Coordinating What is Needed To Come Home

15 years 10 months ago #16966 by momof4
Replied by momof4 on topic Coordinating What is Needed To Come Home
Hi Julie,

We also have the Tempur-pedic Mattress (not electric). I love it. Angelo loves it...more importantly. It is so important to us to stay in the same bed. The kids like to come in and snuggle with me, and watch TV with their Daddy...I hope we can avoid the hospital be a little longer....

Thanks,
Karen

Caregiver for my Wonderful Husband Angelo, who has Metastatic Bladder Cancer.

Life isn't about how to survive the storm, but how to dance in the rain.

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15 years 10 months ago #16962 by Julie
Replied by Julie on topic Coordinating What is Needed To Come Home
Karen, We bought an electric bed last year as Dick has to have both his head and feet elevated. We bought a queen size bed and mattress as a king size is too large for our bedroom. The nice thing about the king size was that you could adjust each side separately. Now I have to adapt to Dick's need to have the feet elevated because of his lymphedema. This was a much better solution for us as all the hospital beds are much too high for my 5'5" spouse with short legs. He likes to have his feet on the floor when he gets out of bed instead of having to stretch to reach the floor. We got ours with a Temperpedic mattress and love the memory foam. Julie

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15 years 10 months ago #16956 by Patricia
Replied by Patricia on topic Coordinating What is Needed To Come Home
Ok this should make everyone their own advocate or have someone like Karen with them!!!

Serious injuries associated with medication errors reported to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration increased from about 35,000 in 1998 to nearly 90,000 in 2005, according to a report published in the Archives of Internal Medicine. Of those cases, more than 5,000 deaths were tallied in 1998, but in 2005 more than 15,000 deaths were reported.
a story from the LA Times.......www.latimes.com/features/health/la-me-twins22nov22,0,7788746,full.story?coll=la-home-center
I don't have the 2005 to 2008 stats!!...........Pat

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15 years 10 months ago #16950 by momof4
Replied by momof4 on topic Coordinating What is Needed To Come Home
I spoke with the patient coordinator, and we will have everything that we need for him to come home tomorrow. After a few mix-ups...of course...he was almost discharged tonight....on the wrong meds!!!!!UGGHH!!!!!!(that requires a whole other post...I swear I feel so sorry for people who don't know to look into all of these things. He would have been getting so many contradictory meds I would have probably killed him, had I not known better...I asked for the sheet with all of the WRONG information on it, and almost had a tug of war with it until I won...LOL...At least I know what he is supposed to be on...

We will be hopefully setting up the radiation for later in the morning, and he will get medical transport daily for the remaining 9 treatments.

This evening he was up walking with the walker, and would not accept help (yeah). He seems more stable on his feet and has gotten a little more independent. I am thrilled.

Pat, you are so right about the hospital bed...he is really looking forward to coming home to his own bed, and hopefully getting a good nights sleep with no beeping, and being woken up to take sleeping pills LOL....

I am just thrilled that he will be back here...It is alot of work coming and going...

Karen

Caregiver for my Wonderful Husband Angelo, who has Metastatic Bladder Cancer.

Life isn't about how to survive the storm, but how to dance in the rain.

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15 years 10 months ago #16944 by Patricia
Replied by Patricia on topic Coordinating What is Needed To Come Home
A lot of the medical supply houses have all of those things to rent...i got the hospital bed for my father which lasted 3 days..he was to tall and it was uncomfortable for him...so i just bought lots of feather pillows and propped him up in his own bed. Also his insurance paid for it....do you have that option?
One of the things with those hospital beds is the mattress is covered with plastic and with someone who has lost lots of weight its just irritating and i think was the contributing cause of a bedsore my father got.
Pat

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15 years 10 months ago #16935 by momof4
After 18 days in the hospital we are trying to aim for my husband to come home this week. I am upset because after all of this time he is still not getting the pain management we hoped for. But he is better. He received his 6th of 16 Radiation treatments this morning....and they will continue daily (except Sat. & Sun.)until completed.

This of course presents the problem that if he is released...he will need to get back and forth for the treatments every morning at 9:00 AM. Not an easy feat because he is not as mobile as he used to be.

We need to set up a daily nurse, an aide a few times a week, a wheelchair, and getting a hospital bed. I am holding off on the bed until after he gets home...He wants to try our bed, and if it works out great if not, we will re-arrange the furniture to fit the hospital bed and our king size in the same room.

Hopefully over the next day or so the pain meds will be what they should be, and he will feel a little better from the radiation. Then finally he can come home!

Thanks to you all for your thoughts, prayers, suggestions, and concerns,
Karen


Caregiver for my Wonderful Husband Angelo, who has Metastatic Bladder Cancer.

Life isn't about how to survive the storm, but how to dance in the rain.

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