Another hospital another déjà vu, I could sense that today’s
nurse was just another strong minded and full of presumptuous type. Nurse S
insisted on taking fluid from me or at least the so called what’s given – the clichéd
500ml. Why nurses like her refuses to just follow the chart, follow what’s been
done previously as on the worksheets sent to her, instead they all try to use
their own heads. I detest confrontation and dreading hurt their feelings, but
self preservation forced me on the battle field. By now I am too tired and have
no time for educational sessions, and asked to see the manager. She came in with
her own question and wanted to know why I only doing three hours.
There is a list of reasons for me doing just three hours,
but I only told her the one which would stop further probing, that is my
bladder couldn’t handle more than 3 hours, that I had been doing 3 hours with
zero UF goal for 4 months. After some frustrated haggling everything was
settled exactly as what it was should be which was a repeat of my last session
and many more before that. Needless to say this can’t help my blood pressure.
The tone they used was full of accusation, treating me as if I was a criminal.
Nurse S disappeared with my file, I was sure she was busy
with her literary work, recording the whole episode. For fear of being read by
me, she hided the file somewhere without putting it back to where it usually
lay which is on my table or on the machine. I knew this was true because every
hour patients’ blood pressure needed to be checked, that when another nurse
came and did everybody’s in the room except me, and she looked for my file here
and there again and again and couldn’t find it. Certainly she couldn’t ask me
where my file was, I was just sitting on the chair and going nowhere, beside that
would look unprofessional. Without my file to record things on, I missed out my
blood pressure check which I was not particularly fond of, the pumping of blood
and squeezing of my arm is not a feeling to be enjoyed. After finishing her
report nurse S did came in and checked my pressure for later hours, she only
brought along a scrap of paper to record the numbers, never the whole file. All
other patients had their files where they should be.
When dialysis was finished, she followed me to the scale and
read out the weight and encouraged me to go to the toilet. I didn’t see any
door with a toilet sigh, and she let me to the end of the dialysis unit and
opened a plain looking door without any signage on it which I suspected was
used by the stuffs. I did my thing. She then followed me back to the scale
again. My weight was 500g lighter than before toilet and 200g lighter than before
I came in today before dialysis. She was still sceptical and asked me whether I
was taking diuretic medication, which I certainly did not. And we said our good
bye.
For certain people it is not easy to have an open mind and
drop all presumption and prejudice. Most of the time, such persons do what they
do initially out of good intentions and diligence to their job and duty. Very
often they could only achieve the contrary to their desires. Certainly there
are others who do what they do simply as their duty and earn a salary. It never
occurred to them that their actions could hurt others.
A part from the above drama today is the most confusing day
for my next dialysis appointment. This morning 10:30 I got a call from mother hospital asking me if I knew where I would go next Monday. I told them that I
normally dialyse on Tuesday sequence, that today as it was Saturday I was to go
to centre D in the afternoon. They checked their roster and told me to come to
centre M next Tuesday. During dialysis today the manager at D told me I was to
come to her unit next Tuesday and I told her my morning phone call. She went
checking and told me that all sorted, I was coming to her unit. Before the day
ended, the secretary came to me and told me I had a choice to go to either M or
D on Tuesday, I don’t think they knew what they were doing. I wonder if they
can read their own roster. To play along, I choose M, at least the battle there
had been fought, and I know every nurse there. In the mean time, I just have
phone battery charged, who knows what’s going to happen on Monday or even on Tuesday
for that matter.
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