Recovering

First of all, welcome back! Glad to hear of your recovery, and looking forward to your posts.

Your experience with the American medical system recapitulates my experience and that of my friends'. A dozen years ago when helping a friend who was dying of AIDS, I learned that every patient needs an advocate: someone who can ask questions, actively track down information, help make decisions about medical care. No person sick enough to be hospitalized can handle these responsibilities.

After my friend's death I sent a fruit basket to each of the three nursing staffs. They deserved a token of appreciation for their work. My friend's physician--once I had a legal medical power of attorney--was also wonderful.

One Sunday morning when the visiting nurse thought that my friend was dying, she talked with the physician managing care, who recommended that my friend be moved to the hospital for tests. I wouldn't agree, because transporting him was always traumatic for him. I refused to agree until I talked with my friend's own physician--who called me when he returned home from church.

My friend--alas!--died a week later. And as sad as that end was, I at least could console myself that I had done for him what he could never have done for himself.

Dear Greg: So glad you are on the mend, and doing much better! Have missed your pithy and insightful online comments :-) Ms. AM caught me up on your health saga...good fodder for a different sort of book!

Greetings, Deborah

Thanks, Deb. I think I'll pass on writing that book! It'd degenerate pretty quickly into a rant. But I'd love to see a book on the subject by a management expert.

I've missed your posts! Glad you're back.

I would love to hear your thoughts on Gene Weingarten's article in Sunday's Washington Post magazine about Joshua Bell performing in a DC metro station. Have you seen it?

Hi, Margo. Thanks for the good wishes!

I haven't read the piece, but I've certainly heard a lot about it. One thing we might not know is how much attention anyone on the street might get. Are there studies of this, by sociologists? Street musicians, in any case, have been so common over the last few decades that they often don't get much attention. I've heard astounding performances in the New York subway, for instance, with no one standing around listening. Good street musicians really aren't uncommon, and if Josh is, obviously, better than good (a lot better), this doesn't mean that many people passing by would notice that. Probably you'd have to hear concert violinists a lot to immediately understand that his is world-class playing.

Greg,

So sorry about your ordeal and glad you are back.

Sadly, I finally figured out the problem with hospitals (and Emergency Rooms) long ago: they are all like the military: Badly , full of "pork," or worse.

They communicate with you on a "need to know basis"; change orders at random; order you around; dictate when you have which procedures; and, generally, scare the "sh**" out of you.

Unlike you, I had better luck with nurses than interns/residents---who generally know almost nothing (certainly less than a lot of experienced nurses), and they can kill you faster.

Welcome home.

P

Thanks, Paula. Good analogy, hospitals and the military. The same idea occurred to me, though since I've never been in the military, I'm not speaking from direct experience. Still, I kept thinking of the line people keep using to describe military life: "Hurry up and wait." I had a fair amount of that in the hospital.

Greg, it's good to see you back. I'm glad you survived both your accident and the system.

There are groups working on the problems you saw, but I'm sure that's a hard process that has far to go, as we've seen in the news and in what you've experienced. http://content.healthaffairs.org/cgi/reprint/21/3/80.pdf and http://www.leapfroggroup.org/ are a couple of pointers into that work.

Take care, and get through your recovery posthaste!

Greg, Again, welcome back, my friend and fellow victim of the collapsing American medical system. I am forwarding this - your post and my comment - to my resident Florence Nightingale and wife of almost forty years, Kimberly. She is preparing to write a letter to all the culprits - for now but not for long they will remain nameless - demanding some satisfaction for the shoddy post-operative and subsequent at-home follow up that I failed to receive after a fall and multiple fracture of my right leg. Yours in misery!
Rafael