Daily Insanity December 8, 2022

Lost my shit yesterday … sometimes it’s all too much …

Every time a new person in the medical world comes into contact with Brother, they want his whole history … 3 different hospitals for each of the 399 hospital stays just in the last 6 months … The ER people, the facility intake persons, the nurses, the doctors, the social workers, the case workers, the home health care workers, the medical equipment people, and about 10 million casual inquirers … FUCK!!!

Brother cannot accurately dictate his history …

1.      he always tells them he has had his spleen out, then he says, “or maybe it’s just from me wiping my ass from that direction” (mortifyingly embarrassing)

2.      he says he has a heart condition because when he was 30 years old, he had a flutter once (he is now 56 … this sounds like my dad, when dad had a heart attack in his 70’s with his big, protruding belly and had super low blood pressure, he said I’m an athlete, of course I have low blood pressure! He was an athlete in his prime … now so much anymore …)

3.      Stu goes back to prior dates and memories to give information he told me he drank two pots of coffee a day, when pressed, come to find out that was 15 years ago in Tucson when he and Katherine were drinking two pots of coffee together all day long …

4.      They ask if he drinks – “Yes, I had 28 drinks one year” Fucking light weight … (I had 28 drinks in two nights in my drinking days)

5.      They ask if he eats healthy … he is diabetic … “Yes, I have milk, OJ, Cereal, candy bars, cookies, coffee and soda”

6.      One gal asked about what physical pain he is feeling … he was answering every little pain he has felt for the last 20 years … O… M… G… for 20 minutes … she wrote it all down …

It is a constant stream of bullshit coming out of Brother’s mouth because he is not grounded in reality … we are subjected to this over and over and over and over and over again whenever there is contact with some sort of medical team … ridiculous!!

We went through 40 minutes of this on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving with the VA intake nurse before his Psych Doctor appt., then a week later with his regular MHICH nurse, yesterday with a new MHICH caseworker, and today Dec 8, with another VA intake assistant for a scheduled General Physician visit. These are ALL VA people, people!!!

All this information is in his file, yet, within a 2-week time frame they ‘NEED’ to take down past history info again? Correct me if I’m wrong, but once you do past history, shouldn’t you only need to do it once?  Its PAST history, it is NOT going to change!! Yet they have no problem wasting everyone’s time asking the SAME questions over and over and over and over and over again … I have considered my time to be my most valuable asset … they are squandering my time, their time, Brothers time … Wasteful!

It’s enough to drive ME crazy, the stream of bullshit tumbling out of Brother’s mouth, me trying to correct the information so he has an accurate history recorded and them with the constant, SAME … FUCKING … QUESTIONS ... over and over and over and over and over again … It is FUCKING torture!!!

Why can’t there be a centralized data base for all this information?  It would save so many people, so much time … I know there are HIPAA laws, but with the proper permissions and authorizations, this could be a life saving prospect … seriously … life saving from the aspect of being a time saver (which can be crucial in critical situations), having accurate information, not driving people mad with the constant questions that could lead to suicide or homicide (not kidding here … that’s a very real possibility), think of how much money would be saved from the staff’s time not having to collect all this info every time! It would save on patient’s time too … time is money for everyone … so much easier …

When I started with ‘I lost my shit yesterday’, it was the new MHICH caseworker, the 3^rd person to be asking these questions within two weeks, that I freaked out on …

It was on a Wednesday, which is when the MCICH nurse comes weekly to do Brother’s pill box. She brought a co-worker this time. Since he is just out of the hospital, AGAIN, we are trying to figure out all the new meds, doctor visits, routines, etc … for him … This is when the new girl started on the questions and Brother started on the bullshit …

Halfway through, I stopped her and asked why she had to ask these questions AGAIN? The regular nurse said she was just trying to get to know him … Well then read his fucking file!! I said silently … in my head … Thank God!

I got up abruptly and announced in a very irritated manner … “I’m leaving, I can not sit through this again …”

The regular nurse (who was the 2^nd person in 2 weeks to record his history with me present) assured me she could correct any discrepancies, but she doesn’t know the FULL history like I do, but I am confident she knows enough of the important shit to make do …

I dipped … only to met with the same insanity the next day at the doctor’s appointment …

So, here’s my plea … Centralize this Information!!!! Get authorization from the patient to be able to share their info across departments and other agencies/other medical facilities … THEN, make it mandatory to READ a patient’s information BEFORE they come in to torture the patient with a million questions that the medical professional already has in front of their face, if they would just look …

It seems to me that the medical facilities are taking the easy way out, being lazy by not reading what is available to them, to best treat a patient, given their history and their current medications … (See Sept 16, 2022, Excerpt: the meds are new and different than before this hospital stay … (side note - each hospital stay brings a new doctor, with a new idea of the meds to treat Stuart’s illness … no communication or continuity… that would be too easy … or dare I say logical & efficient? aka the SANE way of doing things? I have tried, and the caseworker has tried to communicate this info over and over and over again, all to no avail)

But let’s get real, even if somehow, the legislation or policy procedures were put into effect to implement these policies, many facilitators would not do it anyway, welcome to the human race …

Trying to navigate through all the bullshit that comes with having a mentally ill loved one and trying your best give them, and get them, the best possible care is truly maddening …

THE MENTAL HEALTH SYSTEM IS BROKEN … 

It may take a long time to fix it, but maybe we can start by having some conversations on the best way to fix it and, together, make a better system than we have now (which is severely lacking at best) … we need to start somewhere … let’s chat … let’s multi-brain, brainstorm this mother fucker into a better system to help treat mentally ill people everywhere … I invite you to please join me in this cause … One day at a time, we can figure out how to give a better quality of life to ALL involved … the patient, the caretaker, the medical professionals, of whom many are also frustrated by the present system …

We can do it together … One day at a time …