The System

November 2, 2011

I am learning about our Health Care system.  Don’t get me wrong, the nurses, the doctors, the PSWs are all excellent.  Mistakes happen on occasion, but I’ll deal with that in a minute, but everyone is fantastic.

An issue, for example, is on weekends.  Several patients go home and they cut staff which means that the patients who need more care are the ones that are left.  With the weekend staffing, the nurses on duty are overworked.  And the problem is also made worse by the fact that some nurses call in sick on the weekends so that makes them really short staffed.  Some nurses will work a 16 hours shift which probably isn’t too good for them.  If you know anybody who is going to be going into the Health Care system, be careful who you vote for in the next election because places like Parkwood do fantastic work in rehab and I’m only on Spinal Cord Injury.  There’s also stroke, brain injury, palliative care, amputees, and there may be others that I don’t know about.  Money has to keep flowing into places like this to maintain quality care.

I am going to get a little political now, and this is only my opinion, and it’s probably the same in every hospital, I know it was in Toronto, but there are a lot of part time nurses being hired as it does save money on benefits, etc.  However, I don’t think it’s good for the nurses as they may need to get more than one part time position in other hospitals, retirement homes, or nursing homes.  It’s not that the part time people don’t do a good job, but in the long run I think there would be better patient care with full time staff.  The health Care system doesn’t really look after the individual, it looks after the condition.  For example, if you have condition “A” you get treatment “B”, and the individual may or may not be taken into consideration.  The way I see it, and again my opinion only, is that the system pays for treatment “B” and the treatment range time is quite tight.  It appears that the individual in our Health Care system is really not taken into consideration.  The system should be less administrative and more on the individual’s needs and requirements.  End of political statement.  I suppose I shouldn’t complain too much because I’m probably costing the system a great deal…thank God I’m not an American because I would have lost my house, my car, my pension…….probably lost everything and would not be getting the excellent care that I have been receiving.

PT & OT:  Again as mentioned the weekend was boring.  However, my left knee was again the centre of attention as it got bent past 90 degrees (by accident, not intent) where it hasn’t been for several years and it is even worse now that there is no muscle holding it together.  So the knee got damaged on Saturday, again Sunday and again on Tuesday.  I spoke to the doctor about my knee, and it appears the only real solution is a total knee replacement, but in the meantime I could have another shot of cortisone (probably not due to risk of infection).    The other solutions are analgesic creams, increase my pain meds.  They did decrease my time release pain meds two weeks ago from 15 mg down to 6 mg per day.  I can still have 2 mg every 2 hours as needed and I have been trying to keep them to a minimum.  But I may have to take them more regularly. The big negative is that they tried to get me to stand in a standing table today and I couldn’t do it because I’m required to straighten my knee out…..grrrrrrrrrrr.  I now have to wait until the swelling goes down and the pain goes away in the left knee before they will try to put me in the standing table again.   FYI – a standing table is a harness that goes around your  butt and they hoist you up to a standing position, with your arms resting on a table and some weight on your feet.  I think one of the problems is that I have dropfoot on my left foot which means my toes want to point to the floor and when they straighten that out in the standing table that also tends to affect my knee.  Hopefully, my knee will recover enough so I can get into the standing table next week but that will be up to my therapists.  To tell you how bad the knee really was, I missed biking today for the first time since I’ve been here. 

On the bright side, my left hand is moving more every day.  My fingers are moving much better and I can turn my hand over a little bit.  I am doing some curls but just against gravity, and I am doing some tricep exercises and shoulder adduction (that means doing a chicken wing).  And a new trick, is that I can now lean forward in my wheelchair and rest my right elbow on my right knee, and I can stay there for 45 seconds and sit back up by myself, but the OT therapist says I should be able to lean forward and stay there for 2 minutes and I should do that regularly.  I think I have maintained some of my “six pack” as my 500 crunches are now paying off a bit.  What I have to do is get my back muscles strengthened and after the attempted standing today in PT, they had me sitting up and then laying on a wedge pillow for about 25 minutes to stretch out my back and hips, note that’s lying on my back on a table with my feet on the floor.  Note:  I just bent forward and stayed there for 45 seconds…….yeehaw….and yes I do have my seatbelt on so I won’t fall out.

The goal in OT is to get me out of this reclining wheelchair so that I can get into a straight back one which will be a lot more maneuverable that the one I am presently in.  With the straight back wheelchair, the whole idea is to get me to slide out of the chair onto a bed or another chair or a commode or in and out of a car or whatever else I need to sit my butt on.  That will require considerable amount of strengthening in my right arm and my left.  It may not happen before I’m discharged so we are setting up the house for the worst case scenario that I will be in a chair and may not be able to get from the chair to the bed or whatever else I need to get onto without a lift.

The other good thing is I am being weaned off my neck brace.  It will probably be gone by the weekend.  I just use it now for being transferred from bed to wheelchair and vice versa or when I am being rolled.  I keep it on in physio but it comes off for OT. 

I lost my roommate yesterday and I have now moved over to the window bed so I will now have a view of the City of London which I think may help my claustrophobia as well.

I really would like to thank all the visitors who came to see me, and in particular Grandpa Bob and Linda Roberts who come to look after me and give Darcy a rest…..and believe me, she needs a rest.

Today was a gorgeous day and I was able to get outside for about a half hour.  The sunshine was beautiful and Stephanie’s blanket kept me nice and warm.