My dad was a 'throw-away'

I'm sorry but this is very hard to read. Any chance you can edit to a different font/size (no need to be obnoxious - just something more standard). Please/thank you

sorry- I copied and pasted it from another place- didn't realize how small it was!

Quote from alaur74sorry- I copied and pasted it from another place- didn't realize how small it was!

I can totally relate. You have no idea the horrible things that were said by "professional" nurses to and around my mother. They were a bit more careful around me because I had no problem calling them out on their rudeness. The good nurses helped provide my mother with the information and resources she needed to make treatment decisions. . Kudos to you for standing by your father. And best wishes for your father on his progress towards recovery.

Ok, now I've read your post. Hugs to you for this long uphill battle and keep on advocating for your Dad. Hopefully he will continue to make progress and eventually return to his own home. Best wishes

I hope that your father makes a full recovery without complications and can continue his "old life" and go on his merry way. When a doctor once told our family that my grandmother would not live at the age of 88 and we should just stop all treatment and let her die, I asked him who made him God. She still had brain function. Yes, she did recover...it was HELL for her to learn to walk again and she was angry that she had to use a walker for safety everywhere that she went. Eventually she wanted to return to her own home and live by herself. We made an agreement that if she would get lifeline and promise to be safe she could finally go home. She lived 11 years and died 4 months shy of her 100th birthday. The week before she died, I went to visit her and she said something that alerted me. She said, "You know, I've lived a long time and I'm getting tired. I think I'd like to go home now" She said that on a Saturday and the following Friday she had an AMI and died before the paramedics could get her to the hospital. I think she did it her way and on her terms. You are right, not for anyone else to decide. If it's meant to be it will happen, and all judgement should be left up to God....Sorry for your experience with calloused and uncaring health care providers, but ultimately he is surviving because he is supposed to survive and for that you can celebrate!

i hear you there. last week, an 'intensivist' who never actually laid eyes on my dad decided he was to be sent to the medical floor and out of the ICU. He had pneumonia at the time, and we had just discovered bilateral blood clots in his legs (he can't be on anti-coagulants because of his bleeding on the brain, so they ended up inserting a 'basket'). I very calmly told her that she would have to roll my dad's bed over my cold dead body. Shortly thereafter the neurologist came and shredded her transfer order, as he did not yet feel my dad was suitable for a general medical floor. It left me wondering how many patients fall through these cracks??

My grandmother was a tough lady- she didn't want to sign a DNR. When asked if she wanted us to call her priest, she replied that she didn't need him yet.I agree that nurses need to keep their opinions to themselves when it comes to patient and family choices. OP, I will keep your dad and you in my prayers, and give him a big thumbs up from this nurse, who thinks that he's awesome.

Your comments come from your emotionally distraught heart, and I can appreciate that.They do not particularly relate to nursing.Your father's "medically-induced coma", to use a lay term, was continuous sedation ordered for brain rest or some other rationale. Nurses administered that continuous sedation.I'm sorry that the interventions "mean nothing to you" and that all you've taken away from a month-long up close encounter with critical care was that you only want nurses to "advocate". We do advocate - including sometimes opening up discussion on whether or not the plan of care and the prognosis driving it need to be altered.Wishing your dad a recovery that meets his expectations.

I am sorry you are going through this and my prayers for you dad's full recovery. I experienced this with my dad although my outcome was not a good one.My Dad was 80. A work horse all his life. He had rheumatic fever when he was young and had subsequent heart damage. He had a valve repair and CABG at age 70 finally for his valves and re mapping of his coronaries. He did well......for having a bad heart. My dad finally retired at age 75 because he was forced he continued to Walk at least 3 miles a day. IN November of 2008 he started experiencing renal insufficiency fro longstanding heart/HTN issues. He began experiencing confusion. He fell in February on 2009 and was hospitalized for urinary infection. His care was poor. If I heard that we needed to recognize that my father was 80 I was going to hurt someone. I Flew in to find my dad face first in his lunch tray with a glucose of 40.....with his footies on his bedside tray/stand and dry skin all over the top, gait belt cinched around his waist. My father was a work horse and if you asked him how he was he would tell you fine even if he was holding his severed limb. His renal function deteriorated his confusion increased....his LOC decreased. I will never forget the day the dialysis tech was talking to me at the bedside and made some comment about if they had to be on dialysis they would rather be dead and that they wouldn't wish these treatment on their worse enemy. What the????? I found him with OR monitor patches after "his best bath ever" and still covered in betadine made me mad. That his IV srsg wasn't changed for several days until I complained frustrated and disappointed me.Dialysis worked he cleared wlaked around his room unassisted One day he was due treatment. The tech couldn't get the cap off the VAC cath she took two hemostats and torqued the cap.....fracturing the hub, making it now unusable. I was assured he'd be fine. He was 80 and it was the weekend...the cath could wait til Monday. His labs weren't that bad. Besides he is 80. My Dad was fine, he was a member of mensa. He walked 2 miles just days prior to admission.My Dad coded that night.......we removed him from life support the next day. I miss him everyday.

A very good reminder to all. My wishes for a full recovery for your Dad...what a man!

In response to Altra's comment:I wear both the hat of a nurse, and that of a client. And as both, my comments indeed relate to nursing. I am not new to this.He was in a medically induced coma (would you rather I use different language here?) to stop his seizures that occurred after his surgery. For reasons of brevity, I did not go into all the details, but suffice it to say this- he was in a 'medically-induced coma' for a few days. Then, they turned off the propofol. When he did not wake up at the rate that his nurses felt he 'should be waking up', he was written off. My dad does not react normally to medication. He had his specialists stumped. As I mentioned, very few of his nurses did their homework. Very few of them bothered to find out that he had been given a whopping dose of phenobarbital. In fact, one of the nurses told us he was non-responsive, his pupils were blown and we should just come and say our goodbyes. Others told us that people walk around every day on phenobarb and that nothing justified his condition. That is NOT a nurses role, no matter what. It got so bad that the neurologist actually put in the doctor's orders that no-one was to make diagnostic or prognostic comments to us at any time. It felt like we were being attacked with every shift change, I kid you not.It is insulting to me that you twisted my words into 'interventions mean nothing to me'. That is not what I said. I said the nurses 'efficiency' meant nothing to me, because it was not accompanied by any semblance of humanity. I am also offended that you would say that in a month of this encounter with critical care, all I am asking for from my dad's nurses is advocation. You cannot simplify what I have said here to mean that. What I am saying is that through this journey it is what we needed the most. It's all fine and good to be efficient, but what tends to be forgotten in these long, intense situations is the 'art' of nursing. I cannot count how many times nurses would walk into the room and perform a task without speaking to us or to my father. I am not a fool. I know that my dad was (and still might be) on the brink of death, and I have made my peace with that. Had anyone actually opened up the conversation in a kind and sensitive way I would have been willing to go there. It never came to that. His neurologist was optimistic the entire way through, and asked us to stay the course and that is what we did. We should be supported in that, regardless of our nurses opinions. Furthermore, opening up that conversation in ways such as 'the doctor ordered another EEG. Seems like overkill to me', and 'you know he's not going to survive this, right?' is not the right way, as you say so succinctly, to 'open up discussion on whether or not the plan of care and the prognosis driving it need to be altered'.thanks for your well-wishes.