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accurate transcriptions, brother, caregiving, elderly parents, family, father, health, health care facilities, home, hospital infections, hospitals, Kessler East Orange, Kessler West Orange, love, mother, physical therapy, post-surgical rehabilitation, responsibility, Rory Staunton, sepsis, siblings, sisters, surgical rehabilitation, The July Effect, twenty four hours
(The following is excerpted from my memoir-in-progress, Missing Dad. All conversations recounted here are accurate transcriptions, made at the time they occurred. All incidents described here are accurately reconstructed from contemporaneous notes and emails. No names were changed. There are no innocent people to protect.)
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Nancy, Chris and Grant arrive at Dad’s at around noontime on Saturday. They settle into the upstairs bedroom where they usually stay.
Dad, Walter, Janet, Chris, Nancy, and Grant go to Kessler East to see Mom. They find her in the physical therapy room, asleep in her wheelchair. Her hair is dirty. They can barely rouse Mom, who is still wearing the clothes she was wearing when she was admitted. The therapy aide says, “Oh, she is just tired from the move”, and leaves.
Chris is standing over Mom, his hands on her shoulders, while they all wait for someone to get Mom back to her bed. He notices a bad odor coming from Mom.
“Nancy, I think Mom needs a bath.”
They mention this to the nurses. They try to get someone to shampoo Mom’s hair, in case the odor is coming from there. But it is late, and the shampoo person does not have the time.
An aide comes to move Mom back to her bed. Mom’s dinner arrives, they all stay to make sure she eats (she does, a bit). They all leave to go back to Dad’s.
They go to church, share some dinner, play a couple of games of Uno, watch a little television, and then to bed. Hopefully, tomorrow will be a better day. It will be Nancy’s birthday.
(Continued tomorrow, with the events of Sunday, July 17th 2005)
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THANKS!
CKSWarriorQueen 
I am riveted, Claudia. Your story is so sad, and I can’t stop reading it!
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Muddy, the story gets sadder. Fair warning.
Thank you for reading, and for thank you for the compliment.
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Can’t wait to read your book when it’s done! I googled a bit more to learn about this July Effect that I’d never heard of. Apparently, it is only present in teaching hospitals. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2896592/ this study is very clear about the findings. It is nevertheless a cautionary tale about how even the things that should go smoothly can go wrong… it has to be so frustrating knowing it could have been prevented.
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Thank you, April. The worst thing was the total lack of even the most basic patient care at Kessler East Orange. At the time of my mother’s admission, this was one of the top five spinal rehabilitation hospitals in the entire USA. How could they not have even changed her clothing from Friday evening through Sunday morning? My mother was in their care for more than thirty-six hours and the staff neglected her terribly.
If it had been up to me, I would have gone after them legally. Only my father had the legal standing to do so, and he didn’t want to pursue it. All of us agreed to abide by his wishes, but had he passed before the statute of limitations lapsed, we would have reconsidered.
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