#medical incompetence
I suppose you’re all wondering how my surgery went? Welp, it didn’t. The tl;dr is that they needed a special part that didn’t arrive in time and they’ve rescheduled me for September 22.
So like, basically they needed a special part for me because I’m a complicated case - it’s a replacement of a 1997 replacement and I have a femur rod in from breaking my femur years back and my original replacement was locked in there with cement, so it’s a complicated situation - & they had to order the special part, but like because of the holiday weekend, it didn’t arrive in time. But they thought it would, so I did the whole no food & drink thing, no pain pills, anxious mess, little sleep, showed up in my pajamas, waited curled up on 2 little chairs that were pushed together because I hurt too much to sit up, in a very cold waiting room, that’s like literally in a hallway, like their pre op waiting room is just a bunch of chairs in the main hallway, three hours before they called me back, where I then changed into a gown, started answering all their questions, had to use a Hoyer lift to get onto the bed because for some reason Ortho Surgery doesn’t have stretchers that drop low enough for wheelchair transfers even though they have all *Ortho* patients, which then the Hoyer lift caught my bad leg and the nurse had to twist it loose and it hurt so much and then another nurse came a minute later, and not having seen what had just happened, also grabbed my leg and started wrenching me around while the first nurse was like, “no, don’t do that!” but too late, and then the dr came and was like, “bad news” but the last time he said those words to me minutes before I was to be wheeled back to surgery it was to cancel so I was like, “WHAT WHY” and then I was like, “ok just go away then, I can’t even right now, I’m so hungry, tired, in pain,” and the nurse ran a off and came back with a big ol plastic bag filled with crackers, chips, pudding, applesauce, sodas like I had just robbed a vending machine. And I came home and ate and slept and cried and slept some more. And drank water, oh god so much delicious water. It’s the worst part about being NPO is the no water part. I’ve been rescheduled for September 22.
So I get to spend 2 more weeks in severe pain. And that’s like, Chronic Pain Sufferer’s *severe pain*, not just any ol pansy level of pain either, cuz my tolerance is high and I’m still over here whining like a pussy. I know they had me come in and everything because they thought it would arrive in the mail that day, but like, if they knew they had to order a special part, on a holiday weekend, like I don’t care how bad off my hip is that they felt they had to rush my surgery, they shoulda never tried to fit me in when they knew they had to special order a part on a holiday weekend. I can’t believe I have to go through all that pre op shit and the psychological prep in my head like all over again. If this is how the U of M - one of the top hospitals in the whole country, that people come from all over, from like other countries even, to have surgeries there - if this is how completely non-professional they act, what the fuck are other hospitals like?
