named one of the top surgeons in the U.S. in 2008! God was watching over Dan when he first went to see him in 2004, as we had no idea how good a surgeon or how bad, for that matter, he might be. But, a woman came into the waiting room while we were there, and I got to talking to her about Dr.Ramos, and she assured me that he was excellent. Sure made me feel better, and especially after meeting him as he's so thorough. Thank you all for your good wishes, and will keep y'all updated
The biggie now is for him to loose weight, like about 50 lbs, as that will really make it easier on his back. He's always had a weight problem, until he was diagnosed with diabetes, started counting carbs, lost the weight and was doing great, until the holidays came around. It's been downhill since then
as far as his weight goes. But, we'll gitter done, LOL!