Sorry for going off-topic but I need to vent about a difficult situation…
Last Tuesday (9/6) my wife Cris went into the hospital for surgery to correct a bowel problem. The surgery itself went well and there are no complications directly related to that. However…as some of you may recall she has several health issues, and the biggest of these is that she is severely bipolar. She has a lengthy list of medications to control it, and this regimen must be adhered to very strictly. It’s taken years to work out the combination of meds that work best for her specific case.
Following the surgery, she was in the hospital for a week, during which time they refused to give her one of her meds, a certain sleep aid. In addition, undergoing surgery, being hospitalized, and having her life and daily routine disrupted was already putting stress on her. The last couple days she was there I told the nurse that I was concerned about changes I was seeing in her mental state. She was discharged Monday evening, and I felt that getting her home and back on her complete cycle of meds would soon set things right.
But that night she began having strange sleepwalking episodes. During one of these she fell and smashed her face into the corner of the dresser. I found her sitting on the edge of the bed, fully asleep, with her face bloody and blood all over the floor. She had a huge gash on her forehead down to the bone, and long, deep cuts on her upper lip. Her mouth was so full of blood I couldn’t tell if she had lost a tooth or something.
This was about 1 a.m. I had to get her into the car and drive her to the ER, while she’s groggily protesting that she doesn’t need to go to the hospital. We were in the ER all night, and she was readmitted into the hospital about 8 a.m. Tuesday morning.
On top of everything else, the stress and lack of sleep apparently caught up with me while she was still in the ER, because I suddenly got very dizzy, then blacked out. I woke up on a gurney, hooked up to a monitor, with people asking me all the usual questions: “Can you tell us your name?” “What’s your date of birth?” “Do you have a history of fainting?” etc. Very embarrassing.
Later that morning I returned home to try to get a little sleep. When I returned, I find out that the hospital’s staff psychiatrist got the bright idea to cut off all but one of her meds! I told them to have the guy contact me, but I didn’t hear from him until this morning. He tells me he couldn’t get ahold of Cris’ regular psychiatrist (and he never bother to call me, despite Cris specifically telling him that I manage her care and he needed to contact me before doing anything.) Now her mental state has deteriorated badly and is still getting worse.
So today I tried calling her shrink myself, and was told that he’s out of town and unavailable until the 22nd! But they would have his assistant call me. I finally got a call from her about 8 o’clock this evening. She was shocked and appalled that this guy cut off Cris’ meds, which is very dangerous. In fact, with one of them, cutting it off cold like that can cause seizures! Also, once it’s been stopped, she can’t just restart it at full strength. The dosage has to be built up in small increments over a period of many weeks. Even after reaching full strength it takes time for it to build up an effective level in her body. So just with cutting off that one med alone, means she’s going to be seriously messed up and in misery for a long time. In which case there’s a strong possibility she could end up in a full-blown psychotic state requiring ECT treatments.
Also, I was told that the reason she was sleepwalking was most likely the result of them not giving her that sleeping pill the whole week she was there following the surgery.
As you can imagine, I am extremely upset about the way this has been handled. Tonight I made it clear that I want the hospital’s quack off her case, and tomorrow I intend to have some serious discussions with the hospital administration.
BTW, I know some of this stuff might be considered “personal info”, but Cris has always been very open about her illness. We both feel it’s the only way to counter the stigma that tends to be attached to mental health issues.
