I always tried to be there when the doctors made their rounds for the day. That is usually quite early in the morning, but each doctor is different. That way I knew how things were going. I also did as much personal care for Joe as I could, given his situation at the time. Once he was unhooked from tubes, etc. I could give him his bedbath and help him with other personal things. You will know instinctively when there is something you have to watch out for, and who you have to keep an eye on.
Most nurses and nurse aides are terrific, but there are some occasional loo-loos who don't have a handle on things, or really don't know what they are doing. And they have the potential to harm someone.
A couple of outstanding dingbats I remember, was an aide, who was actually doing the nursing care for the post surgical cardiac patients. I have no clue where his nurse went during this time, but it left ONE RN for a whole floor of cardiac patients and this weird aide.
She was extremely "tired" or something, leaning on doorways and closing her eyes, and walking very slowly. She was supposed to take Joe for his first walk after valve surgery. He was a day from the ICU, on Percocet and on oxygen. So, in she comes, grabs his oxygen line about 10 feet from from the wall plug (to get it loose so she could attach it to the portable oxygen tank) and gives it a yank. It boomeranged around both Joe and I. Quite amazing.
Then she looked at Joe who was in la-la land and said, "OK, now get up!" Never offered him her hand, never did anything to steady him, and he was not even coherent. It was a broken hip waiting to happen. I stopped her and told her to get lost and not come back. Then I flagged down the only nurse available who was stressed out to beat the band and asked her to help. She got right up into my face and asked me why I had a problem with aides handling patients. She told me that they had all been trained in a Nursing Home setting and knew what they were doing. Couldn't believe it!
I had a meeting with the Head Nurse on that one.
Another time, when Joe had a massive bleedout (not from heart surgery.) and was going through dressings right and left, had 33 units of blood products to try to stop the bleed and keep him in this world, there was the lazy night nurse. This was an RN. He decided that he didn't want to be bothered changing Joe's dressings during the night, so he found some of those small bed pads and packed them around Joe's bleeding incision. Then at the change in shifts, in the morning, he told the next nurse that the bleeding had slowed down considerably. Fortunately, I came in right about that time, and saw the sloppy looking wad of stuff. I opened it up and found tons of blood, told the new nurse and also the doctor who was starting to round. Joe could have died from that one.
Then there was a time when Joe had serum sickness, and could not move any of his joints. His body was frozen and they let him sit upright in a wheelchair for several hours. He could not move at all, and there was no doctor in sight. He also had not urinated in about 6 hours, since he had lost kidney function. I threw a fit and insisted that SOMEONE come in to examine him, and I didn't care who did it. So a Nurse Manager came and told the aides to get him onto the bed so he could be examined. Four of them tried lifting him, and then they dropped him. Fortunately, he wasn't harmed. But my God, can you imagine! After the examination, he was transferred to the ICU where he stayed for a couple of weeks.
So, when people tell you to keep an eye on things, it's situations like this that make you very, very vigilant. You can't know what could possibly happen. Just be aware, be there as much as you possibly can and when you have to, be vocal.
By the way, there have also been roomates of Joe's who have had things happen, like falling out of bed, starting profuse bleeding (again, not heart surgery related), having massive bowel accidents that needed immediate attention, and I was able to alert the nursing staff when these patients could not talk, ring the bell or when the nurses didn't respond.
