Dad had open heart surgery for a leaky mitral valve. Mortality stats for this surgery is 0.5%. After the surgery we were placed into the miscare of recovery center nurses and doctors whose favorite phrases were ''he's doing fine" and ''there's nothing to worry about" and "I don't know:" On day 1 we had a neighbor who was both disrespectfully loud and smelled of feces. It took lots of urging to get another room. Days 2 through 4 my dad's condition deteriorated as a result of one of the nurses or doctors OD'ing him on a powerful pain med called Percocet. He was given two pills, twice. This would be fine for a person who is 6ft, 180+ lb, but Dad is 4' 8" and a hair over 100lb. He was sick for two days as a result. Yesterday he complained of feeling "thin" because they had been taking a lot of his blood. Today he broke out in a cold sweat, felt dizzy, nauseous, had no appetite, was coughing up yellow phlem, and his heartrate shot to 98 from 80 and his blood pressure dropped to around 75/55. Still, the nurses and doctors said he would be fine.
But something was up. My mom constantly complained and they finally gave him an Echocardiogram. He had been bleeding internally and the cavity around the heart had been filling with fluid this entire time. They rushed him to intensive care where Dad started feeling very cold as we waited for surgery. Then his blood pressure dropped to 69/50 and they immediately rushed him into the OR and now Mom and I are waiting for the results.
If it were not for the constant pestering of the nurses and doctors, they never would have given him that echocardiogram. Dad could very well have passed away in the night because his blood pressure is only measured once every 4 hours, and that precipitous drop in his blood pressure happened within an hour.
I find it amazing that at such a world class hospital something like this could slip under the noses of those recovery center employees.
UPDATE:
Dad is fine. They drained 1 entire LITER of blood from the cavity around his heart. Obviously, he was given additional blood. The operation went well. They had to open up his existing chest incision a bit to drain the fluid, and now his blood pressure is back to normal. He's back in intensive care and he won't be coming back to conciousness until tomorrow afternoon. So the nurses and doctors in the recovery ward managed to miss profuse internal bleeding. It was not until my mom urged they immediately check his blood pressure when they finally did, and realised it was so low that they couldn't even get a reading. Then they ordered the echocardiogram, then he went immediately to intensive care. While on the bed my dad told me to look after myself and my mom. He was feeling cold all over and no amount of heat or insulation was helping.
UPDATE:
The nurses in the ICU are absolute shit. They do not pay attention to what's going on, their measurement styles are sloppy, they ignore my dad when he's trying to speak to them, and they are away from his bed 95% of the time and only come back to refill his IV or when an alarm has been beeping for a couple minutes. It's like they expect the machines to do their job for them. All they ever do are spot checks of his current condition, and do not take into account any kind of trends or history or case-by-case situations, always comparing his results to some kind of average.
My dad is not the average. He is quite small. He responds worse to basically anything that is done to him compared to a full sized person. My family and I noticed that his blood pressure was steadily dropping over a period of a few hours, but the nurse doesn't realise this because she only does spot checks. She simply sees each instance as still OK, but doesn't realize that over time his pressure has been steadily going from really OK to less and less OK.
Now my dad just went into Atrial Fibrillation in which his heart is going 100+ bpm. He's had this before, but this time it feels different. It feels like it's hitting harder. Before it was simply a fluttering. The nurses don't care. All they want to do is give him medicine. I'm worried that all this rapid movement of the heart could make his heart wound open up again, which is what caused his severe internal bleeding in the first place.
His vision is also getting weird. He says it feels like he's seeing everything from behind a mirror. This is making me worry because now it sounds like it's getting neurological. The nurse just goes "Oh... ok. Well, you look fine."
But something was up. My mom constantly complained and they finally gave him an Echocardiogram. He had been bleeding internally and the cavity around the heart had been filling with fluid this entire time. They rushed him to intensive care where Dad started feeling very cold as we waited for surgery. Then his blood pressure dropped to 69/50 and they immediately rushed him into the OR and now Mom and I are waiting for the results.
If it were not for the constant pestering of the nurses and doctors, they never would have given him that echocardiogram. Dad could very well have passed away in the night because his blood pressure is only measured once every 4 hours, and that precipitous drop in his blood pressure happened within an hour.
I find it amazing that at such a world class hospital something like this could slip under the noses of those recovery center employees.
UPDATE:
Dad is fine. They drained 1 entire LITER of blood from the cavity around his heart. Obviously, he was given additional blood. The operation went well. They had to open up his existing chest incision a bit to drain the fluid, and now his blood pressure is back to normal. He's back in intensive care and he won't be coming back to conciousness until tomorrow afternoon. So the nurses and doctors in the recovery ward managed to miss profuse internal bleeding. It was not until my mom urged they immediately check his blood pressure when they finally did, and realised it was so low that they couldn't even get a reading. Then they ordered the echocardiogram, then he went immediately to intensive care. While on the bed my dad told me to look after myself and my mom. He was feeling cold all over and no amount of heat or insulation was helping.
UPDATE:
The nurses in the ICU are absolute shit. They do not pay attention to what's going on, their measurement styles are sloppy, they ignore my dad when he's trying to speak to them, and they are away from his bed 95% of the time and only come back to refill his IV or when an alarm has been beeping for a couple minutes. It's like they expect the machines to do their job for them. All they ever do are spot checks of his current condition, and do not take into account any kind of trends or history or case-by-case situations, always comparing his results to some kind of average.
My dad is not the average. He is quite small. He responds worse to basically anything that is done to him compared to a full sized person. My family and I noticed that his blood pressure was steadily dropping over a period of a few hours, but the nurse doesn't realise this because she only does spot checks. She simply sees each instance as still OK, but doesn't realize that over time his pressure has been steadily going from really OK to less and less OK.
Now my dad just went into Atrial Fibrillation in which his heart is going 100+ bpm. He's had this before, but this time it feels different. It feels like it's hitting harder. Before it was simply a fluttering. The nurses don't care. All they want to do is give him medicine. I'm worried that all this rapid movement of the heart could make his heart wound open up again, which is what caused his severe internal bleeding in the first place.
His vision is also getting weird. He says it feels like he's seeing everything from behind a mirror. This is making me worry because now it sounds like it's getting neurological. The nurse just goes "Oh... ok. Well, you look fine."
